Tags: Jeremiah Owyang, Martin McKeay

The date will be Saturday, November 3, in Los Angeles — venue to be determined. Thoughts on venue, anyone? We have some ideas (Avalon would be great), and we’d also love to here yours.

Tags: Vloggies

Congratulations to all 600+ nominees, and thanks to everyone who helped to craft the first annual Vloggies. Special thanks again to our sponsors, all of whom contributed to making The Vloggies happen: Yahoo! Video, Intel, blip.tv, Dabble, GUBA, Intel, Revver, Pandora, and WebEx. We look forward to working with the community to continue supporting videobloggers and showcasing their work. And we can’t wait to see what next year will bring…

Thanks to Scott Beale / Laughing Squid for the photo.

Here’s the full list of People’s Choice winners:
Best Vlog - Ask a Ninja
Male Vlogger - Josh Wolf
Female Vlogger - Nontourage
Group - Alive in Baghdad
Corporate / Organisation - NetSquared
Comedy - Ask a Ninja
Community - Minnesota Stories
Instructional / Educational - Wine Library TV
Entertainment (Fiction) - Galacticast
Entertainment (Non-Fiction) - Beach Walks with Rox
Experimental - 90 Seconds with Dave
Inspirational, Religious, Spiritual - Beach Walks with Rox
Kids & Teens - Phil Hamilton Hits the Big Time
Cooking - Wine Library TV
Green - Freshtopia
News - Goodnight Burbank
Personal Diary - Josh Leo’s Vlog
Political - Ze Frank
Tech - Diggnation
Travel - Amanda Across America
Viral - Invisible Engine and The Singing Woodchuck
Funniest - Ask a Ninja
Collaboration - Node 666 Project
Documentary - Freetime
Experimental Video - 90 Seconds with Dave
Interview - Geek Entertainment TV
Most Controversial - Alive in Baghdad
Original Music - Nontourage
Special Effects - Galacticast
Vlog Editing - Freshtopia
Vlogging Books - Secrets of Vlogging
Video Hosting Provider - blip.tv
Online Video Production Tool - videos Playing in Places
Vlog Directory - MeFeedia
Vlog Website Design - Galacticast

Vloggies Favorite Award Winners
Best Vlog - Alive in Baghdad
Male Vlogger - Ze Frank
Female Vlogger - Ryanne Hodson
Group - Alive in Baghdad
Corporate / Organisation - NetSquared
Comedy - Ask a Ninja
Community - Minnesota Stories
Instructional / Educational - Freevlog
Entertainment (Fiction) - Chasing Windmills
Entertainment (Non-Fiction) - LoFi St Louis
Experimental - pouringdown TV
Inspirational, Religious, Spiritual - Beach Walks with Rox
Kids & Teens - Jet Set Show
Cooking - Freshtopia
Green - Treehugger TV
News - Rocketboom
Personal Diary - Josh Leo
Political - Alive in Baghdad
Tech - Bleeding Edge TV
Travel - Travelvlog
Viral - Singing WoodChuck
Funniest - Ask a Ninja: Pirates of the Carribean
Collaboration - Bottom Union
Documentary - American King
Experimental Video - pouringdown TV
Interview - Alive in Baghdad
Most Controversial - Josh Wolf
Original Music - Valdezatron
Special Effects - Galacticast
Vlog Editing - StutterFrames by Jay Dedman
Vlogging Books - Secrets of Vlogging
Video Hosting Provider - blip.tv
Online Video Production Tool - videos Playing in Places
Vlog Directory - MeFeedia
Vlog Website Design - It’s JerryTime

The Vloggervangelist Award
The Vloggervangelist award is a special award given from the PodTech Vloggies planning committee to a vlogosphere activist who has done an extraordinary job promoting the vlogging medium. This award was not selected by judges or viewers, rather the vlogosphere people who have worked closely with PodTech and would like to recognize one person at each annual Vloggies event for their tireless work in helping people build and establish their vlogs! The First Annual Vloggervangelist Award Winner is Michael Verdi and for all of his work on NODE101.

