Archive for the ‘Podcasting’ Category
iPodcast competition update March 19th, 2007
I received a call from Steven Davis from Apple this afternoon to discuss the rules of the competition which I criticised in my post titled "ipodcast competition is not for me". He said it is not the intention of the sponsors of the competition to violate users’ content license conditions and has asked me to assist him in modifying the rules to remove the cause for complaint. I’ll post further updates shortly.
Update: Heather Ford of iCommons posted an interesting post to her personal blog with a couple suggestions.
Tags: ipodcast competition, rules, content licensing, copyright
Posted in Podcasting, Podcasts, Sharing | Comments (0)
ipodcast competition is not for me March 16th, 2007
I was invited to enter the ipodcast competition (we’re highly sought after you know 
) along with a bunch of local podcasters and I initially supported the competition 110%. I was going to edit past and new episodes of chilipod and my own Legally Content podcast for submission this weekend until I read Mike’s post and Peter’s comment querying the rules of the competition on the site.
They literally have fine print and if you are considering entering the competition then you need to seriously pay attention to what all the jargon says. While there is a lot of complicated legalese (it is English, really), these clauses in particular are problematic:
(C) Any Entry Materials which Sponsor, in its sole opinion, deems to be inappropriate for publication will not be considered and the individual submitting those materials will be disqualified. By entering, each individual warrants and represents that all of the Entry Materials (i) is/will be the sole and original creation of the individual (or group in the case of a band) and has not been copied in whole or in part from any other work; (ii) does not/will not violate or infringe any intellectual property right, such as but not limited to, copyright, trademark/trade name, or contract rights, or other proprietary right of any person (including but not limited to rights of privacy or publicity and are not defamatory, slanderous or libelous, or portray in a false light), or entity; (iii) is/will be the sole and exclusive property of the individual (or group in the case of a band); (iv) is not licensed or otherwise encumbered in any manner whatsoever; and (v) complies with (and does not violate) any law, rule or regulation. Entry Materials cannot name, describe, or depict any person or character, living or dead or fictional, except only the band members, and cannot contain any material subject to copyright of any third party or contain the trademark, trade name or logo of any third party (other than that which is displayed on an instrument and applied to that instrument by its manufacturer and then only as it had been applied by the manufacturer). By entering, the individual grants permission for the use of the Entry Materials, and/or name of the band (and the name of each individual member of the band), in connection with the advertising, promotion, and publicity of the Competition and otherwise as stated in these Official Rules (as solely determined by Sponsor).
…
4. GENERAL CONDITIONS: By participating, each individual agrees to release, discharge and agree to hold harmless Sponsor, and its respective, parent, subsidiary and related companies, advertising and promotion agencies, and all of their respective employees, officers and directors, representatives and agents, and judges and against any and all claims, losses or damages of any kind (whether due to negligence or otherwise), including personal injury, death, and/or property damage, and/or breach or failure of any representation or warranty, and/or contract rights, and/or infringement of Intellectual Property rights such as but not limited to, copyright, trademark/trade name, and/or rights of publicity or privacy, defamation, slander, or libel, or portrayal in a false light, arising, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, from acceptance, possession, use or misuse of any prize or participation in this Competition, or participation in the Competition related activity or travel related activity, and (b) each winner, by acceptance of prize, except where legally prohibited, grant permission, in perpetuity, for Sponsor and those acting pursuant to Sponsor™s authority to use his/her name, photograph, voice and/or likeness, and videos, recordings, prize information, and Entry Materials (and notwithstanding anything to the contrary in these Official Rules license the use of the Entry Materials which may be altered, changed, modified, edited, used alone, together or with other works, and/or used in distorted, illusory or composite form, as solely determined by Sponsor) for advertising, trade and promotional purposes without further compensation, at any times or time, in all media now known or hereafter discovered world wide and on the Internet without notice or review or approval. All Entry Materials will be deemed a work made for hire under the copyright laws of South Africa, but if it cannot be so deemed, then each individual irrevocably sells, assigns and transfers to Sponsor all of his/her right, title and interest in and to his/her Entry Materials, including but not limited to all copyright and trademark rights, in South Africa and worldwide, therein, for valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which is hereby acknowledged. Upon request of Sponsor, for the original music category, each winning band and the individual members of each band shall execute and deliver such additional instrument of assignment, as may be solely deemed by Sponsor, reasonably necessary to establish the ownership of record of the right, title and interest in and to the Entry Materials and of the copyrights transferred hereunder in favour of Sponsor, that the winning band and the individual members of each band may now or later have; and to record and perfect same. Should Sponsor fail to request the said assignment as stated, that shall not be deemed a waiver of Sponsor™s rights and Sponsor may at a later time request the transfer and/or assignment, and each such winning band and the individual members of each band agrees to comply with any such request. INFORMATION PROVIDED IS SUBJECT TO THE PRIVACY POLICY ON THE iPODCAST WEB SITE (www.getpodcasting.co.za). TO ACCESS AND READ THE POLICY, GO TO THE WEB SITE AND CLICK THE PRIVACY LINK. Any dispute concerning the Competition will be governed by the laws of South Africa and adjudicated therein.
