Podcasters and Fans Join Forces To Create ‘Boom Effect’ Today

Readers of Podcasting News should take a moment today [February 27], to look at online auction “The Boom Effect“, which is going on throughout the day. The auction’s proceeds will benefit Sonic Boom, young daughter of podcast pioneer and Podiobooks’ co-founder Tee Morris.

The brainchild of the Kiwi podcast and Erotica a la Carte author Philippa Ballentine,  The Boom Effect auction was inspired by a tragic event earlier this year:

“Tee Morris is a beloved founding father of the podcasting community; co-creator of Podiobooks.com, writer of four social media books, and the first novelist to serialise his novel as a podcast.

On the 5th of January 2010 Tee found himself facing raising his daughter (with the alias of Sonic Boom) alone, after the sudden, shocking death of his wife Natalie.

The podcasting, writing, and social media community gathered around and within days had raised over $10,000 to cover funeral expenses and other pressing bills Tee was facing. This response was incredible, and showed just how much Tee has touched the lives of others.

However now, as a community we are turning our attention to Sonic Boom’s future. She is only five now, and relying on Tee to provide everything for her. We have the aim of providing a trust buffer for her, so that she can go to college if she wants.

Nothing is going to replace her mother, but the funds raised will give more opportunities . So writers, podcasters and creative types of all stripes are offering up items for auction.

This event will be a webathon run by Podcasting’s very own Rich Sigfrit, with a plethora of special guests and fun. It will take place live online at 10amEST  February 27th 2010.”

Items up for bid run the gamut from custom hand-knitted hoodies, to autographed manuscripts by podcast book authors including Ballentine, J.C. Hutchins, and others…. podcast editing and theme song creation services, jewelry, t-shirts, a custom fitness regimen, and more.

The auction is already underway — it’s all for a good cause, and you can follow the proceedings, and maybe join in yourself, by going here.

The State of The Internet, 2010

Click here to view the embedded video.

Twitter Now Fortune 500’s Fastest Growing New Media Channel

The Fortune 500’s use of blogs, online video, and podcasts continues to increase, but microblogging site Twitter was the social media channel of choice in 2009.

According to a new study, The Fortune 500 and Social Media:

• 35% (173) of the Fortune 500 have active Twitter accounts (a post within the past thirty days); and nearly 50% of the top 100 companies (47) have a Twitter account.
• 80% — four of the top five corporations – Wal-Mart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and General Electric – consistently post on their Twitter accounts. The number one ranked company, Exxon Mobil, does not have a Twitter account.
• 22% (108) of the primary corporations listed in the 2009 Fortune 500 have a public-facing corporate blog. This represents a six percent increase over the 2008 study.
• 86% of these blogs (93) link directly to a corporate Twitter account, a 300% increase over the 2008 study. (Note: More Fortune 500 corporations have Twitter accounts, but do not link directly from their blogs.)

The study also found growing adoption of podcasting and online video among the Fortune 500:

• 19% of the 2009 Fortune 500 is podcasting, a three percent increase over the 2008 study
• 31% are incorporating online video into their blog sites, a 10% increase over 2008

“The continued steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies demonstrate the growing importance of social media in the business world,” stated researcher Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D.

via Society for New Communications Research

Boxxee Wants To Help You PWN Your Apple TV

Tired of Apple’s “Apple TV is a hobby” attitude?

Boxxee wants to help you “pwn your AppleTV” and run Boxxee – a free Internet media platform – on your Apple hardware.

Here’s Boxxee’s instructions:

Installing Boxee on Apple TV

In order to install Boxee on the AppleTV you need to do the following:

1. Download the ATVUSB-Creator
2. Insert a “bootable” USB drive into your Pc/Mac
3. Run the ATVUSB-Creator
4. Click on Create Using /or Patchstick
5. Remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV
6. Power on your Apple TV and the patchstick will run the ATV bootloader
7. After the bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV
8. It now has options for Boxee / XBMC on the main menu
9. Click on Boxee, then select update launcher and  then update Boxee Beta
10. Once boxee is done installing, restart your Apple TV
11. Click “Boxee”

Note: Patchstick Creator Guides
If you’re not familiar with Boxxee, check out the overview video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Radio Personalities Turning to Podcasting

People who work in traditional Radio and people who would like to be in Radio all wonder if Internet Radio and Podcasting can be a viable vehicle for careers. I think the answer to this question is slowly evolving into yes, it can.

Writing at washingtonpost.com, Mike Musgrove has a great article about longtime radio pro, Mike OMeara. OMeara lost his on-air gig at 106.7 last year because of a format change. For most of O'Meara's on-air career, losing a radio show would have meant a job hunt and a move to a different market, writes Musgrave.

But, OMeara decided to have a go at Podcasting a show and apparently he is parlaying his 25 years in the Washington, D.C. market into a viable online offering. Read Musgraves article and you will be able to catch more of the details. For pros who have lost their jobs over the past few years and newbies who are looking for a way to get in front of the mike, Podcasting continues to offer a surprising amount of opportunities.

