Scoble is right, podcasting is inefficient!
June 26, 2006
I agree with Peter and Robert when they say, “podcasting is inefficient.“Â You may be shocked to hear me agree since we have our own podcasting business (PodServe) as well as Robert who just joined a podcasting company.
I am subscribed to several podcasts myself, but I rarely have time to listen to them. They just sit on my iPod and I never hear them. So for me, podcasting does not work for casual listening. There are a few podcasts I do listen to. The main one is our weekly sales call, our sales people use PodServe to record their conference calls and automatically upload them into a podcast feed. Each salesperson has access to the feed so if they miss the meeting they can catch up and then use PodServe’s podcall function to call the system and insert an update into the feed. I can insert comments into the feed as well, providing feedback, suggestions and praise. Podcasting for sales teams can work much better than a traditional conference call bridge - adding intelligence to a recording (i.e. ownership rights, authorship rights, xml feed and telephone integration) is a smarter way to work.
I am most excited about the ability to merge telephony and podcasting for business uses - i.e. Enterprise 2.0 use cases such as:
Podcasting for Social Media Consultants
Our year-old social media business, Weblogs Work, needed a way to easily host and create feeds for its client’s podcasts. Our developers built the precursor to PodServe to make it easy for anyone confused by FTP and XML to get their podcast up and running fast. Anyone on the Weblogs Work team can create a podcast in about 10 minutes using PodServe.
Podcasting for Support Systems
Architel, our IT support company, uses a network management system to generate server and network alerts via email and RSS. Podcall’s text-to-voice feature grabs each RSS feed from the management system, determines which technicians should be notified and begins calling each engineer and relaying the alert in a simulated human voice. The team also uses PodServe to host their internal audio and video training.
Podcasting for Schools
High schools and colleges can use private label PodServe to offer their teachers and professors the ability to record lecture content and additional information for their students. Today, Purdue has more than 70 classrooms wired to record lectures and more than 60 courses have regular podcasts. PodServe can allow any university or high school enter the social media space. Our group and public podcasting features can allow for multilateral communication between students. Combined with our Podcall features any student with a cell phone can participate.
Podcasting for Hosting Companies
Web hosting companies can offer private label podcast hosting using PodServe to increase revenue or to differentiate their service offering. For example, Verio now offers standard shared hosting clients access to hosted podcasts via the Verio customer control panel at no additional cost. With PodServe any large or small web hosting provider can offer the same service with their own custom control panel. Combined with Podcall, web hosting companies can offer creation tools for any of their users who have access to a telephone.
Podcasting for Television
A popular television series is working with us to private label PodServe to allow their viewers to call in to hear specific messages and generate content to be distributed via various podcasts. We are customizing PodServe’s Podcall IVR functionality to allow for user interaction with show content and user generated responses to that content available for other users via iTunes.
Clearly, this has turned into a sales post about PodServe so I will continue by explaining how PodServe’s Podcall feature works and what features it offers: Podcall allows PodServe users to easily create recordings for inclusion within PodServe created and hosted podcasts. Podcall is a a multiprotocol PBX on Linux integrated into PodServe. Based on Asterisk, Podcall is a complete PBX that provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Podcall does voice over IP in many protocols, and interoperates with all standards-based telephone equipment. Podcall provides a gateway to PodServe from inbound phone lines, outbound phone lines or conference bridges.
Features include:Â Automated Attendant, Blacklists, Call Detail Records, Call Forward on Busy, Call Forward on No Answer, Call Forward Variable, Call Monitoring, Call Recording, Call Retrieval, Conference Bridging, Fax Transmit and Receive, Interactive Voice Response, Predictive Dialer, Route by Caller ID, SMS Messaging, Spell / Say, Talk Detection, Text-to-Speech, Graphical Call Manager, Outbound Call Spooling, and TCP/IP Management Interface.
Requirements: Our standard Podcall install requires an additional server (Dell PowerEdge SC1425 - $1,527 recommended). Digital phone service is provided by Teliax (8 unlimited lines are included in base rate). Additional lines may be added for $10 per line per month. Outbound international calls are included at no additional rates to 90% of the planet (list of covered number: http://www.teliax.com/ccincl.csv). PodServe with Podcall includes 4mpbs of IP transit (additional bandwidth available at $90/meg/month).
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Nice write up Alex, do you inform your clients on the sales calls that they are being recorded? I think that may be required by law.