Dana Gardner has a post here about ‘community podcast directories’ – all the features he wants we’re building…..keep those ideas flowing Dana!! His blog is a good read – follow it.

There seems to be some hubbub around the concept of a ‘community podcast directory’ and in fact it is one of the core reasons we have built (and continue to build) Podcast.com in the way we have – forming a solid content data foundation, with easy tools – then slapping that data into a great UI, for the web, mobiles and desktop. And btw with a simple neutral URL to find the good stuff…;)
‘Community Directories’ are exactly what you will have available at Podcast.com, in open OPML and RSS for you to consume and manipulate, using easy tools we are building here for you.
Soon, you will be able to log in to Podcast.com, create an account – get a super hot URL for your podcast directory and fill her up! In fact the other day in a matter of minutes we pulled together Canada.Podcast.com in an OPML file for easy consumption and findability of all Canadian podcasts.

The call came from http://www.rogic.com/canadapodcasts/ who was maintaining the node for the old community directory that has been abandoned – we fixed up the OPML to comply with the spec via our toolset and voila Canadian podcasts are cranking again. We left the custom tags in there. You can find it here :

http://podcast.com/opml/canada_fixed.opml
We have also been testing out various nodes – BBC.Podcast.com – Worldcup.Podcast.com – CNN.Podcast.com – NPR.Podcast.com
The power of OPML inclusion will make it very easy to connect many different users’ podcast directories together to form an infinite growth of trees of directories, mashed up any way you like.

So the ‘root’ of this directory is in place….come on in and curate!

In an article on MediaPost by Wendy Davis she reports that “Nielsen/NetRatings research is showing more than 9.2 million Web users, or 6.6 percent of U.S. adult Web users, have downloaded an audio podcast in the last 30 days, compared to 6.7 million users (4.8 percent) who published blogs in that time.”

mmmmm…..curious comparison – as my Gramother would say to me “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” Apples and oranges I would say.

Nielson goes on……

“They also have reported that around 5.6 million online adults (4 percent) have downloaded a video podcast in the last 30 days”.”Podcast downloaders tend to be younger than the online population at large. Web users between the ages 18 and 24 are 72 percent more likely than the average Web user to listen to audio podcasts and 47 percent more likely to view video podcasts. Users older than 45 were less likely than average to listen or view podcasts.”
mmmm….alright that’s interesting stuff – this certainly adds credence to our thought that people are very comfortable with ‘unchunked’ content in any form and want to be their own ‘smart reconstructors’ and interact with media on their terms. – see the article here.

It’s a nice headline though…..remember these are the folks that brought you The Nielson Box…….what a way to arbritrate visual thought….not. Glad we are working on smarter applications here @ Podcast.com

I have to say I am enjoying building and fostering new media ecosystems – I’ve spent the last several weeks with a friend from New York casting a message that the old line finance types in his world will understand – the most difficult part for these folks will be letting go of traditional notions and that the economics of MSM has changed forever – and my children will know nothing else. Eric Norlin makes a great comment on The Buzz Machine about this point and elucidates the mission of the platform we are building – filtering and aggregation – and the Value lies at the aggregation point!

I had breakfast last week with Jeff Pulver of VON fame – He’s launching a new conference in Boston this September >> http://www.videoonthenet.com/ <<<

We had a good conversation and certainly are simpatico on the Democratization of Media.

Best of luck to Jeff and the new conference – I’ll be going.

I ran into my buddy Jim as we were giving the new Ribcraft 6.5 a shakedown – with twin Honda 90′s DASH really ‘gets out of the hole’ – I tossed him my camera and he took a few shots off Bakers Island in Salem Sound

Jim also shot a video podcast – He was running The Mitigator side by side – click the Dash Run link >>> Dash Run.mov