Tags: Vloggies, Vlog, Iraq, Brian Conley, Intel, Core 2 Duo, Vloggervangelist, vlogosphere, Michael Verdi

Meanwhile, it was a huge night in for a new generation of media developers and videobloggers — a night to recognize and celebrate the great work of thousands of videobloggers and video developers. PodTech is proud to have put on the show and we’re excited to be developing some new video works and shows soon. We’re having fun and developing great friendships and business partnerships. Congratulations to all the winners and to all the videobloggers.

The night began with a special appearance from Jerry Zucker, who provided a short, funny and inspiring talk about how he, his brother David, and Jim Abrahams started. Kevin Marks captured it on video in the audience and posted it. Jerry compared how he got started (his early days were spent in his family’s basement) to the world of media today. He talks about how, in the beginning, it was about experimenting, playing and having fun, but they faced the additional challenge of getting people to see their stuff — they needed a theater. Today, the Internet makes that step a lot easier. “You have the possibility to take the stuff today and send it around the world… for almost nothing and the equipment is fantastic… This new technology will change the way we view entertainment,” Zucker said. “You are at the beginning of it.”

It was a great evening. Robert Scoble was blogging non-stop the entire night and has great posts here and here. Tom, whom I interviewed on the red couch at the party, has the first post of the night. Here are some amazing photos by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid who captured the event via photoblogging. Rene Bloggett has an indepth post with photos. Beachwalks, who captured three vloggies, has video up on their blog. Thomas Hawk was photowalking the show, too. As usual he has a great set of pics.

Coverage on Techmeme and the blogosphere will no doubt continue, as well.

PodTech would like to highlight the sponsors who contributed to make this event so special. Yahoo Video, Blip.TV, Guba.com, Revver, Webex, Dabble, Pandora, Intel and Café Du Nord.

Tags: Vloggies, PodTech, Jerry Zucker, Robert Scoble, Scott Beale, Laughing Squid, Beachwalks, Thomas Hawk

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Tags: Jason Calacanis

But you might not recognize the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Dr. Yunus spoke about his work in microcredit and the Grameen Bank at a Google company-wide meeting in May 2004.

Microcredit is the extension of small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. It has proven to be an effective and popular measure in the ongoing struggle against poverty. Dr. Yunus has a extended description of microcredit here and in his book. Learn more about the Grameen Foundation at their Website or RSS feed.

If you are Java developer and are interested in helping the Grameen Bank, they are coordinating an open source effort called the Microfinance Open Source (MIFOS) project.

Tags: Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank, Grameen Foundation

We’re really happy with this new update of PodTech.net, and it’s just a beginning. You’ll see many more changes to the UI and features, not to mention more homegrown PodTech shows as well as content partnerships that are in the works.

We’re trying to push the boundaries of video. We’re trying to set a standard in how companies tell their stories. We’re trying to bring you consistently authentic voices and stories that you won’t get anywhere else. And we’re having a great time doing it.

All this is happening at a time when the media industry is rapidly changing – it’s a world of new players. People want content, good content, when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it. Media today is multimedia. It’s more. It’s more than just text. It’s audio and video. We’re all about telling stories you can’t see or hear anywhere else, anytime you want – on your PC or portable device.

We hope you like the direction we’re heading in, and we especially hope you enjoy the ScobleShow, PodTech News, and other great shows coming out of tech and media. We really look forward to your feedback.

So check out PodTech.net, PodTech News, and ScobleShow. Let us know what you think! Huge thanks to everyone who has been working so hard to help us get here. And there will be more updates soon, including, yes, my own show. I’ll be back.

After a few initial snags in the wee hours of the morning here on Pacific time, Robert was finally online, sharing thoughts and ideas with India’s largest unconference of bloggers, transecting across time zones and geographic boundaries. Robert also officially announced a preview of our PodTech India content in the course of his conversation with bloggers in India — a project that we’re extremely thrilled about.

Robert’s Skype-video tryst with BlogCamp India was a great opportunity for us to be reminded of the marvels of connectivity in the era of the global village. There’s something exhilarating about living in an age in which we have real-time access to ideas, innovations, and people from all over the globe, all at our fingertips. It is this very same thrill and passion for real-time access to ideas, influencers, innovations, and thought leaders that fuels our vision for PodTech India.

We’re proud, finally, to bring months of work on PodTech India to fruition, and look forward to featuring fresh, on-the-ground coverage of the ideas, trends and people in the Indian technology industry, ultimately bringing India’s rich entrepreneurial culture into full focus.