The first part of these clauses seem ok but it gets worse as you near the end of it. Here is a summary of what these clauses say:
- the content you submit is your own stuff and it doesn’t violate someone else’s rights (including copyright and trademarks);
- your content is not licensed to anyone else;
- you have to play nice so no name calling or saying nasty things about people;
- you can’t talk about anyone except yourself; and (here is the clincher)
- if you accept a prize you give up your content to the Sponsor (Apple IMC Southern Africa, MINI SA, Coca-Cola South Africa (Pty) Ltd or 5FM) forever and they can do whatever they want with it, chew it up and spit it out.
The problem with this is that once your content goes into that competition and if you are fortunate enough to win one of the amazing prizes, you are going to lose big as the content you worked so hard to produce is yanked out of your virtual hands and sold into bondage. I don’t support this. These rules will, if I submit chilipod and Legally Content material, violate the content licenses that govern the use of that content. In the case of chilipod, the episodes are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License. This license enables people to share our content in certain ways that are not possible under copyright (which is pretty much what will be imposed on your content in terms of the rules of the competition) and it is the license which we have chosen to govern use of our content. In fact, going further, the rules provide that you effectively give up any claim of any sort to that content. For this reason my own content will not be entered into the competition (despite the allure of a new MacBook Pro) and I doubt that chilipod will be a part of this either.
Don’t get me wrong, I support initiatives to promote podcasting and other new media elements in South Africa. I support those efforts 110%. What I don’t support is a competition that steamrolls over the rights of those same content creators the competition would seem to promote. That is not on. That being said, I urge you to make up your own mind. This competition could give you fantastic publicity if you do well and that is worth something. Take the time to read the rules (take an afternoon off) and see what you are getting yourself into.
Update: There have been developments here and here!
Tags: getpodcasting, ipodcast, competition, copyright, creative commons, content licensing, fine print, the catch
Posted in Events, Podcasting, Podcasts, Sharing, chilipod | Comments (2)
Comprehensive introduction to podcasts and podcasting March 5th, 2007
We published an introduction to podcasts a little while ago and discussed a number of aspects of podcasts and podcasting. PBS has a great introduction of their own which really goes into quite a bit of helpful detail. It is titled "Your Guide to Podcasts" and is yet another fantastic post for those who are still a little unsure about podcasts. The one unfortunate thing about podcasts is the name "podcast" because it suggests that you have to have an iPod to listen to podcasts. This is not necessarily the case. Even though some podcasts are formatted for use in iTunes and on an iPod, most of them are available in mp3 format which can be played on pretty much any digitial audio player.
Tags: podcasts, introduction to, guide to, howto, podcasting
Posted in Podcasting | Comments (0)
Before you jump in March 1st, 2007
In some ways Web 2.0 is just like Web 1.0 in the late 1990s. There is plenty hype about what social media in particular, and new media generally, can help achieve and how everyone is using these new tools on their new sites. The problem with this is that this sort of hype led to a monumental bubble burst that led to a fairly dramatic downturn of the global IT industry. The reason much of the hype turned to vapour is because it was all about the technology and had very little in the way of a sound rationale for implementation of those emerging technologies. In other words, all the promises made about the newfangled Web thing were a load of bull.
Almost a decade after that crazy time we find ourselves with a far more developed version of the Web with improved infrastructure and capability. Ironically we now have the bandwidth to realise some of the dreams of the dotcom era and yet we have our own hype and range of promises about the current Big Thing. The question is whether we can back up those promises with something real and tangible for people and companies that want to get stuff done better and not get caught up in fancy pictures and promises of 1% of 1% of a gazillion visitors to their website. Is there is a good reason to set up a blog or a podcast or a wiki for a company? Answering these questions involves asking a couple of pretty sensible questions, namely why, what, when and how/who? There is really no point installing a blog because it is the dine thing, especially if you are not going to maintain it.
On this note, Christopher Carfi has a great post on The Social Customer titled "Prerequisites For Setting Up A Business-Driven Web 2.0 Effort" which asks these questions and suggests ways to constructively answer these questions to ensure that when you do set up a "business-driven Web 2.0 effort", that it makes sense and is more likely to be sustained by that business.
