The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
I spend a lot of time online, so I usually pick up on new things fairly quickly. For example, I was into podcasting very early. The first time I checked into podcasting, there were less than 50 people doing it. Now, log into iTunes on any given day and you will find tens of thousands of new podcasts that have been uploaded. These mp3 files are easy to make, don't take up much storage space and are free to download. Like blogging, podcasting changed things, allowing basically anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to produce something that could be downloaded by anyone with an internet connection. When Apple began including podcasts in the iTunes store and built support for them directly into the software, it seemed like the sky was the limit. But about the same time, all of the high-speed Internet service that was allowing people to download these audio files was also making it possible for video to flow cheaply and easily. YouTube hit the Net and things changed again. For years, video had been restricted to short clips that had to be slowly downloaded. Once more, people could now be producers of their own content and get it out to a potential audience of a billion people. Don't get me wrong, I love podcasting. I subscribe to at least a half-dozen and listen to them on my walks to and from school each day. For me, they serve a purpose. But for many people, they would rather watch a video than have to listen to something. Podcasting is running into trouble. Even if you check the directory in iTunes, the grand majority of the top podcasts are actually daily available video feeds. Beyond that, the next step for video is already here - personal television stations. Joost and Miro are coming. While they are different - Miro requires Bit Torrent and that you subscribe for free to channels downloading the content that you want to watch, while Joost lets you navigate through its channels like a regular TV streaming the shows to you without having to download - they are both bringing home the idea of custom-built TV viewing. Watchers can build their own schedule of a combination of popular "real" shows and indie shows that might be produced by someone in their bedroom. We are also moving one step further along this line to the point where we can all have our own TV channel. Ustream.tv is a new website that allows anyone to set up a free account and start streaming live video onto the Net that anyone can watch. Like podcasting and YouTube, a lot of what is being streamed is not worth your viewing time, but sifting through what you can find on the site, there is a lot of valuable content. Leo Laporte from Tech Tv has his own channel, there are all kinds of lectures and special events that are being presented live. As of today, there are 216 separate channels that are broadcasting on their own schedule. Some of them produce shows several times each week and others are more frequent. You just need a free account and a camera of some sort to stream whatever you want and set it up for public viewing. A free account gets you a chat room as well, allowing you to interact with viewers as you are filming. So while podcasting is flattening and has not grown much lately, video in all of their forms, from YouTube to Joost and now on to Ustream, is changing all of our options. ([email protected])