Tune in, and please let us know what you think.

–Min Li Chan

PodTech India gives you direct access to ideas, influencers, and issues originating from the ecosystem of Indian entrepreneurs, thought leaders, companies, and startups. The PodTech India Channel also capitalizes on a shared connection between technology epicenters in India and technologically-attuned Indian diasporas worldwide, including the Silicon Valley.
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I originally stumbled across Professor Walter Ong’s work while studying language acquisition at Santa Clara University. I dusted off my copy of Ong’s Orality and Literacy to revisit his thoughts on the spoken word. I find this passage quite interesting:

“Because in its physical constitution as sound, the spoken word proceeds from the human interior and manifests human beings to one another as conscious interiors, as persons, the spoken word forms human beings into close-knit groups. When a speaker is addressing an audience, the members of the audience normally become a unity, with themselves and with the speaker. … The spoken word is always an event, a movement in time, completely lacking in the thing-like repose of the written or printed word…” Ong continues to say that the spoken word is best for medium for transmitting feelings or beliefs.

There are two very important examples from history that exemplify Ong’s points.

The first is Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. Dr. King gave this speech forty-three years ago this week. I have recently ripped a collection of Dr. King’s speeches entitled A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King to my iPod. The following line caught my attention, “With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” The line is a very near the end of the speech and can easily be missed as the speech builds to its emotional ending. But the phrase jangling discords so perfectly describes our the current polical situation. Looking at the quote, it does not do the phrase justice. You must really hear it.

The second important example is from the same era: Robert Kennedy’s Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Joe Klein describes this speech beautifully in his Time.com essay. Klein writes,

“One senses, listening to the tape years later, the audience’s trust in the man on the podium, a man who didn’t merely feel the crowd’s pain but shared it. And Kennedy reciprocated: he laid himself bare for them, speaking of the death of his brother—something he’d never done publicly and rarely privately—and then he said, “My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote, ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,’” he paused, his voice quivering slightly as he caressed every word. The silence had deepened, somehow; the moment was stunning. “‘Until … in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’”

Again the transcript pales in comparison, you must listen to the speech to feel Kennedy’s raw emotion and hear its power to unify the audience and the nation.

Both speeches are available for download at American Rhetoric. I am collecting other great examples of oration. If you have a favorite, send it along to me at steve at podtech.net.

The surveys took a long time — sometimes three months — because they were one-on-one conversations by phone or in person with more than 40 people. These conversations tapped into perceptions and were incredibly insightful. Much work went into summarizing and analyzing these conversations and essentially “measuring” their thoughts so that these perceptions could be used to drive marketing and communications strategies for the company.

For corporations today, blogs can provide the same benefit, but are a much more efficient means of communication. Take for example how Bob Lutz of General Motors is using his Fast Lane blog, where now more than 10,000 customers have responded with comments, rebuttals and criticisms of GM. This would have been the same type of data I would have gleaned from the perceptual studies at Regis McKenna or Mayfield, but the information is now available in real-time. Even better — it is totally uncensored. From what I have read, Lutz thinks this input has been enormously valuable and has driven corporate product development strategy.

Blogs have other uses in corporate marketing as well; they are effective in establishing thought leadership, building deeper communities and creating stronger customer relations. Given my belief that a blog should be used as in corporate marketing, I discovered a newly published book called The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil that is very provocative. It is a must read for anyone who is interested in learning more about how companies are using blogs today. As the host of the Marketing Voices™ for PodTech, I interviewed Debbie Weil on her book. In the podcast, we discussed what the best ways are for a company to use a corporate blog, what companies are stellar examples of corporate blogging, how companies should think of ROI as a return on influence rather than a return on investment — an acronym that has new meaning for me as I reconfigured it — and finally delved into the potential challenges of using blogging as a corporate marketing strategy. Blogs are wonderful at providing the necessary transparency to a marketplace’s perceptions — a true “naked conversation” — to quote my PodTech colleague, Robert Scoble, soon to launch his own show on PodTech as well. The Marketing Voices podcast and Debbie’s book are helpful for those seeking more information on how to view blogging’s power for marketing purposes. Listen to it and let me know what you think!