Tags: business-driven, web 2.0, social media, new media, rationale, adoption, case for adoption
Posted in Feeds, Podcasting, Sharing | Comments (0)
Blogging policies in your company February 23rd, 2007
We encourage companies to consider blogging as part of their efforts to communicate better with their customers. As much as we would love to see everyone blogging, podcasting, using wikis and subscribing to and publishing feeds, they are not the answer for everyone. At the same time, those companies who will make good use of blogs/ podcasts/ wikis/ insert-name-of-new-media-element-here should take care to ensure that these new media elements are governed by properly prepared policies that determine what the acceptable uses of those new media elements are. It is important to bear in mind that if you have an acceptable use policy in your company to deal with the use of your IT infrastructure (and you really should have something in place), your policy should encompass all uses of that IT infrastructure. New media is, well, new, but that doesn’t mean you treat it differently from a policies and procedures perspective.
When you publish content on your company blog, wiki or podcast the same rules relating to intellectual property (copyright, trademarks, patents etc), privacy, defamation and advertising apply just as they would to a static website. You should therefore take care to ensure that your acceptable use policy covers some of the following issues (this is by no means a closed list):
- publication of the company’s intellectual property;
- republication of other people’s content (one of the big concerns here is copyright and trademark infringement);
- publishing potentially defamatory content (and, in the process, exposing the company to claims);
- expressing personal views on the company blog;
- who is responsible for content published on the site and whether content should be checked before it is published;
- what sorts of content may be published on the site (for example, strictly company related or anything in the industry?); and
- compliance with legal requirements which may be relevant to publication of this sort of content.
There is a fairly comprehensive list of Do’s and Don’t’s when it comes to corporate blogging on the Law.com Legal Technology site that is worth reading.
New media can be used really effectively in a corporate environment. Like any aspect of the business you need to make sure that it fits in with what you are doing and have planned and compromise the company. Achieving this may require a fairly simple set of rules and procedures that, when implemented, will facilitate the creation of an effective and and more productive communication channel with your customers.
(Source: Lexblog)
Tags: corporate blogging, dos and don’ts, policies and procedures, acceptable use policy, blogs, blogging, podcasts, wikis, feeds
Posted in Blogging, Podcasting, Tools | Comments (0)
chilibean - a blog of note according to Quirk February 22nd, 2007
I was chatting to Sarah Aitken, marketing manager over at Quirk, and she mentioned that this humble blog was, in turn, mentioned in Quirk’s latest newsletter! I rushed over to the site and found the following:
Wow! Thanks Sarah and the Quirk team. You really made our day! As for the last bit in the mention, Victoire and I are going to be covering the WebPR+ conference in Joburg next Friday and we will publish a special edition chilipod series soon afterwards to give you an idea of what was discussed at the conference.
Tags: quirk, sarah aitken, webpr+, chilipod, blog of note
Posted in People, Podcasting | Comments (0)
Podcasts. What’s the big deal? February 5th, 2007
We’ve talked a bit about blogging and how valuable and important it is on chilibean. What we haven’t spoken about all that much is why podcasting could be valuable, particularly to a business. I’m going to throw out a few ideas about podcasting and its relevance in a business context in this post.
An important consideration when it comes to new media is making it relevant to a business where the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. It is all well and good how cool new media is but coolness is of limited value when you have to justify the expense. It makes sense to go back to what a podcast is and then proceed from there. A podcast is a pre-recorded media file that is made available for subscription using technologies like RSS. Although the term "podcast" was originally derived from the device that supported them, namely the iPod, podcasts can be downloaded and accessed using a variety of applications, not just iTunes and can be played on pretty much any device that supports mp3s (the most common format), not just the iPod. You can subscribe to episodes using a feed reader or applications designed for podcasts like iTunes, Juice and a variety of podcast clients.
So what does all of this have to do with a business? In a way, much of what a blog has to offer a business except the format creates a few interesting opportunities. Like a blog, a podcast gives you the opportunity to speak to your customers and prospective customers in your own voice (literally). If you publish a video podcast you can actually show your subscribers what you do and how you do it. Start thinking about the possibilities with audio and video formats and you begin to appreciate the potential of a podcast. Some of the principles of blogs remain relevant. The podcast should still be an expression of an authentic voice. If it becomes a series of adverts then you will lose your subscribers. The idea is to tell your subscribers about you and your business. A big part of that may be talking about what is going on in your industry or what your take is on your products. Things really start to become interesting when you open up for feedback (something I highly recommend you do) and how you respond to that feedback.
Something to bear in mind is that you don’t need to stick to a specific duration for your episodes. The nice thing about podcasting is that it can sometimes work better if you have a shorter show every week or two rather than a 40 minute diatribe about your latest product twice a week. The idea is to give your subscribers an insight into your product, your business and the people behind the scenes. Another thing to bear in mind is when your subscribers are likely to listen to the podcast and take this into consideration when you record the episodes. You may find that your subscribers will listen to your podcast during their commute or while they are on break so you may want to keep the duration shorter.
