Real winter weather & podcasting

Winter has finally arrived with a nice coating of lake effect snow. For those of you lucky enough to not live near one of the Great Lakes - Lake Effect snow is what happens when the weather comes over the lake (Erie in my case) picking up additional moisture, that then gets dumped in the form of heavy, wet snow.

I ran across Adam Curry's weblog and I started checking out his podcast. Now even though I don't have an iPod, I have been downloading and playing his podcast. Now I have been following podcasting for all of a week now, but I can already see where there are a number of problems.

1) Podcasting takes too much time. Unless you have a long ride/drive or want to listen to them all day at work you need to carve out a large chunk of time. Although a little better than TV, it is still tough.

2) Adam Curry points out there is no content management right now. If you think of TiVo, it does great content management so you don't have to think about what you have watched/not watched and making sure you have enough hard drive space.

3) Until something can be worked out with the RIAA, the music selection is going to be limited.

4) Given we already have some iPod-style machines that are showing pictures and I think video (if not, it is not far behind), it is not too long until we get the equivilant of public access on cable.

After the initial thrill dies out, much like with CB radio or even pirate radio, we are going to see this go a few things develop:

1) Most people will use podcasting to do remote updates of the traditional blog. I have seen at least 1 person doing this already.

2) Colleges & other schools will use it to help train traditional broadcasters and to keep in contact with colleges. We may even see businesses use this as a way to keep in contact with customers.

3) A few people may keep up with non-RIAA music. I figure there is a growing popularity in releasing music independently, but it is tougher to get advertising.