Guardian Rubbishes Podcasting, Badly
A columnist has decided to trash the medium that the paper has done so much to popularise.
The Guardian has occasional moments of confusion. Despite being one of the leading big media proponents of podcasting in the UK, itās just published a piece mocking the whole idea. Thereās nothing inherently wrong with that. Newspapers should have room for different ideas and positions within the covers. Itās just that, well, itās so predictable. You could have picked out some of the ājokesā in advance. For example:
The term podcast ā coined and first used, according to most sources, by the writer Ben Hammersley in this very newspaper in February 2004 ā distinguishes a certain sort of internet-borne audio (or, increasingly, video) content from all the other sorts, and specifically denotes an MP3 file that can be downloaded to oneās computer automatically via RSS subscription technology and thence transferred to oneās personal MP3 device for later listening. In short, itās like a radio programme that you listen to on your iPod. A podcast is not to be confused with a webcast, which uses real-time streaming to allow you to listen at your leisure, but not on the hoof, as it were. (You are free to regard this distinction as largely semantic or, if you prefer, wholly incomprehensible.)
The emphasis is mine. So, Mr Dowling, are you suggesting that the readers are free to regard your journalism as inferior, because you canāt comprehensibly explain the the theory and technology behind it? Surely the distinction between something you have to sit and listen to at your computer or something you can listen to anywhere you take your iPod isnāt that hard to express or understand?
Other podcasts make use of āpodsafeā music, that is, music wholly owned and controlled by the artist, who has uploaded it on to something like the Podsafe Musical Network in order to make it available, for free, to registered podcasters. (āPodsafeā, therefore, is well on its way to becoming a synonym for āhomemade and/or of necessarily limited appealā.)
Thatās Podsafe Music Network, and do you really believe that ānot picked up by the mainstream music industryā really equals ārubbishā?
Though the technology probably exists, my iPod has no means of fast-forwarding through a boring rant or a dreadful podsafe tune
And thatās a pretty clear example of what IT support types call āuser errorā. Mine can do that Mr Dowling. All iPods can do that.
Thereās a funny article to be written about this stuff, but itāll rise above āisnāt technology so geeky?ā and āall amateur material is laughableā.
So nyah, nyah, nyah.