Another consideration is the format of your podcast. Some easy podcast recording applications will save the episodes in a specific format. For example, Apple’s Garageband prefers to export the file to iTunes in .m4a format (the iTunes format) which will only really suit people who listen to the podcast using their iPods. A better option if you want to appeal to a broader audience is the .mp3 format which will play on the vast majority of audio devices. Of course there is no rule that podcasts must be played on a portable audio device. Subscribers can just as easily listen to them on their computers or burn a collection of podcast episodes on to an audio CD and pop it into their car CD player.
There are a lot of podcasts out there and as more people start listening to podcasts you are going to find yourself competing for a very limited amount of time available for podcasts so you should make sure that your content is worth setting aside some rare listening time to listen to. People are not going to subscribe and listen to your podcast just because you publish it. There has to be something of value to them in it and to keep them coming back so I suggest you plan each episode and include show notes or even have your podcast transcribed and the transcription made available to your subscribers. Make your podcast accessible and engaging and it could prove to be a valuable tool for reaching your customers.
Of course, podcasts could also be used to communicate internally with your employees or even your stakeholders. A properly prepared podcast could replace a newsletter and perhaps even make your communications more human simply because it would be your voice on the podcast. The advantage of humanising your communications is that people tend to respond better to people they believe they know and if you come across as more human, you will probably find people start to identify with you and start to feel they know you better than your competitor. Think about it this way: if you are looking for a plumber, do you prefer someone you know or a total stranger?
There is so much more to podcasting. This post is really intended to be an introduction to some of the possibilities. Feel free to drop us a line if you would like to chat about more podcasting tips and ideas.
Tags: podcasting, podcast, how to, tips, ideas, audience, subscribers, introduction
Posted in Podcasting, Tutorials | Comments (1)
Episode 1.2 of the Legally Content podcast is up February 1st, 2007
My apologies for the delay with this post. I was waiting for Odeo to pick up on the update so I could post a player for the podcast episode here. Without further ado, episode 1.2 of the Legally Content podcast is available through the Legally Content feed, on the Legally Content blog or for direct download:
In this episode -
- I revisit Creative Commons licenses and talk a little about them and what they could mean for your online and offline activities;
- I also talk a little about how mainstream journals have responded to the free content movement in the scientific world in the United States.
- Amber MacArthur talked a little about an audio sample used in the recent "Children of Men" movie that is licensed under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus license (via Boing Boing).
There is also some exciting news about a new chilibean project.
The exciting news I mention in the show notes is a new podcast which Victoire and I will be recording tomorrow afternoon (1 February) and which should be up by the weekend. This new podcast will cover new media and should prove to be a great supplement to this blog. We hope you will enjoy it.
We’re going to get off to a rather unusual start and record the first episode of the podcast in a public spot using some pretty simple and mobile equipment. I have tested the equipment and it works pretty well and I am sure you will let us know what you think when you hear it.
Tags: legally content, episode 1.2, podcast, chilibean
Posted in Podcasting, Podcasts | Comments (0)
chilibean is expanding January 28th, 2007
This evening at the 27dinner, Victoire and I announced that we will launch a new podcast next week as part of the chilibean mix. We hope to have the first episode of the podcast up by the end of next week. The podcast will focus on new media and we are working to minimise the duplication of content between the podcast and the blog itself so you don’t wind up feeling you have heard it all before (Rich, thanks for the suggestion!).
Keep an eye on this blog for more information. We are not going to launch a new blog for the podcast. Instead we will publish a separate feed for those people who would like to subscribe to the podcast separately.
By the way, get some chili love on 14 February 2007 …
Tags: chilibean, podcast, new media, 14 February 2007, 27dinner
Posted in Media, Podcasting, Podcasts | Comments (2)
Episode 1 of the Legally Content podcast has been published January 12th, 2007
I have just published two versions of episode 1 of the Legally Content podcast titled "The Apple Show and DRM". The original episode is the full version and includes part of Steve Jobs’ keynote speech where he introduces the iPhone. It is worth listening to and at the same time does take the podcast to around 30 minutes and 36MB. I also published an abbreviated version of the podcast without Jobs’ keynote speech for those of you with bandwidth restrictions.
I am just waiting for the feed to update to Odeo and I’ll insert mini-players in this post for you to use. Actually, on that note, I inserted a mini-player into Legally Content’s sidebar and into the right sidebar of 3puppies media. What do you think of that mini-player? Should I insert one into this blog’s sidebar instead of the individual episode mini-players in these announcement posts?
Tags: legally content, the apple show and drm, iphone, drm, apple, podcast, episode 1.1
Posted in Podcasting | Comments (1)