Answering the ODEO Question

MAKE: Blog: ODEO Podcast service
Live from Etech: Blogger.com founder Evan Williams from ODEO gave a preview of the podcast recording, hosting and publishing service. Users will be able to play audio from any page (from the source location via Macromedia Flash) use tags, subscribe, add to queues, share queues, post comments, download for iTunes, WinMedia, etc. Keep reading for more information and photos…

Greetings from the Future of Law Libraries Symposium

We get under way in about 30 minutes.  I’m going to be trying something different, making audio posts from time to time since I’m not sure if we’ll have always on net access.  Click here for an audio update on the symposium.  I’m using a prototype of a new CALI service called ClassCaster to do the posting.  Look for new ClassCaster postings to follow along and excuse the audio quality, I’m still tuning it:)

Halo_Radio: Web-enabled MP3 Streamer

freshmeat.net: Project details for halo_radio
halo_radio is a package for running a streaming MP3 radio station. A usable Web interface, a backend Icecast source daemon, a utility script for populating a MySQL database with your songs, and other clients are included. The Web interface features informational functions, user management features, and search and request functionality. The source daemon can encode multiple bitrates and features an automatic playlist feature that will randomly select songs based on historical user data.

I need something like this to adopt a webcasting module for ClassCaster.

Getting Enclosures Working

What fun is autoposting mp3’s without writing the enclosure tags needed to make podcasting work? Not much. Scuttle butt on the web says if I link to an MP3, enclosure happens automagically. We’ll see.

Podcasting Attracts Startups

The New York Times > Technology > For a Start-Up, Visions of Profit in Podcasting
The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web’s next big thing.

That step is planned by Odeo, a five-person start-up that is based in a walk-up apartment in this city’s Mission District and was co-founded by a Google alumnus. The company plans to introduce a Web-based system that is aimed at making a business of podcasting – the process of creating, finding, organizing and listening to digital audio files that range from living-room ramblings to BBC newscasts.

The guys behind Odeo are Evan Williams and Noah Glass, responsible for Blogger and AudioBlogger respectively. Seems like they may be up to something that looks to tie the various pieces of podcasting together, at least that’s what Dave Winer thinks. It is intersting to see all of this energy in this space even as I managed to push out ClassCaster.

Oh, but wait, I haven’t exactly explained ClassCaster yet. Well here’s the pitch: grab a phone, dial a number, record a lecture or an analysis of something for your class, hangup, go to your blog and listen to it. All done with Asterisk, VoicePulse DID, MetaWeblog API, and 67 lines of PERL. It is nice and it works. No it needs a pretty dress:) We’ll tie it to our database and offer it up to CALI members and release the idea into the wild…