Yesterday I came across a small newspaper called The Niagara Gazette. The interesting thing about this paper was the way they were doing their daily news roundups. Rather than simply post the headlines of the day - the managing editor David Arkin reads them, in a pretty energetic fashion, on their Daily News Podcast.

Now their is nothing revolutionary about this at all - its just nice to see companies/media outlets (especially in smaller markets with smaller budgets) thinking outside the box a bit. I would venture to guess that for many residents of Niagara that was/is their first taste of a podcast. The more people are exposed - the more it spreads….

Check out the Niagra Gazette’s Daily News Podcast here - even though most of this is only going to be interesting to residents of Niagara

Podcast Ready believes that podcasts should be more interactive and easy to promote. With that in mind they have created a cool little widget that allows podcast subscribers to record and leave audio or video comments on a podcast. feedCaster is a free software widget that give podcast producers a new way to promote their content on the ever-growing social networking sites like myspace and TagWorld.

Via TechWeb:

Site owners load feedCaster onto their AIM, MySpace, or any blog or social network page. The software automatically determines if the podcast listener who visits the site has a camera or microphone, and then prompts them through recording and posting a comment.

According to Podcast’s website - there are two parts to feedCaster:

1. The feedCaster Recorder allows you to record custom Podcasts for users to view and comment.
2. The feedCaster Flash Widget allows you to place your custom content (or other content of your choice) on any website. The viewers of your widget can then, among other things, comment on your Podcasts.

Podcast Ready is giving this widget away free on their website (requires registration) @ www.podcastready.com/tools.php.

Read the official press release here.

Wow - its a big day for PodShow as they announced that they just received fifteen million in VC money. Podshow describes themselves as a site where you get to choose what you listen to and when and where you listen to it. As the name would hint at - they focus on podcasts…

From the press release:

PodShow, Inc., the digital media entertainment network whose properties include PodShow+, PodShow Podcast Network, PodShowPDN, Podcast Alley, Castblaster, the Podsafe Music Network and, most recently, BTPodShow, today announced that the company has raised a second round of venture funding from new and original investors, totaling $15M, led by DAG Ventures.

Read the full press release here.
PodShow pressroom here

Steve Johnson from The Chicago Tribune recently wrote an interesting review of Starbuck’s new podcast series Coffee Conversations:

If the word “coffee” contained caffeine, the first Starbucks podcast would keep you awake for about three weeks.

The magical term is spoken 82 times in just under slightly less than 13 minutes of the weekly, corporate-sponsored chitchat about beans and such. That’s roughly once every nine seconds.

To sum it up Steve says that Starbucks doesn’t deserve the hate they get for being big, but they don’t deserve any love for this effort.

Frank Barnako from Marketwatch had this to say: To judge by the first “sip”, it’s going to take a lot of coffee to keep me awake listening to a full show.

It will be interesting to see if Starbucks listens to some of this criticism and turns it around. I agree with Frank regarding this point: If Starbucks REALLY wants to re-bond, it should be using real people with something real to say.

A well known podcast host (he produces eight in total), Leo Laporte recently asked his listeners whether they preferred a long or a short version of his TWiT.tv podcast. Twenty thousand people responded in favor of the longer podcasts. TWiT is 120 minutes long.

Leo’s podcasts include “this WEEK in TECH,” “Inside the Net,” “MacBreak Weekly,” and “Security Now!”

Speaking at this weekend’s Portable Media and Podcast Expo, Dave Van Dyke of Bridge Ratings said that a year ago his research company had found less than 20% of podcasts were being heard on iPods or other MP3 players.

“That number has gotten worse (for players),” Van Dyke said…. “It’s no longer the early adopters,” Van Dyke said. Likening podcasts to CB Radio, he said, “There was a certain brand of individual who was very passionate and used it in a much different way than the people who were slightly less passionate.”

IMO - PCcast just doesn’t have the same ring to it as podcast so I don’t think it will catch on in quite the same way

Interesting article about it as well as live audio from Van Dyke here on the CBS Marketwatch blog.

Podbridge Inc., a startup company that provides demographics of podcast listeners, has announced on Monday that it has partnered with Forbes.com. This alliance has given Podbridge exclusive rights to be the provider of measurement tools and advertisement services for all of Forbes.com podcasts.

Forbes.com began providing online videos in 2002. With this partnership, Podbridge will be supporting such podcasts as SportsMoney, StreetTalk, and The Adventurer.

Podbridge was founded in 2005 as an outlet for media companies to extend their content into podcasting.