August 26, 2006

Get Ready for Another Semester at UC-Berkeley!

It’s back to school at UC-Berkeley and they’re podcasting many of the courses they podcasted in the Spring of 2006 along with a number of new courses. Here’s some of the new ones they’ll be podcasting:

Introduction to General Astronomy

Introduction to General Astronomy

Economic Analysis – Macroeconomics

Properties of Materials

Earthquakes in Your Backyard

American Environmental and Cultural History

World Regions, Peoples, and States

General Human Anatomy

Open Source Development and Distribution of Digital Information: Technical, Economic, Social, and Legal Perspectives

History of Information

Survey of the Principles of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

General Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Mechanical Engineering Design

Heat Transfer

Introduction to Nonviolence

Physics for Future Presidents

General Psychology

Human Emotion

Social Psychology

Introduction to Statistics

Geometric Optics

Drugs and Behavior Podcast

You can access the RSS feeds and start subscribing to them here:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/feeds.php

And for a listing of all the podcasted courses they’ve released to date check them out here:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/berkeley

Thanks UC-Berkeley! You’re the most generous college in America!

August 19, 2006

Our Podcast Directory at One Year

It’s been about a year since we launched the LearnOutLoud.com Podcast Directory, devoted to high quality podcasts that you can learn from. Man has podcasting exploded!

I just went through our whole directory and got rid of a lot of the podfaders whose podcasts haven’t been updated in a year or so. For the most part all the podcasts we feature are now up-to-date.

Some highlights from this last year in podcasting:

webcast.berkeley Courses Podcasted!
Many New Language Learning Podcasts
National Public Radio Podcasts
Hay House Podcasts
New York Times Podcasts

And theres a lot of other individual podcasts that have popped up and really excelled, but I’ll leave it up to you to find them in our directory:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory

July 27, 2006

iTunes Podcast Directory Keeps Getting Better

I have to hand it to Apple. They’ve really nailed it when it comes to promoting podcasting. Back when they launched their podcast directory over a year ago, I remember it being a sort of free for all and you couldn’t find much of anything outside of what they featured and everyone was struggling to get on iTunes and their images weren’t showing up right and going into the categories you’d just get overwhelmed with this never ending laundry list of podcasts.

Well Apple has come a long way since then. The ability to subscribe to and listen to podcasts through the iTunes application and then to transfer them to your iPod is flawless. They’ve nailed video casting with the ability to stream right in the application or transfer to a video iPod, and they’ve added the ability to make enhanced podcasts with chapter marks, inserted images, text, and hyperlinks. Every podcast you download is an MPEG-4 file that goes to the Podcast section of your iPod and each file is bookmarkable so you never lose your place.

They’ve grouped together all the big podcasters such as NPR and all their affiliates making those podcasts easy to browse. And now they’ve added a new section of categories and subcategories making it much easier to find podcasts in your areas of interest, complete with listings of new podcasts, featured ones, and the top 100 podcasts in every category and subcategory. And let me not forget that they’ve got good listener reviews along with excellent “Listeners who subscribed to this also subscribed to this” podcast suggestions.

Now for a few things I think iTunes can improve on with their directory. First off I still think their search is weak. It’s better than it used to be, particularly when you do a broad search like “wine” and you get a nice set of relevant results up top with images. Search anything more obscure though and you’re bound to pull up no results or a result that seems totally off base. It doesn’t even seem like they’re bringing the text in the RSS feeds to bear on the results, much less converting the audio of podcast episodes to text and allowing people to search the audio like our good friends at Podzinger have done for our podcast directory.

Another thing I don’t like is that they don’t allow you to stream podcasts in their entirety. I have to download it and then find it in my ever growing list of podcasts I’ve downloaded or subscribed to in iTunes. I guess it’s a concern that streaming whole podcasts might suck too much bandwidth from podcasters and make them mad so I sort of understand.

So Apple’s almost there with the ultimate podcasting player/catcher/directory. The only problem facing podcasting now is that I believe it’s reaching a glut. So many seemingly interesting podcasts, so little time. That’s why at LearnOutLoud.com we’ll keep devoting ourselves to seeking out only the best podcasts that you can learn from. We don’t want to overwhelm you with information, we want you to learn!

June 28, 2006

Search *Within* Our Podcast Directory

NOTE: Sorry we don’t have this option any longer.

You’ve always been able to search our podcast directory to find the best podcasts to learn from. Now you can actually search within the audio for each podcast episode. We’ve recently partnered with Podzinger, a company that has a very cool audio search service. This will allow you to find podcasts that match your tastes or find podcasts on current events.

