Podcasts suck

About Me

I'm Dan Scott, barista, library geek, and open source dabbler. You may know me from such projects as PHP (PEAR's File_MARC package and PDO documentation), Apache Derby, and the Evergreen open-source ILS project.

I'm the Systems Librarian for Laurentian University. You can reach me by email at dan@coffeecode.net.

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Zend Certification

Thursday, December 22. 2005

As a means of conveying information, podcasts suck.

There's no good way of searching the content of an aggregate of podcasts through the likes of Google or Yahoo!.
There's no good way of rapidly scanning through a single podcast for a particular keyword: the equivalent of CTRL-F or "/" in your browser.
There's no good way of linking to a section in the middle of a podcast.
If you're a half-way competent reader, you can ingest the same information in half the time it takes for someone to speak the same words.
There is no way to automatically translate the content of a podcast into a different language (no matter how bad / funny automatic translations from things like Babelfish may be).
If you're trapped in the middle of a boring meeting, it's really hard to browse through a podcast at the same time. Or to find the supporting statement for an argument that you're advancing at a more exciting meeting.

Give me a podcast if there's a really good reason for audio content; say, for example, if you're discussing your favourite new bands and playing clips of songs. Or if your VOIP is really screwed up and you end up sounding like Darth Wez. Or maybe if your content is of an adult nature and your vocal performance really adds to the effect.

But otherwise--death to podcasts!

Posted by Dan Scott in Personal at 12:15 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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The next PHP Celebrity Deathmatch:

Darth Wez versus Wezzy Wezbourne

#1 Chris Shiflett (Homepage) on 2005-12-23 01:39 (Reply)

Unfortunately people have been misusing media formats, particularly since the digital age: Power Point, Flash...

#2 Michael Zuliani on 2005-12-26 21:37 (Reply)

An append to my original comment...
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for December 5, 2005: Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/video.html, reiterates that any media format can be misused.

Podcasts could be useful in situations where you can't read: Visual impairment, driving, no seat on the bus or subway. In the same way that books on CD can be useful.

#2.1 Michael Zuliani on 2006-01-04 11:45 (Reply)

> Give me a podcast if there's a really good reason for audio content

http://www.apeboymonkeygirl.com/

There you go

My favorite reason to hate podcasts is when they try to point you to URLs and then give you no clue that the URL is not written like it's said, and you have to find that spot in the podcast and play it 10 times before you have enough to enter into google to find what you want.

The up-side to podcasts is that you can't queue up an hour of text to be read to you while you go on your daily jog...

#3 Aaron Wormus (Homepage) on 2006-01-02 13:55 (Reply)

"Podcasts are for people too lazy to Blog, Blogs are for people too lazy to write a Journal, Journals are for people too lazy to remember stuff."

- Me

The problem is, you can't believe any of the stuff in any of the formats.

#4 Ed (Homepage) on 2006-01-09 09:14 (Reply)

Maybe the problem isn't with podcasts, but the type of information we are conveying.

Obviously we have more 'information' in the world now than ever before, but oral communication has been an important way to store and transfer information since before the dawn of recorded history. (I know, I know, oral communications IS the dawn of recorded history, but you know what I mean.)

In certain times, and in certain cultures, story tellers were revered, and of course they still maintain a high status in Western culture, they just use more special effects (computer-wise and plastic-surgery wise).

So if you are trying to explain how to update files in a source management system, podcasts suck. If you are trying to explain the benefits of meditation, or why you should never Cry Wolf I think they fit the bill perfectly.

#5 David Sky (Homepage) on 2006-01-20 15:27 (Reply)

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