Friday, April 22, 2005

iPodder.org , blogging without a keyboard

iPodder.org : Unlike most of my early adopter friends, it wasn't until Feb. that I bought my first Ipod--a 30 gig Photo iPod. At first, I thought I'd use it at the gym. I haven't been to the gym since I got it (so much for the new years resolution), but I've been using my iPod every day--in the car, and walking down the street to Starbucks. I use the iPod to listen to audio books that I downloaded from the iTunes store--not music as I would have expected. While I'm blessed with an 8 minute commute, I'm managed to consume three books in the past 2 months this way--three books I never had the time to read. This is important, because listening to a book is much slower than reading. However, I cant read while driving, and carrying a book to starbucks just doesn't happen.

As I reflected upon the new value that the iPod brought to my otherwise wasted time, I ran across iPodder.org and discoverd "podcasting". While Blogging is profoundly huge in its emerging impact on society, I think podcasting might be even bigger. Why? Because more people listen to the radio than read the newspaper. More people will end up getting a podcast feed via RSS to their portable mp3 player than people who really have the time to spend reading blogs like this. Finally, content producers will have an easier time cranking out audio content than trying to compose the written word--remember its much easier talking to your friends than writing a letter to them, at least for most people.

If after contemplating this potential and you figure out a slick idea for using voice recognition to drive a podcast search engine, let me know and we can talk about VC funding terms.

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