Radio Personalities Turning to Podcasting

Apple TV Still A “Hobby”

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, speaking today in San Francisco, explained why he believes the Apple TV is a great product, but there just isn’t a large enough market to make the hardware worth a great deal of concentration from his company.

The product is a “hobby,” he said, because it doesn’t compare to the phone, computer and MP3 player markets in terms of sales.

“Apple TV is still a hobby,” he said. “We’ve been very clear about that.”

But he also suggested the company’s set-top-box device wouldn’t necessarily lay dormant. It may just take time for the potential market to grow.

“Because our gut says something’s there, we’re continuing to invest in this,” he said. “But today, it’s still just a hobby.”

Apple TV’s adoption has stymied by Apple’s inability to get workable content deals for the device.

But this may be a chicken or the egg issue. Content providers are going to be hesitant to make deals with Apple unless it can make Apple TV a platform to be reckoned with.

This isn’t going to happen unless Apple opens up the platform to applications and lets Apple TV develop into a social platform for interacting with Internet content.

via AppleInsider

All The Apple iPad Critics Could Be Wrong

Apple’s recently introduced iPad has been criticized by many analysts as being just a big iPod touch.

A new survey, though, suggests that people are really interested in a handheld computer that’s basically a big iPod touch.

RBC/Changewave found that 13% of the people they interviewed were very likely  or somewhat likely to buy an Apple iPad when it comes available:

Even more interesting is the fact that this is nearly 50% higher than the percent of people that were interested in the Apple iPhone when it was announced.

RBC analyst Mike Abramsky attributes much of the interest to the device’s unexpectedly low $499 starting price. “Only 8 percent (of respondents) appear unwilling to pay Apple’s indicated iPad prices,” Abramsky notes. “That’s below the 28 percent who balked at initial iPhone pricing.”

Top planned uses for the device are:

• Surfing the Internet (68 percent),
• Checking e-mail (44 percent), and
• Reading e-books (37 percent).

Expect lines when the iPad is released.

via DigitalDaily

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What if Facebook Added a “Blog” Tab?

Facebook wants to keep users on Facebook. So far, they are doing a pretty good job of that. More and more people are spending more of their online time on Facebook, not to mention, spending more time connected to the web in general (at least partially due to rising use of smartphones).

How much time do you spend on Facebook in a month? A week? Let us know.

Facebook recently made it a point to show users how to use the social network to keep up with the news. Users can simply become fans of their favorite news organizations' pages (feel free to include ours in your mix), and group them in a "news" list just as they would create a group for friends or co-workers. The bottom line is; spending more time on Facebook getting news headlines is spending more time on Facebook period. There is also talk of Facebook  working on its own web email service. Again, more time spent on Facebook.

One way Facebook could capture even more of its users' time, is if it introduced a "blog" tab. Facebook currently has a "notes" tab, and quite a few people do use this. It's a similar concept, but what if it was given more prominence and renamed "blog?" A blog tab might keep Facebook users even longer. First of all, the users blogging with it would obviously be sticking around to write their posts. In addition, their friends and fans would be sticking around longer to read those posts, which would generally be much longer and require more time than the average status update.

Would more people become bloggers?

I suspect that the word "notes" doesn't quite resonate the same as the word blog in the minds of many Facebook users, although for all intents and purposes, the feature operates like a blog. You can post longer-form content for your friends and fans to see, and they can comment on it, while it all remains in tact in one spot for future reference. Not only could the addition of a "blog" tab keep Facebook users around longer, but it could have a significant impact on the Blogosphere. Simply calling it a blog and having it available right from any user's profile page might just inspire.

Is social media killing blogs?

No, but it's hard to say that use of sites like Facebook and Twitter (and now Google Buzz) don't lend to less blog posts being created. If nothing else, it’s simply a time issue. It is easy to push out a quick status update if you have something to say. It's easier than blogging. For longer-form content, blogs are generally the better option, which is one reason they are still alive and well. But if Facebook had a blog tab, the social network could cut into the Blogosphere even more, given its huge userbase, while establishing itself as a go-to place for blogging (another area in which Facebook could compete with Google, I might add. Don't forget that Google owns Blogger).

If Facebook did this, it is very unlikely that all current bloggers would immediately go running there to do their blogging, but Facebook users who may not already be blogging may find the urge to do so when that tab is right in front of their faces. And frankly, I'm confident many current bloggers would go running there. Facebook is a powerful tool for building an audience or expanding upon one. 

It works on MySpace. Look at director Eli Roth's blog, for example. He gets a lot of engagement there (although he hasn't updated in several months). Facebook is another animal altogether, and its growth is unprecedented. Just look at Facebook's latest round of stats.

Facebook is frequently adding and changing features, as any user can certainly attest (for better or for worse). It is not hard to imagine them doing something like this. For the record, the company has made no mention of going such a route, to my knowledge. There are currently ways to blog within and around Facebook if you look hard enough, but if Facebook made blogging a focal point, I think it could take off, and perhaps lend to the concept of Facebook as a news source, and even add greatly to the Blogosphere by encouraging more blogging. 

Should Facebook Have a blog tab? Would you use it? Share your thoughts.

Olympic Podcasts

Olympic podcasts -- podcasts about the world games recorded by fans as well as participants in the games.

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