Richard Giles Blog

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Just over a month ago I ran a quick analysis over Scouta’s data, and found that a small sample showed that possibly only 10% of downloaded podcasts are consumed to any degree, and only 50% of those are consumed over 50%: Are Only 10% of Podcast Downloads Consumed?

We mentioned then that we’d do another analysis after a few more weeks with some more data. Today was that day, and we did another quick analysis: the numbers look smaller over a larger data-set.

A sample of 17,821 podcasts and video podcasts, with 166 members subscribing with iTunes, showed that only 4.5% of the shows are consumed more than 50%, and only 7.5% are consumed more than 10%.

If you’re a podcaster, and would like to know more about how people consume your podcasts or video podcasts, then let us know. We can help you do an analysis based on your content.

“Bust your ass. Pay attention. Fall in love.”
Jerry Seinfeld.

As part of my Sydney trip this week I paid a visit to Juan Mann’s new open home. Juan is the guy responsible for the Free Hugs campaign that went viral on YouTube last year (see the video here). He has now published his address on the Internet, and lets anyone drop buy for a visit.

I dropped by on Friday afternoon before I headed to the airport, and hung out with Juan and three other visitors: Sally, Remo, and Miro.

It was a pretty good experience. Not only is Juan inspiring, but the people at his place were also an interesting and diverse group. Sally and I chatted about her research about the history and psychology of science, Remo chatted about his store that’s been around for quite sometime in bricks and mortar and online, and Miro dropped by to help out Jaun record events in case there’s a documentary in it somewhere. Personally I think they should just make the documentary, because it’s gonna be a fascinating story.

Juan just found out that he’s being evicted this week, which really is a shame. So he’s now trying to figure out his next move. He’d like to keep the open house, but needs to find an accepting landlord. Anyone have a contact that might help him out in Sydney?

The latest Scouta TV Episode, 0.1, is now up on the web site: Scouta TV.

Go grab it, and subscribe in iTunes.

Taken just up the street from my apartment. Thought it summed up the usefulness of dead-tree yellow pages.

I heard the other day over Twitter that someone had again added inaccurate information to Cameron Reilly’s wikipedia entry. Ok, so inaccurate information probably isn’t that surprising, what was really surprising was the slanderous nature, and also that it has become obvious that someone is trying their hardest to defame Cameron on the wiki.

A few months ago I checked out his entry, and was surprised, amused, and mildly disappointed to see this statement in the “Controversy” section:

“In May 2007, Reilly described his 2006 co-host on G’day World, Richard Giles as “My ungrateful protege”. They have since made up and Giles returned as a special co-host on the Gday World podcast on June 23rd 2007.”

Cameron and I have never fallen out, and as such, never needed to make up.

Since meeting Cam in 2005, I have had the utmost respect for him. He’s one of those guys that becomes a loyal friend pretty quickly, and I’ve chatted with him about all sorts of things that have happened in my life since. Even though we live at the opposite ends of Australia, I consider him one of my best mates. He’s always made the time to talk with me, and when I’ve needed it, he’s given me support.

I laughed off the entry in wikipedia, because to be honest I figured most people wouldn’t read it, and those that did probably wouldn’t think much of it. He did make the statement, but any time he has said it, it was obviously in jest, and no one has ever asked me to clarify the situation, but I’ve mentioned it on a couple of podcasts.

However, the recent addition to Cam’s wikipedia entry went too far. And unfortunately the offender, who has since come clean in the comments on Cam’s entry, excuses himself by saying “I wasn’t in the right place mentally when I added to the entry.” They’re still defending what they wrote, even though they admit the main thrust of the comment “wasn’t needed or is provable.”

I listen to most of Cam’s podcasts, and at no time have I questioned his transparency or integrity. It’s seemed pretty obvious what’s been happening the last few months, and I don’t see how anyone could question him on this, other than to try and make him look bad.

I think it’s time for the person to apologize. They’ve admitted it was wrong, in a round about fashion, and should never have been adding to wikipedia if they weren’t in the right place mentally.

Update: Probably the quickest update I’ve ever needed to do, there is now an apology on Cam’s blog post.

Boing Boing points out that the One laptop Per Child organisation is selling laptops to the public for a limited time: November 12 to 26. Not only that, but if you buy one, you will “donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation.”

I love that offer. I’d love to see every kid, in every nation with a laptop like this. Imagine how empowering that will be!

The offer is currently only good for Canada and US residents, but I was really tempted to take up the offer some how.

Things are certainly hotting up here, weather wise, and Scouta wise.

For those not in Perth, we’ve seen a few days of weather in the high thirties (degrees C). It’s nice to have some warm weather after a fair amount of rain.

As for Scouta, well, Scouta TV has already been heaps of fun. We’ve seen plenty of activity already on the Facebook group — go join if you haven’t already — and downloads are continuing at a great rate. It’s fantastic to see, especially for essentially a pre-release.

Scouta itself is also ramping up. Membership is increasing, and we’re also in talks with several exciting potential customers. Some of which are not those you’d expect to want a recommendation engine.

The last week has been insanely busy: all because of Scouta TV, my new video podcast.

A few weeks ago a decided to go ahead with a video podcast idea I’d had for a while. So I reached out for a co-host and some help in recording and post-producing. After a few emails, and a few messages through Twitter and Facebook, I got together with Grum and Saywood.

Last weekend I bought myself a copy of Final Cut Express, and played with it and a video camera I borrowed from Simon. It looked pretty flexible, and I felt I’d mastered enough to warrant our aim of recording the first episode on Tuesday night.

I also spent a few hours in Blender. Even though we knew we’d be a little rough around the edges, I wanted to at least have a semi-decent intro animation. I’d played with Blender about six odd years ago, and managed to remember a bunch of what I needed to, to get the job done. I also have to say it’s come a long way. I love that I can do ray-tracing in the application now. Too much fun.

It took a little while to setup the equipment on Tuesday. The main issue was audio, funnily enough. Simon’s camera was overriding our microphones, and because it didn’t have an audio line in (a must for video podcasting), it was giving us low quality audio.

We eventually swapped it out for Grum’s camera, and by about 9pm we were rolling.

Now, I never had any illusions that video production was easy. I’ve had enough experience with audio podcasts to know that I was biting off a fair chunk when we embarked on the project. But, the damn annoying thing is that a simple mistake, or omission can cost you several hours.

One major hurdle included not having enough disk space. I’d cleared up over 15GB for the effort, but that really wasn’t enough. So Thursday evening I shot out to Harvey Norman and Next Byte, and bought a new Apple Airport Express and a 1TB Western Digital USB drive. Hooked together they’ve become my wireless NAS. I offloaded everything I could to that, and now have plenty of room on my PowerBook’s internal drive to deal with everything I need.

I think I need to do some serious reading on workflow, because the whole post effort took me all of Wednesday through to most of Friday, including a couple of late nights. This’ll obviously get easier as I go, as I now know a lot more than I did a week ago, but I also figure there’s some smart ways to do the editing. I’ll do more research when I’ve rested for the next few days.

Anyway, it’s now live. Thanks to everyone that’s made great comments on the Scouta TV blog, and via Twitter.