For example, let’s say you would like to hear some recent podcast episodes about the World Cup. Try this search. You’ll see some of the podcasts you would expect (e.g., the ESPN.com Mix Podcast, Sports Business Radio, Skinny on Sports) and some others you probably wouldn’t (e.g., Digital Planet and the English as a Second Language Podcast). It’s a cool way to expose yourself to some new podcasts.

Give it a try today by going to podcasts.learnoutloud.com. We’re hoping to incorporate more and more of our audio content into this search mechanism in the future. Whatever we can do to make Learning Out Loud more fun and easier for you…that’s our mission.

🙂

May 9, 2006

Why Isn’t This Being Podcasted?

So I have the privilege of taking an awesome class right now through the UCLA Producers Program that is being taught by Peter Guber (Host of Sunday Morning Shootout among other things). It’s quite possibly the best graduate-level course I’ve ever been to. Last night our guest was Lloyd Braun, the head of media at Yahoo! We’ve had Mark Burnett (creator of Survivor and The Apprentice), Scott Sassa (CEO at Friendster) and a number of other interesting guests. And the class is only half over…

Anyway, when I go to classes like these I can’t help but be a little frustrated that the only people who get to experience this are the 100 or so people in the classroom with me. I would love (love love love!) to see stuff like this podcasted. I know it’s starting to happen (a podcast like Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders is an example) but in my opinion it isn’t fast enough.

We need to get this knowledge out there into the hands of as many people that want it as quickly as possible.

We need to podcast conferences like TED and PUSH (which I’m going to next month) and GEL (which my buddy Kareem just wrote an excellent blog post about).

We need to podcast more courses and lectures (especially the ones with cutting-edge ideas that can push the world forward). We need to have more people contribute their thoughts to the mix and share their wisdom with the world (which is essentially why we launched TeachOutLoud). We need to realize that ideas will change the world, especially to the extent that we can spread them as far and wide as possible.

That’s our goal here. To change the world through meaningful media. We’ve come a long way in the last five years and no doubt will make a tremendous amount of progress in the next five.

Nevertheless, I’m pretty impatient these days. 🙂

April 22, 2006

Great Podcasts

Man I’ve been listening to a lot of good stuff lately. Here are a few samples:

The Future of Work – Very inspiring and optimistic presentation from MIT Professor Thomas Malone from Accelerating Change 2005.

Beyond Search – Cool panel discussion from BayCHI with the founder of Digg, del.icio.us, Pandora and Netflix.

Mosaic – Unleashing the Creative Spirit – I’ve been doing some “church hunting” lately here in LA and I love the ability to check out a church via a podcast before I show up in person.

Venture Voice with Steve Hindy of The Brooklyn Brewery – Venture Voice just keeps getting better and better. If you’re running your own business or thinking about doing so in the future you *must* subscribe to this podcast.

April 19, 2006

LearnOutLoud on the Web 2.0 Show

We’re not really a web 2.0 company but in the spirit of never missing the opportunity to spread some LearnOutLoud love I did an interview at BarCampLA with Nick Dyson of the Web 2.0 Show. It’s a short interview but it turned out pretty good. Here’s the link if you want to take a listen. And one question…could they have found a worse picture of me? 🙂

March 17, 2006

Shownotes for Audio Learning Revolution Episode #016

Audio Learning Revolution Podcast for March 17th, 2006

March 16, 2006

Our Highest-Rated Podcast

I cruised into our podcast directory tonight and noticed that the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast is now our highest-rated podcast based on your ratings. I can’t think of a more deserving podcast as I’ve learned a ton from just about every episode and some of them (like the one with Trilogy Founder Joe Liemandt) have been downright amazing.

I just got down listening to the latest episode and it’s excellent. It’s a presentation by John Roos, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and it’s packed full of great advice for entrepreneurs. If you’re running a company or thinking of starting one in the future I’d highly recommend this podcast. It’s tough to get this type of insight into entrepreneurship anywhere else.

Oh, and before I forget, in other podcasting news, PaidContent.org reports that Podtech.net has received $5.5 million in funding. This is pretty significant news as it means that there will be a lot more cool stuff coming from John Furrier, the creator of the excellent Media InfoTalk Podcast. Kudos to John of closing this funding and we’ll be looking forward to (and reporting on!) what comes of the Podtech Network in the future.

