Blogging is huge and here’s the report that proves it

Need to prove to someone that blogging is huge? Check out this Pew Research report on blogging. Some notable points:

  • Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004
  • 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators
  • But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is
  • By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere and its popularity:
  • 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created ablog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people.
  • 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers. Much of the attention to blogs focused on those thatcovered the recent political campaign and the media. And at least some of the overall growth in blog readership is attributable to political blogs. Some 9% of internet users said they read political blogs “frequently” or “sometimes” during the campaign.
  • 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get thenews and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as itis posted online. This is a first-time measurement from our surveys and is anindicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold.
  • The interactive features of many blogs are also catching on: 12% of internet usershave posted comments or other material on blogs.
  • At the same time, for all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage ofthem, blogs have not yet become recognized by a majority of internet users. Only38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term“blog” means.

Let Google be your dictionary

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Here’s a great Google tip. The next time someone throws a big word at you, like “stenosis”, you don’t have to reach for the dictionary or a gag towel. Just go to Google, type the word “define:” then follow it with the word you want to learn about and Google will pull up all the definitions on the Web. You’ll love it.

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iTunes 4.9 video demo walk through

Want to see how to use this feature the cool way?
Watch this video using your Windows Media PlayerCheckout the video for a step-by-step demonstration!
(And let me know if you experienced any difficulties)

If you’d like to see how iTunes 4.9 works, check out this video.

Overall, nice, simple UI. Better than iPodder Lemon. You can drag and drop podcast links to subscribe, and the directory is easy to browse. I like it.

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iTunes 4.9 released!

This is the moment podcasters around the world have been waiting for. I’m downloading it right now with a full review ASAP!

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

YCM is Your Tool

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A quick review of the purpose of the Your Computer Minute (ycm.com too) podcasts:

  • It’s a tool for YOU (the technical user) to use and distribute to your end-users.
  • If you have something you’d like to have communicated to your end-users in an easy way, send it over to me and I’ll see what I can do.
  • You can subscribe to audio-only feeds by visiting the our home page and choosing the feed that’s right for you

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How to synchronize your podcasts with Windows Media player

Want to see how to use this feature the cool way?
Watch this video using your Windows Media PlayerCheckout the video for a step-by-step demonstration!
(And let me know if you experienced any difficulties)

If you don’t have an iPod but you want an easy way to synchronize your podcasts with your Pocket PC or any other MP3 player, you can configure Windows Media Player to automatically sync newly downloaded podcasts and even deleted podcasts.

It took a little while to monkey around with this but I got it to work and it works like a charm. Check out the video I’ve put together and let me know what you think!

If you don’t want to watch a video, here’s what I did:

  • Set Podcatcher directory
  • Set WMP additional directory
  • Create new auto playlist
  • Insert removable media
  • Edit sync settings
  • Assign playlist
  • Open properties of removable media
  • Uncheck convert files
  • Check create hierarchy & start sync

Use your favorite Podcatcher to automatically download new video and audio tips as they come! Subscribe to the Podcast and automatically download new video and audio tips as they come!

Bullies move to text messaging

I guess where there are kids, there are bullies. And where there are bullies, there’s a nonprofit organization funded by your tax dollars that’s telling us the obvious: it’s wrong.

Apparently 1 in 5 kids gets bullied electronically and text messaging is the most popular. A report by NCH gives you an idea of what kids are saying to each other, which sounds very much like what we used to say to each other back when I was a kid (except the “we’ll burn your house down” part):

“You’ve got ‘you’re big, you’re fat, you smell and nobody likes you’ right through to ‘we know where you live and we’re going to burn down your house and you’re going to die'”

In fact, there’s even a Web site: http://stoptextbully.com/.

Need more info? Cnet has a good article on it.

So what’s the solution? It’s the same one today that is used to be a long time ago: beat the crap out of the bully. Except now instead of fists, it’s hacking geeks to the rescue! Shut ’em down, boyz!

Podcasting for schools: a natural application

Clearly, podcasting can be a huge benefit for schools. I can think of a few applications right off:

  • Classes (obviously)
  • School announcements
  • Teacher reports to the parents
  • Guest speaker presentations
  • Internal School news magazine
  • Faculty development

Here’s an article written by Russell Educational Consultancy and Productions, “Exploiting the educational potential of podcasting“. Take a read and post your comments here. Thanks to Podcasting News for catching this one.

iPodder’s last breath: a new update

You just gotta love the guys at iPodder, makers of a great podcatcher (I use it and love it). They know they’re toast because iTunes is coming and of course MS can’t be too far behind (if not ahead???). So what are they doing? They’re goin’ out with style by delivering the lastest version 2.1 with a collection of cool features as posted by Podcasting News:

  • In response to user voting on the ipodder-dev mailinglist, one-click subscription support has been enabled
  • Ability to synch subscriptions to remote OPML files (works with feedmanagers like podnova)
  • Auto cleanup: Ability to specify on a per-feed basis that older episodes should be cleaned up.
  • Genre overriding in iTunes.
  • New right-click option for feeds: Open downloads folder
  • Right-click menus in the episodes and downloads tab link to show notes and hyperlinks found within RSS item description.

Way to go iPodder team! You guys rock! You should have made tons of money and been able to retire by now. I’m very sorry to report that you only got a few scraps in your cookie jar instead. I don’t think this is a good example of the Open Source model.

iTunes 4.9 with podcatching coming really, really soon

If you heard Adam Curry’s “Daily Source Code” yesterday you heard him mention that iTunes is coming in two weeks or less.

Get ready all you podcasters for the avalanche of 38Million iTunes desktops coming to a podcast near you. I hope this means my stats will crank up another notch!