Podcasting Time Bomb

I guess I should have linked to this story about Terms of Use in my last post. And this one in Boing Boing.

AMP Library live

It can be very difficult for a ragtag group of merry indie music podcasters, who have day jobs, and don't have money as a group, to come together and pull something off. But sometimes we actually do just that.

Back in the day, pre AMP schism, we had started to form a library of music where our members can draw upon a database of music that has been cleared by the artists without any sort of heinous restrictions or over-reaching licensing. Just a straight up you can use this and we will credit you and there you have it.

So after much time and effort, we have put it live. We have a lot to put back in there, and a lot of work to do to get it going the way it should, but its a start.

Check out the library if you want to peek. If you are in a band head on over to the signup page and send some music our way. Please read the terms and conditions carefully. We want you to know we respect you.

Podcaster Overload

So over two days in San Francisco, I met with the following music podcasters:

CC Chapman - Accident Hash
Chris Rockwell - The Daily Download
Big Mike - Extra Super Action Show
Michael Butler - The Rock and Roll Geek show

CC had told me he was going to be at the SF Podcast meetup and I didn't realize it was going to be a "Podshow" heavy gathering. They had the whole crew in town. Even Ron Bloom. CC showed off their music site.

Earlier in the day I had been over at Odeo talking about AMP and other stuff. Fortunately for me that evening, the Odeo guy who showed up at the meeting was none other than Rabble their head geek. I had the opportunity to show him our Rabble.

The next day I was in LA for a couple of things and got to hang out for a couple of hours with Jason Evangelho from Insomnia Radio, arguably the biggest music podcast and a fellow AMP founder. Very good time and great to get to put a face to a name.

San Diego Mobile Monday

I have been asked to speak at the inaugural Mobile Monday meeting for San Diego on September 19th. Please come by if you get a chance. We will show the group Rabble and talk about of the various things we are working on at Intercasting.

San Francisco Podcast Meetup

CC Chapman from Accident Hash is in SF this week doing some stuff for Podshow. He mentioned to me that there is a Podcast meetup in SF tonight so I will definitely be checking it out.

Google Talk

I woke up this morning to several invitations to join Google Talk, Google's new IM client. I downloaded it and set it up. I am derrick.oien. Very creative of me huh? The invitations I received were from two fellow podcasters. It's been interesting to see how my Skype list grows daily and my AIM list is staying flat. Most of the Skype growth is European business associates or podcasters. I am thinking podcasters are generally the most early adopters I have met.

Rabble in Best of The Web Survey From Business Week

We are flattered that Rabble is one of the entrants in the Business Week Best of the Web competition that you can find here. I would humbly ask you to click on the Wireless Services category under the Toolbox section if you get a chance.

September Madness for Travel

I just booked my travel for the month of September. Ouch. I am speaking on two panels prior to CTIA in SF. One on creating mobile communities and one on emerging technology in the mobile software value chain forum. I am also presenting at a conference on mobile activism. That should be really cool. So September includes Toronto, NYC, SF and some other odd trips. Should be a long month.

Godcasting

I had lunch today with Craig Patchett founder of The Godcast Network. Craig is one of the early celebrities of podcasting and happens to be local. We had been meaning to get together for a long time and finally got the chance today. Glad we finally did it.

Office Space

So we are starting to fill out our once vacant office with stuff. More photos here.

Summer Thoughts

I was driving home down the coast the other day and I realized that I am somewhere on the other side of summer, well past the half way point but still somewhere in that place that I love about Southern California. And I realized that I haven't really taken the time to stop and enjoy this bit of time.

The last two to three months have been nothing but crazy and I am longing for a quick break that isn't coming anytime soon.

I then stopped and realized a couple of things.

My wife has been really slammed the last several months as she has returned to work and is still maxed out with the triplets. She is amazing.

The triplets have become increasingly easy, although that is almost a joke to say when you consider how many little creatures they are and how quickly they are developing.

My oldest son is now a school kid. And he has been playing pee wee sports, which is really funny and really cool.

I have been dying to write things in my blog out of a compulsive need to keep up my frequency of posting, but doing this has only resulted in a number of posts that when I look back on them aren't the type of things I expected to write about when I began. I guess I need to be patient and know that it's ok to not write stuff, especially if you are doing it for the wrong reasons, i.e. frequency over quality.

I am at that interesting cross roads in a company where you move from hard core startup to quickly growing company, which is simply amazing when I reflect on how far we have come and where we plan on going.

I am on the road all of the time, and although it is going really well and I am really excited about what we are working on, its a delicate balance to make it all work.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that, things are good yet very busy, and I am both happy and thankful for where things stand today. I don't expect to be blogging as frequently as we really start to do some heavy lifting, but when I do blog, hopefully it will be better than the last couple of months.

Podcasting Funding

Lots of funding this week. Podshow raises $8.8 million. Odeo raises an undisclosed amount.

We closed our Series A round for $5.5 million

As Shawn pointed out here, and Dave Beisel here we closed our Series A round for $5.5 million last week, which we announced yesterday in this press release.

