Tired of broadcast radio? Don’t want to go through the hassle of installing a satellite-radio receiver in your car? Bored with your music collection? Then podcasting is for you.

If you haven’t heard of podcasting, it’s going to be hot in 2005… if it isn’t already. Podcasting is obviously a play on Apple’s iPod - appropriate since podcasts are audio files (typically in MP3 format) similar to music you’d download. These audio files are attached to RSS 2.0 feeds as enclosures, and can be easily downloaded using a podcast client. Podcasts can be looked at as the audio form of blogging, and with the explosion of podcasts over the last few months, there’s content available to interest almost anyone. And as with most blogs, the majority of this content is free (I can’t think of any podcasts that you have pay for) and legal.

In order to start receiving podcasts you need to download a podcasting client, and subscribe to some podcast feeds (if you already use an RSS Newsreader, check to see if your current or a new version supports podcasts). From Adam Curry’s first podcasting client (which was release only a few months ago), podcast clients have matured to the point where they will automatically download your podcasts based on a schedule you set, synchronize those downloads with iTunes or Windows Media Player, allow you to skip editions that you don’t want to download, keep a history of your downloads, allow you to search for new podcast feeds, etc. The client I use is called Doppler Radio and can be found here. Doppler also has some links to help you find podcasts here.

I’ve been listening to podcasts since the early fall of 2004, and I’ve noticed that they have really changed my "radio" listening habits. Before podcasts, whenever I had the radio on in my car, I would be listening to music. Now I almost exclusively listen to podcasts. In addition, I’ve got a small MP3 player which allows me to listen to podcasts when I’m exercising… and even when cleaning up the house.

As with websites and blogs, you need to experiment a bit to find content that interests you. However, it didn’t take me long to find several podcasts that I now really look forward to hearing. I think you’ll find your experience will be similar.

I installed a new Firefox extension a few days ago called QuickNote. It’s an awesome extension that I am primarily using as a blogging aid. What is QuickNote? In QuickNote’s words it’s a:

… note taking-like extension slightly modeled after ‘Post-It’, ‘Sticky’, and the "Quick Notepad" plugin for jedit.

I
didn’t really get that either, but I did installed it, so I could kick
the tires.

In Firefox QuickNotes creates a custom sidebar or new
window (user selectable), accessible by hitting cntrl-F7, that displays up
to four savable, QuickNote-specific tabs in
which you can jot down notes. Installing QuickNotes also adds a "Send to QuickNote" link in the
context menu (aka, the right mouse button click menu). Clicking on this
link will send any text to QuickNotes. Some screenshots of QuickNote can be found here, and I’ve added QuickNotes to my list of installed extensions.

CNet has a story about Amazon creating versions of its web services for foreign markets.

"This release is a direct response to feedback from our growing
developer community," Andy Jassy, vice president of Web services at
Amazon, said in a statement.

Amazon out of any of the major web companies, has been the most aggressive in pushing web services. eBay and Google have them too, but they have not been aggressively marketing them. In some ways, Amazon is lucky since they have a built-in profit model for their web services.

This is the kind of innovation that I like. Sure, developing, supporting and promoting web services carries some opportunity-cost risks, but the upside of becoming the commerce backend for a big portion of the web is huge. Jeff Bezos at Web 2.0 spoke about the next version of the web - the one making it easier for computers to use. That’s big thinking, but more importantly, Amazon is acting on that big thinking.

In the New York Times week in review

In other Google news, the search giant was dealt a setback when a French court ruled that it must refrain from using the trademarks of European resort chain Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts to trigger keyword ads. A Nanterre court in France ruled that Google infringed on the trademarks of Le Meridien by allowing the hotel chain’s rivals to bid on keywords of its name and appear prominently in related search results.

This just sounds wrong to me. For example, when you look in the Yellow Pages for a specific store, you see competitive ads. I go into Safeway to buy Tide, and it’s side-by-side with every other brand of detergent. Let’s hope the rest of the world is not so shortsighted as the French. In the meantime, pass the ketchup please.

I’m going to do it in 2005. Gonna buy a Mini Mac. Why? When you listen to people like Esther Dyson and Doc Searls talk about the number of Macs they now see at technology conferences, you feel like you’re missing something important. In addition, I have helped a number of relatives and friends purchase and configure Windows PCs in the past. These PCs will eventually need upgrading or replacing, so I’m going to get calls asking what they should do. I suspect that with the maturation of the Web - that is, you don’t need a Windows PC to run most applications these days, just a browser - a Mac may now be a better and easier personal computer choice for them. Besides, the thing looks darn cool.

After reading a review of the Mini, I’ll probably get the cheapest one that has a WLAN card built in. I’m not too concerned about speed or writing DVDs or how much memory it has, since I don’t think this Mac, or any Mac for that matter, will become my main computer. The reasons? I’ve got quite a bit of capital invested in Windows-compatible software, Windows still has far better application support for products I might need in the future (but this is changing), the Mac doesn’t play DirectX games but primarily because I have A LOT of time and frustration invested into knowing how to make a Windows box run well. However easy an OS or an application is to learn, learning a new one is hard and frustrating at times… how hard and frustrating I’m planning on finding out in 2005.

Update: 2005_01_21
From the New York Times:

While Target has not been known as a place to get Macs, or even PCs for that matter, it has been selling the iPod for some time. Target was also the first venue to offer prepaid iTunes music store gift cards, though Apple has now expanded that effort.

What a great distribution channel for Apple. Target is the upscale discounter; a place with a bit of flair.

Not everyone in America is lucky enough to have an Apple store just down the block like they do in Palo Alto. Now the rest of America has a place to "kick the tires" and purchase a Mac Mini. In the review I linked to above, the reviewer commented on how he mistakenly thought he was opening the shipping box for his iPod he had also ordered… that is, until he opened it and found it actually contained his Mac Mini. Man, it must be small.

When you think about it, you can get all of the functionality of an iPod for a lot less. One big reason people purchase iPods is for the brand (Apple = cool). The same thing could happen for the Mac Mini. Let’s hope so, because we could use some competition the operating system market.