This last week on LOR has been taken up by a succession of audio experiments which has distracted from standard I- spy-a- comment blogging. Since I've been pretty much house bound, the recreation has been instructive, albeit sedentary.
The Audio Links section has been greatly expanded for those keen on DIY.
After spending a few acoustically driven hours listening to miscellaneous podcasts, I find that the radical bent of the enterprise is a lot different from everyday blogging which politically seems to have been snaffled by the US libertarian Right. Podcasting is another kettle of fish altogether and is being driven by much we'll-change-the world idealism. (whereas blogging rests so often on rank egocentrism).
I think it would be straigtforward exercise to establish an alternative--and radical -- news and views podcast network here in Australia. But that's down the track...but hey! it's very feasible.(Compared to the cost of community radio such a project is a walk in the park! Instead of ONE radio station, with all its associated clique politics and running/licensing/capital costs & limited antenna reach , generating in house programming, the exercise is instead a succession of subscription feeds & archived audio files produced in the main at the homes of activists as they go about their activism.) What podcasting does is place into the hands of Joe and Mary Citizen, or this week's top political campaign, the attributes of a radio station for a mere slither of the outlay...
The Life of Riley homepage has also been set up, making the enterprise accessible through a local search. Here you can review the blog's feeds as soon as new posts are published.
Over the next week there will be another Ratbag Radio broadcast, this time with better modulation. (To give you an idea of how easy peasy this was -- I recorded the broadcast/ established the playlist in the preferred order/ clicked 'REPEAT" mode/ and left the broadcaster running for the whole weekend as I was elsewhere. On my return I reviewed the exercise by checking my listeners log).
By the way, Ratbag Radio is NOT podcasting or necessarily MP3 in format, as it can broadcast other protocols and can be live to air anytime -- just like the AM/FM band. RR employs clipstream so that there is no wait with the downloading.
For those who are wondering about podcasting and journalism -- Dick Smith's is retailing a Mp3 player/recorder by iRiver (that also includes a mic jack & will record off any source) at a very good price (for those with birthday coming up -- like me -- or for standard journalistic work/ lectures/ forums/ interviews). But MP3 players from the same source(which will also record minus auxiliaries) are now retailing at $69.00 (both Smiths and Harvey Norman) which means that the portable technology is getting much more accessible, expecially for young people (if they can overcome the iPod hype). We are now talking about technology that is in effect in the same price league as portable radio and CD players and which is much cheaper than other recording sources such as Mini Disks. Indeed Australia seems to have a niche advantage as some Asian sourced MP3 technology is much cheaper here than in Britain or the US.
For those seeking a thoughtful overview: check out Music of the Blogospheres podcast .
