Oxford Dictionary Names “Podcast” 2005 Word of the Year

The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected “podcast” as the Word of the Year for 2005. Defined as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,” the word will be added to the next online update to the dictionary in early 2006

Here is an interesting business model for the rapidly growing base of video iPods. Check out PodDater. You can search for your desired mate by using tags. Once you see a profile or profiles that your interested in, you can then download and sync them to your iPod and review at your leisure. The downloadable profiles are short video segments of individuals who tell you all about themselves. Good one.

Interview Shots

Originally uploaded by trendjunkie.

Check out my latest podcast. This time I kick off the first podcast initiative for Verizon Wireless. The podcast is about the launch of the new, Verizon Wireless, V Wireless device. In the photo to the right, I am chatting with John Johnson of Verizon Wireless. John spent an hour and walked me through all of the features and functionality of the V. All I can say is two words, V-Cast Rocks! Check out the Flickr set here. Enjoy.

I ran across a short article in today’s Baltimore Sun about xooglers.blogspot.com - a blog by two ex-Google employees. Interesting read for sure. Check it out.

“at Google, if I were to rate people on general smartness I would have put myself in the bottom 25%. It was pretty much the first time in my life that I found myself not at the top of the intellectual pecking order. It was not an easy adjustment for me.”

The best and the brightest they say…

“I had an offer on the table, the HR people kept pestering me for a college transcript and my S.A.T. scores. It was a classic Google moment. Your S.A.T. score was the measure of your intellectual capability; your GPA represented the numerical summary of your ability to execute on that potential. Your value to Google could be plotted using those two data points.”

I had breakfast with a client yesterday who runs a very large interactive practice that services fortune 100-1000 companies. Over the course of the meal, we discussed email marketing, podcasting, blogging, and RSS, mainly the current state of each but more importantly where its all going. We also talked about how interested his clients and prospects have become in these mediums. They are starting to “get” how they can become key parts of their marketing communications. Out of our discussion, the one topic that really threaded everything together was just how big RSS is now, and how big it will be in the future. The power of RSS in all of these mediums is such a key factor - its the new open channel of flowing information. The power of what a marketer can do with a feed or many feeds is becoming endless, and most importantly transmissions are seamless and clean. Simply put, when you look at the landscape you see that RSS is popping up everywhere.

Then I get back to Baltimore and read that Sony has just released RSS support as an upgrade for the PSP, timely:

“RSS (Really Simple Syndication, version 2.0) functionality has been added for audio streams. PSP owners connected to the Internet can now easily check through Web sites for updated streaming audio content such as podcasts”

All of this is no surprise to me, I along with all of the other early adopters have been pretty bullish on our bets that RSS would eventually explode in the mainstream (If you have been using an aggregator like Bloglines and subscribing to RSS feeds for over a year, consider yourself an early adopter of RSS compared to the mass population). For me, its completely changed the way I use the web - I am subscribed to just over 130 feeds that I pay attention to every day, and via RSS I receive text content, MP3 enclosures (Podcasts) and now video. All push, no pull - now tell me thats not powerful.

The real interesting part, is the practical application of RSS, and implementing marketing programs and strategies around it. Thats where the fun is. My client and I brainstormed lots of ideas on how marketers could make use of RSS feeds. When some of these come to fruition I will be sure to post about them. In the meantime, watch RSS closely, and if your a marketer and its not on your radar yet, push it towards the top of the list.

This has been a truly wild week. I just returned from Boston, where I attended the 5th Annual Boston Interactive Media Association/Yahoo! Charity Gala. The event was held at the Four Seasons hotel in the Back Bay area of the city. The BIMA crew did an excellent job with planning and promoting, and the event was an absolute rocking success. Attendance was in the 400 range! The event was black tie optional, and everyone was decked out having a good time (some were having a REALLY good time!).

My company is a big supporter of MITX, BIMA’s parent organization, we handle alot of their email marketing and continuously support their initiatives. This particular event is put on for online media professionals, and this year folks charitably gathered to support AccesSportAmerica, an organization that assists disabled people with participating in high-challenge sports. To raise money the event has a big silent auction (I love silent auctions) filled with good stuff. I decided to be a very active bidder this year and went home with a new Tivo system and a Sirius Satellite Radio kit. I am very psyched to play with the new toys, both have been on my list of “I gotta get me one of those.” On behalf of my company, we also bid on a new high res Magnavox television and won. Our VP of Business Development, who is based in Boston and maintains great relations with the organization, took that one home as a bonus

Great job to everyone involved in putting on such a great event. The spirit was high and most importantly the event yielded over $30,000.00 in donations for AccesSportAmerica! Nice work.

The Grateful Dead folks are stirring the pot and messing with their hardcore fan base by restricting the downloads of their live performances on Archive.org. A NY Times article goes over the specifics in detail:

“ The band recently asked the operators of the popular Live Music Archive (archive.org) to make the concert recordings - a staple of Grateful Dead fandom - available only for listening online, the band’s spokesman, Dennis McNally, said yesterday. In the meantime, the files that previously had been freely downloaded were taken down from the site last week.“

I am not sure exactly what the good ol folks over at GD Merchandising are thinking exactly but its sort of taboo to be even attempting a move like this, THIS far in the development and evolution of the Grateful Dead fan base. Being a head myself, I adhere by all of their restrictions, but c’mon, the Archive.org recordings are priceless and a major source for some of the best shows ever played. The band is now selling shows on their main website and in short Archive poses unwelcomed competition. However, in making this decision they are unleashing a beast - David Gan’s sums up the reality of the situation:

“When they were making $50 million a year on the road, there wasn’t a lot of pressure to monetize their archives.” Now, however, it may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. While the move to revise the Live Music Archive may deal a blow to what many fans considered an organized library of material, “the idea that they could stop people from trading these files is absurd,” Mr. Gans said, adding: “It’s no longer under anyone’s control. People have gigabytes of this stuff.”

The fans have created a petition to reverse the decision, you can check it out here.

For some reason my Feedburner feed has not been burning since November 23rd. Odd indeed. I was not the only one this was happening to, as it appeared to be an issue with a server upgrade from the service provider that this blog is hosted on. In any case, thanks to flip for helping me out and keeping me posted, and more than that give me the solution to get back up and running. All I had to do was log into my Feedburner account, and in the “troubleshootize” section, just Resync my feed. All should be working well now. Hopefully, my older posts from the holiday weekend will pop up in your reader, if not stop by.

Check it out - the folks over at Craigslist have compiled a “best of” list. The list dates back to 2000. All I can say is, people are strange

per Mitch Arnowitz

Keeping up with their intense schedule of various product launches almost every week, Google has just released an extension of the popular AdWords program. The new service offers a Pay Per Call model, whereby advertisers can connect directly with prospects by offering a small phone icon on their text ads. Once the prospect clicks on the phone icon, they are prompted to enter their phone number and are instantly called by the Google system and then connected directly to the advertiser. Powerful indeed, and as it is in a test or “beta” period I am sure something like this will work simply based on the relevancy factor that makes AdWords one of the most powerful advertising mediums in the world.

Of course, a service like this has ignited the privacy concerns in regards to Google. Now in addition to storing search history, they also retain individuals phone numbers (although for less than 4 months according to the company’s FAQ). As with everything else that comes out to enhance the performance of online advertising, I am curious to see how well the program works. I can also see other angles to such a program, like additional layers of qualification and other elements that make that call transfer / connection worth every penny.