A great example of story telling and customer dialogue is Tesla Motors’s blog entry by Elon Musk, eBay co-founder, CEO of SpaceX, and Tesla Motors chairman entitled The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me).

Musk starts, “…the overarching purpose of Tesla Motors (and the reason I am funding the company) is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution.”

How can a small Silicon Valley based company possibly do this?

“Critical to making that happen is an electric car without compromises, which is why the Tesla Roadster is designed to beat a gasoline sports car like a Porsche or Ferrari in a head to head showdown. Then, over and above that fact, it has twice the energy efficiency of a Prius”, explains Musk.

Skeptical? Look at the car. It can go 0 to 60 in four seconds and has a top speed of 130mph.

But affluent entrepreneurs running around the Valley in an exotic electric sports car won’t change the “mine-and-burn” economy. Musk continues:

“The strategy of Tesla is to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model.

Without giving away too much, I can say that the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster and the third model will be even more affordable. In keeping with a fast growing technology company, all free cash flow is plowed back into R&D to drive down the costs and bring the follow on products to market as fast as possible. When someone buys the Tesla Roadster sports car, they are actually helping pay for development of the low cost family car.”

Instead of describing Tesla’s technical details, Musk instead clearly presents Tesla’s vision and provides a solid story on how to achieve the vision. It’s a story we can all hope comes true.

Ten years ago, these same folks were afraid to order online from Amazon due to lack of privacy or fear of their credit card information being mysteriously hacked into. Heck, the Kenneth Star subpoena for Monica Lewinsky’s book purchases from Barnes & Noble sent shockwaves through the bulletin boards back in 1998.

Yet people don’t think twice now about posting the most intimate details of their life online these days. What their wishlist on Amazon is, what their music tastes on MySpace are, where they went to school, and on and on. Isn’t it just like stripping naked online? Instead of baring their bodies, posters are baring their habits, desires and personalities for the world.

And they do it voluntarily. God bless the Internet.

Of course, the minute it happens involuntarily, like with AOL’s data Valdez incident—suddenly it’s time to shut down the search engines. So how will forcing operators to delete personal information protect our privacy? Imagine a nude photo, but with all the interesting parts, and the face, cut out. You’re fooling nobody. If you are really seeking to disguise the data, doesn’t it make sense to talk about better ways to anonymize data? Ie, scrambling all the parts of the photo so that the viewer couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

–Ken Leung

Tags: Ken Leung

No word on how and when the company intends to make money, and with social bookmarking still nascent, Yahoo better start giving del.icio.us a bigger push. The measurement question is a whole other issue that deserves some real debate as Mike Arrington and Matt Marshall have initiated. Until Alexa, Comscore, and friends can figure that out I expect that we’ll continue to see conflicting stats.

In a recent post, Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web profiles Elgg.net with Technical Director Ben Werdmuller and Project Director Dave Tosh. Tosh says that Elgg provides an informal online space that lets learners exercise their own reflections and create communities around similar interests by providing a “learning landscape” through a hybrid set of social media tools, including weblogs, file repositories with podcasting capabilities, online profiles, RSS readers, and tagging. It’s interesting to see who in the education space have used Elgg and how. The founders of Elgg recognize that learning is a shared endeavor, and social media can help enhance engagement.

So how do lower barriers to entry factor into all of this? A few thoughts:

1) Putting something together like Elgg is no walk in the park—a lot of time and resources need to be invested in architecting a full educational software suite that meets needs, and is robust enough to be integrated into different learning processes. Nonetheless, blogging and podcasting tools have traditionally been simple, and at the very fundamental level, sufficiently easy to implement. This is important for a space like education software, with fewer resources, fewer multimillion-dollar investments, fewer dedicated players, and much nonprofit/bootstrapping/open source work abound. Developers don’t have to spend lots of money building systems from scratch. Imagine also the possibilities for education technologists in resource-strapped developing nations and what they could do to produce homegrown, locally tailored education software.

2) Blogging and podcasting—as online activities—are hopefully simple enough to do (produce and post) so as to appeal to educators and students of different walks of tech-savvy-ness. In different areas of the world however, sometimes it takes videos like the one at Kiva to put notions of supposed accessibility and simplicity in perspective.