It was an interesting process going through fund raising and along the way we met a bunch of really smart and interesting people. We are very excited about our new partners and expect that we can make a lot of headway in the coming months.

Leak about us - funding

Guess that's how it works. Check it out. I'll post something after I land in Seattle later today.

AMP'ed Podcast

Some of the folks in AMP put together a weekly review show of a slice of what we are doing each week. We pushed the first one live last Friday. By Saturday it was the #22 ranked podcast. By Sunday it was #8. This morning we are at 12. Please go check out the AMP site for the subscribe button or check out iTunes and look for the Top Podcasts to subscribe.

The Helmet and MMS

I think this is Tucker. It could be Brit, but I am pretty sure it is Tucker. Our triplets have slight flattening on the back of the head that at some level is a cosmetic issue, but because it could have some minor health issues we have opted to have them get the helmet. The helmet is fitted to their little skull and it helps their head get more symmetrical. I wish my parents had fixed my head when I was a baby.

The reason I am posting this though was because it was the first MMS message I have ever received. I was shocked today when my wife Jessica, who had to do the appointment without me sent me this picture from her phone to mine. She is on Cingular and I am on TMobile. (To be clear I also have a Verizon and Virgin Mobile phone, but I have been with Tmobile for years).

It's great to see carrier interop on MMS starting to happen. We obviously think we can help make picture sharing happen with Rabble, but anything that allows consumers to start to understand that what used to be known as a phone is now a media production and consumption device is goodness in our books.

Derrick Oien and Shawn Conahan

Derrick Oien and Shawn Conahan,
originally uploaded by Sander van Zoest.

Wow! A group of us set up an MP3.com alumni group on Flickr to share pictures. While browsing through the pics I found this one of Shawn and I at the MP3.com IPO party. That may have been one of the last really outrageous party sessions I have had in my life. Well maybe not, but certainly it was a very long night and an even longer next day.

I can't believe how young we look in this picture. Hmmmm.

Kill Your FM Zine

A group of my co-conspirators at AMP have just released their second issue of the Kill Your FM zine. You can find it at the AMP homepage. The really cool thing about it to me is that it is targeted for the Sony PSP. That's just amazing, and one more reason for me to go buy one. The issue has reviews of bands, tech writeups and MP3 files. Very nifty.

Mobilecast

Moconews reported on a story today about a product called Mobilecast that allows you to convert podcast files (mp3 files) to AMR which is the format many cell phones use. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting. I'll report back when I get a chance to play with it.

First Rabble Review

We had our first review of Rabble. We were very pleased with the write up entitled Joining the Rabble: Making Mobile Community Work. The article can be found at TelecommWeb. A subscription is required. Shawn did a write up here with some excerpts.

Although there are some great comments about the product from a feature standpoint, I was really excited about some of the commentary about the community, which is without question the key component to making something like Rabble a success.

From the article

So whom does Rabble attract and what sorts of content do they make? From what we have seen, the early user base is young 20-somethings who most often post images of themselves and who ask such earth-shattering questions as whether they should let their hair go curly or straight? We get a lot of new- car posts; the occasional semi-nude body advertising his/her physique; and a lot of semi- drunk gal pals taking pictures of themselves in bars, asking the eternal question of life: "Whassup?"

It's very difficult to strike the right balance of product feature set to match a demographic. We set out to create a community that would allow our target demographic to interact and create content much in the same way that they have on some of the leading youth focused blogging sites and the social networking sites. To us, the early indications are that the users understand this immediately and know what to expect, albeit in a mobile environment. Another important piece of the puzzle is to have early members of the community to take a leadership role and model the behavior norms of the other users. The reviewer understood this and commented as follows:

Trivial? Yes. Mundane? Often. Thoroughly absorbing? Absolutely. Whether someone is complaining about an intense family problem or just showing off his or her body (or how drunk they can be while still holding a phone cam), the ephemeral postings quickly can germinate into ongoing soap operas or conversations among a group of simpatico souls. Learning the hard lessons of online communities that often go bust, Rabble does an excellent job of bringing the most active and interesting content to the top. It tracks the most- frequently-subscribed channels, the most popular and frequent posters, and "cool content." It is in these areas where we find serial postings from people whose personalities come through. Rabble already has its own grassroots celebrities. "LiberalFury" is an activist chronicling his journey to Washington, D.C., while "fayble" is a young lady who is away from her boyfriend and obsessively pining away in endless posts. This reviewer is a couple of decades away from his early Twenties, and yet the angst and trivia of these posts is absorbing. Rabble also has seeded the community with minor rock bands who post images and thoughts from the road as they tour.

It is still early and we have a long way to go, but we are excited by both the activity of our users as well as the interest of outside parties.

Football is coming

This morning I received my first email alert from my fantasy football service of choice, The Huddle. Wow, it's time, football season is upon us. As someone who is only a fan of football, this time of year is my most fixated on things of a sports nature. Whether it is high school, college or professional, there is nothing quite like football in my book. It's been a long time since the superbowl, glad it's back.