I learn from fellow NaDruWriNi participant Sci-Fi Ranter Girl that there’s some podcast called Sci-Fi Scoundrels. Will have to check it out.
The bottle of champagne is gone. Now it’s Jack and Coke.
Category / Podcasting
Web 2.0: Hype or Practical Extension of Medium Language?
Tom Coates offers this very interesting sneak peek at a new BBC feature called Annotable Audio. And damn, this has some serious possibilities. Essentially, users will be able to take an audio file and annotate specific sections of it for other users. If there’s any downfall to the idea, it’s that the brain (or, at least, mine anyway) may not be able to process text information and audio information at the same time. But as a reference tool, I can see this as an invaluable interface for something like a podcast. Let’s say, for example, that an interview subject mentions an arcane topic and the listener might be scratching his head, wondering what he’s on about. Well, the informative text is there, perhaps with a few links to other audio segments or alternative presentations.
The BBC has been very ahead of the curve in exploring new technologies. No accident that they were the ones to take on Douglas Adams’ notion of a Web-based Hitchhiker’s Guide. But with all this talk of Web 2.0, this Annotable Audio tool is the kind of thing that represents a transition point between the web language of today (hyperlinks) and its integration with other mediums (sound). And hopefully we’ll see other organizations and companies working to extend vernacular along these lines.
San Francisco Theatre Podcasts
The San Francisco Fringe Festival started this week. We’ve been so busy that, disgracefully, we haven’t yet seen any of the shows, but plan on attending a few this weekend and next week. (And if you’re in the San Francisco area, this is a great way to load up on cheap indie theatre. Each show is no more then $9.) Fortunately, the SFist has an early report and there should be more from Chronicle theatre critic Robert Hurwitt over the weekend.
But here’s the really cool thing: This year, the Fringe (or, rather, the fantastic Michael Rice) is offering podcasts with many of the performers, which can be accessed on the main Fringe page and found at the Cool As Hell Theatre Podcast. Among the highlights: El Camino Loco, Show Me Where It Hurts and, in particular, this brilliant podcast about failed artistry with Kirk White.
Media Overload
We’re still sitting on two more Bat Segundo shows, all to come in the next few weeks. If podcast interviews aren’t you’re thing and you’re hoping to hear some steady reading, the incomparable Gerard Jones has, rather amazingly, kept quite busy. He’s put up podcasts for the first sixteen chapters of Ginny Good and he’s even managed to squeeze some Joan Baez into his introduction.
The “We Battled Insomnia with Gin Last Night and the Gin Won, But Heaven Help the Fallout” Roundup
- The fantastic Carrie Frye points to the Word Nerds, a podcast devoted to “the effect of Internet communication” and various language-related issues. I’ll definitely be checking it out, as soon as I finally finish the next installment of my own damn podcast.
- So according to the Associated Press, the book world “is still searching for this year’s great American novel,” eh? There are endless ways that I can answer this, but for now I’ll point again to Lee Martin’s The Bright Forever and Kirby Gann’s Our Napoleon in Rags as two books that I’ve enjoyed very much this year and, in my view, do indeed cut the mustard. Perhaps the key here is to stop thinking about the big boys and dare to delve into the little ones.
- Dan Wickett doesn’t read Playboy for the pictures or the articles. No, sir, he’s reading it for the literature. I knew about the four-bunny system for books, because I actually had a Playboy subscription at the age of sixteen, in which I would secretly run to the mailbox and grab the latest issue covered in black plastic. (Remind me sometime to tell you the tale of what happened when I was finally caught and how I talked my way out of it.) The nice thing about this was that it allowed me to outgrow a reliance upon visual prurience and apply my perverted sentiments to everyday discourse without shame and of course evolve my unabated interest in breasts. But if the likes of Robert Coover can be found within Playboy‘s pages, then I may have to pick up a subscription. I have to wonder, however, if Mr. Wickett is secretly on Hefner’s payroll.
- Dubya actually reads serious books? Apparently, some of the books that he’s taken on a five-week summer sojurn are Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History, Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar (which seems peculiarly apt) and John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza.
- The Gothamist talks with Foop! author Chris Genoa.
- Another celebrity reading slacker: Noel Gallagher, who only just started reading fiction with Angels and Demons (“my first ever book. Believe it or not, it is.”). In the same article, Hester Lacey suggests that to dismiss someone who hasn’t read “seems both sweeping and snobbish.” Oh come on, Hester. We’re talking Dan Brown here. If Victoria Beckham has not even read Green Eggs and Ham, should her raison d’etre not be suspect?
- The new China Miéville short story collection, Looking for Jake, gets an early look at SFF World.
- What the hell was I thinking with the gin? Head hurts. More later.