3) “Lower barriers to entry” doesn’t just apply from a tech or tech-savvy standpoint, but also from the perspective of content style. Blogs and podcasts are often informal and stream-of-consciousness, and the barriers of writing a blog or recording a podcast are low in terms of style and formality. Liberated from the traditional obstacles of academic production, knowledge transmission could well happen more quickly. For the purpose of knowledge sharing and learning, writing a blog or recording a podcast is probably less daunting than writing a full-blown 15-page “paper” or “thesis” or “presentation.”

I’m tremendously excited to find out more about how podcasting and social media are used in education. Feel free to share your comments on social media and education, and perhaps how you’ve seen podcasting used in classrooms.

–Min Li Chan

AppleInsider reports “One person familiar with the ongoings believes the Apple cofounder has commissioned the release of cell phone prototypes to at least two potential OEM manufacturing partners in recent months.”

Listen to the Steve Jobs keynote at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) this past month. There is no mention or hint of a iPod-like phone.

Tags: iPod, Steve Jobs, WWDC

This was the first time a pubic company sat down and did a podcast as part of their earnings package. We posted the podcast right at the time the earnings were announced. It’s a great opportunity for Seagate to provide PodTech with access to get the story. Most people think that conference calls are boring. This was very innovative by Seagate. Then again Seagate’s business is growing fast because of things like podcasting and user generated media.

In meeting with Bill Watkins it is apparent that he has a great vision but more impressive is his operational savvy. He has Seagate generating cash through a very strong operational plan. It’s clear there is demand for storage but with price pressure a company needs amazing operations to be successful.

Congrats to Seagate. Generating a lot of cash, new products, stock buyback. I wish PodTech could take credit for their rise in their stock price after the bell.

Robert is off the grid but I’ll check in with him. Om Malik, Niall’s partner who podcasts with him on the podsessions.com, has a comment here.

This is a big blow to MSN and their search team. What does this mean to RSS within Microsoft? Robert has his opinion.

Here is a video of Steve in 1984 introducing the Mac. The only difference in my opinion is that he has less hair now.

PodTech News was there yesterday livepodcasting and have posted a series of podcasts summaries and photos sets here, here, and here. Scott Beale may have some photos at his site.

Apple continues to be a popular cultural company. For example at PodTech our “Apple Voices” podcast series is currently #1 on iTunes under the Business category.

This story should generate an active conversation within the Apple fan base and hard core community members.

Personally there are many reason why podcasts aren’t on cellphones now and why adopting isn’t happening at itunes like breakneck speed. It has nothing to do with demand. It’s a combination of technical and vendor issues. Also there is the impact of music and DRM which also hold back podcasting.

Some thoughts on mobile podcasting
- Mobile podcasting will initially take off as side-loaded solution to phones that have memory cards (e.g. Motorola Q) + phone-based search and tagging of podcasts.
- Over-the-air streaming will come later supported by a monthly subscription service or mobile advertising.
- Ad-driven white-label mobile podcasting service/software has some potential to succeed.

Mobile music
- Arriving within the next year in the US

Several barriers currently to Music – main ones are:
- lack of good, open-DRM software or tracking software
- labels asking for too much rev-share and not willing to try non-DRM solutions

Mobile podcasting

Key challenges
- No money in the system today - who pays for what is a big question on people’s minds especially the carriers
- Has to be supported by mobile advertising – podcasters will get a rev share of all ads generated from listening to mobile podcasts
- Mobile advertising is early but coming along -
- There is no way to charge consumers for podcasts

Technical complications
- File sizes can be large - 3-4 hours long which is a big problem – average podcast is 30-60 minutes long
- The files are MP3s, not all compressed like AAC+ or WME-Advanced

Factors in favor of mobile podcasting
- DRM doesn’t matter for podcasting (as opposed to mobile music)
- Flat-rate data plans – being adopted fast by consumers – Sprint charges $15 per month
- Content and Carriers are testing the market with a mobile podcasting prototypes

It is clear that mobility is the killer app for podcasting as both an entertainment and communications tool but first music needs to penetrate first. It’s a matter of time but just not this year.

Companies working on this.

There are some firms working hard to “crack this code”. Check out Melodeo, VoiceIndigo, and Spodradio out of Germany.

If there are anyone other companies that I missed in this space of mobile podcasting or mobile broadcast send me an email to info@podtech.net and I’ll include them in another post or highlight them.