March 6, 2006

The Top 10 People Who Should Be Podcasting

Yup, there are a lot of cool people podcasting these days. But there are also a lot who haven’t started yet. I realize that a lot of people will never podcast for reasons ranging from a simple lack of time to the fact that a few words one way or another in a podcast could swing their companies’ stock prices pretty radically (e.g., Mr. Gates, Sergey and Larry). But I think there are a bunch of people who out there who could be persuaded into giving podcasting a try. Who knows, maybe if this article gets enough buzz one of them will give it a go. So without further ado, here’s my Wish List of the Top 10 People I’d Love to See Podcasting:

10. Steve Wozniak – One of the co-founders of Apple, Woz is always interesting to listen to. He’s been on This Week in Tech a couple of times and also has the proud distinction of being the subject of the most popular IT Conversations episode of all-time. Here’s one vote for Woz starting a mobile podcast that he’d record while in his Prius or on his Segway.

9. Mark Cuban – Blog Maverick, Cuban’s blog, is among my favorites. He’s got a great perspective on business, sports and entertainment. As those worlds converge at an accelerating pace Cuban’s dialogue becomes more and more relevant. He’s a busy guy these days but sticking a mic on him once a week to get his thoughts on the future of media, his advice on investing and entrepreneurship and the occasional rant about Phil Jackson would be pretty frickin’ sweet. While we’re waiting on the CubanCast check out his interview with John Furrier from the InfoTalk Podcast and his conversation with John Heilemann from the Web 2.0 Conference.

8. Margaret Cho – She has a blog, a My Space site and even a line of belly-dancing clothes. What more could the Notorious C.H.O. want? A podcast, that’s what. Give her an open mic and an RSS feed and just see what happens. I have no doubt that it would be interesting and most likely offensive to at least half of the people listening…

7. Tom Peters – Crazy passionate. That’s the best phrase I could think of describe Tom Peters. He’s been a blogger for a while now but to really experience Peters you need to listen to him. Give an ear to a bit of Re-Imagine! and tell me if this guy isn’t on fire. He’s always on the road giving speeches and presentations. Someone needs to start recording some of them and putting them out there for the rest of the world to hear. Pretty please…

6. The Dalai Lama – The Dalai Lama is the author of dozens of books, many of which have been published on audio and which he has personally narrated. Belief Net has a number of “mini-dharma” talks available but it would be cool to see an audio and/or video podcast feed. No doubt thousands or even millions of people around the world would tune in.

5. Jason Calacanis – I had a chance to see Jason offer up a rant last weekend at BarCampLosAngeles. I love hearing him speak. He’s definitely one of the most opinionated guys out there but he’s on the mark at least 98% of the time. Check out his interview on the Web 2.0 Show for a glimpse into what a CalacanisCast might sound like. No dull moments guaranteed!

4. Guy Kawasaki – The managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and another high-profile author who just started blogging. Based on the volume of his posts Guy either has some time on his hands or types very, very fast. Personally, I can’t keep up. Now if he’d make some of those articles available on audio it might give a guy a fighting chance! Watch his presentation here to the UCLA Anderson School or listen to a chapter from The Art of the Start and see if this isn’t a guy who would be a good entrant into the Podosphere.

3. Andrew Sullivan – Gay? Conservative? Practicing Roman Catholic? Intriguing. I’ve been following Andrew’s blog The Daily Dish off and on for the last couple of years. It’s one of those that I’d like to have the time to digest but never quite get around to. Now if he podcasted it would be totally different. I could listen during my daily jog, when I’m driving around, etc. I’ve never heard him speak but if his podcast would be even half as interesting as his blog it would be worth the subscription.

2. Seth Godin – The author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow and most recently All Marketers Are Liars has one of the most popular blogs going. He’s an innovate thinker and a dynamic speaker (Godin recently was chosen as on of “21 Speakers for the Next Century” by Successful Meetings Magazine). Check out the recent talk he gave to Google to get a sense of what a Godin podcast might sound like. I’d certainly subscribe.

1. Bill Clinton – He has some spare time on his hands these days right? Well actually he has been quite busy doing a lot of work with his foundation and with former President George Bush raising money for last year’s tsunami and hurricane victims. Even though he is retired from office it would be interesting to see him follow in the footsteps of other political figures like John Edwards and Barack Obama and put out a podcast. For an example of what it might sound like check out an interview of Clinton from this year’s World Economic Forum. It would definitely be interesting to more stuff like that.

Of course one-person podcasts don’t seem to end up working out that well. So perhaps (and I know I’m reaching now) some of these people could team up. A Cuban/Calacanis podcast? (Cuban invested in Weblogs, Inc., the company Jason recently sold to AOL.) How about Godin and Peters? (That would be some good brain candy.) Or maybe we could use the husband-wife formula that worked so well for Dawn and Drew and get Hillary and Bill to podcast together? On second thought…