2008.05.13 – 21.41 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
I guess I’ve always been the type of person who likes collecting things, perhaps a bit too much for his own good.
Case in point I reinstalled Leopard on my MacBook Pro this evening so I could reformat the drive as case sensitive. As I was about to copy over my iTunes music library from one of my backup drives I noticed big the folder was, and how huge the Podcast folder had become!
I guess I’ve been downloading and listening to podcasts since early 2005, and they do build up! The question is though, what do I do with all of them? Some of the shows in this folder are no longer being produced or are even available anymore I think, and it’d be a shame to delete this collection after downloading for so long. In a nostalgic way it’s fun to listen back to old shows to see what people thought was exciting a few years ago. Look, it’s an iPod that plays video! Google will never buy YouTube! Ants on Mars! Irn-Bru in New York!
It also raises another question: if I don’t delete this folder, how large will it be in 2009? 2010? 2020? Will I need to contemplate buying even more terabyte hard drives or invest in a Blu-Ray burner and stacks of double sided discs just for this stuff?
So much for podcasts being free right? :-).
2008.03.28 – 21.17 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Afterword: After posting this entry thinking nobody would really read it, I received comments from five fantastic people who have all made me rethink this issue from the ground up… not to mention make me wish I had spent more time on this post in the first place!
You can read my gigantic reponse along with these comments (surprisingly!) in the comments section. Thank everyone for your help and feedback, you’ve all really helped a lot.
Isn’t the internet an amazing place? All this open dialogue with people from around the world, I’m loving it!
It seems there’s a growing number of people who aren’t impressed with the term podcast for one reason or another. From what I’ve been able to gather, these are the most common reasons why (feel free to post a comment below to add to the list):
- Techy reasons
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- It implies you need an Apple iPod to listen to them
- They’re not "casting" because XML is a client pull system, not a server push system!
- You can’t immedietly figure out what it is when hearing the term the first time
- It’s a techy, short sighted term with no longevity
- The "don’t want to be associated with these" reasons
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- It describes horrible shows like Dawn and Drew
- Podcasts have become too commercial
- Antonym to above: podcasts are amateur and silly, nobody takes them seriously and therefore they have no business potential
- The whole field is dominated by a few large egos
For what it’s worth, I really don’t agree with some of these points, and I’m honestly apathetic with regards to most of the others, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.
Someone looks jealous!
In response to this, a veratable splattering of adhoc words combined to create podcast-free alternative names have been created:
- Frank Edward Nora coined the term New Time Radio even before podcasting took off and he continues to use it as an alternative
- Jimbob Kloss from Whole Wheat Radio refers to them as audio magazines, very catchy!
- Leo Laporte infamously decided to refer to them as netcasts, which other than the iPod mixup really doen’t solve any of the tech issues at all!
I’m sure a quick Google search would reveal even more such terms.
Which brings me to the Rubenerd Show. I’ve decided I’m going to distance myself from this issue once and for all by calling these shows exactly what they are:
INTERNET RADIO SHOWS
That said, I’ll probably keep using the term podcast interchangably with it though, it’s the accepted term that everyone seems to have settled on and agreed to, and I’m fed up with explaining other new terms to people. Perhaps with time the accepted term will change, in which case I’ll change too. After all, language is an evolving beast that changes as we do, right?
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