A discussion about corporate and business podcasting with tips and guidelines

Jon,

Thanks for the great post! I'd like to take the opportunity to explain a little bit about myPodder and Podcast Ready and hopefully address some of your concerns.

It is true that on devices that have no built-in internet connection, our application does require that you connect to an internet-connected workstation. Although tethered, this model does shift all of the feed management and content delivery to the device itself (there is nothing installed on the workstation or left behind by the client) which we feel makes it a very viable portable solution for such devices.

As far as your privacy issues are concerned, I assure that we cannot monitor which shows were listened to. This would require some sort of DRM or tracking system such as those used by PlaysForSure and the like, and we're simply not doing that. Our application has no way of knowing which files on the player have been accessed, etc.

The myPodder client does synchronize the user's subscription list with our servers. This is so that we can provide our web-based services such as feed management, the sharing of podcasts, and our universal one-click subscription. This sync can be completely shut off with one check-box under the 'options' tab of the application.

Our main goal here is to bring podcasting to the mainstream public and we feel that by making the technology simple and ready-to-use right out of the box is the most effective approach.

Thanks for this opportunity to explain about Podcast Ready. Please feel free to contact me with any comments, suggestions, concerns, etc.

Russell S. Holliman
Founder, CEO
Podcast Ready, Inc.
www.podcastready.com
russell@podcastready.com
281.914.4705

Hi Russel,

Thanks for stopping by. I always give out full points to companies who monitor the blogosphere.

I can see a marginal value in not having to install podcatching software on a workstation in order to sync the device. However, since this workstation still has to be Internet connected, I don't see why a web interface wouldn't suffice. I'm not hiding the fact that I'm suspicious about the motives behind putting software on the device itself. It seems unneccesary to achieve the portability that you're going for.

I'm glad that you appear to have thought about the tracking issue. To be clear, I'm not 100% against tracking, I'm just leery that it's going to be rammed down our throats like DRM was. It took years for viable, non-DRMd music labels to come out and as a podcaster, I don't want to see that happen to podcasting.

I think you'll face tremendous pressure over the next little while to introduce tracking from advertisers (and possibly podcasters as well). If that happens, I hope Podcastready will maintain a 'non-tracking' service for those who prefer it.

Thanks again for the extra info and for moving the whole podcasting model forward a bit.