The Samson CO1U USB Condenser Mic
To get around this, you need to change your input settings.
- Open Applications > Utilities > Audio Midi Setup.app
- Select your connected Samson C01U mic in the "Properties For:" drop down menu. The "Audio Input" area should refresh to show format options.
- In the Format field, change the channel drop down menu to "1ch-16 bit."
Your audio application show now send mono for both channels.
Victor Lombardi of Smart Experience and I begin DAKISSA, a podcast that looks at innovations in interface design. You can view the podcast on Konigi or at dakissa.blip.tv where you can subscribe via your RSS reader or iTunes.
Mobile phone service Stitcher provides a selected list of news feeds that are read to you. The production quality of this service is very good, and works well for iPhone users. Sign up, and Stitcher sends you a link to their IUI interface in Safari for the iPhone. When you find the feed you want to read, you click on a link to play the Quicktime file in your browser, and someone starts reading you a summary of the news from sites including TechCrunch and Wall Street Journal.
The NYTimes reports that ODEO, the startup company formed by Evan Williams and Noah Glass, is going to be providing an all-in-one system to podcast via the telephone. They are also going to somehow allow users to assemble custom playlists of audio files and copy them directly onto MP3 audio players. And I suppose somehow, they're also going to be making money.
I sent the iPodderX folks some ideas to integrate a media player into their application. I've sent them some ideas, but haven't heard back from them.
My main concern at the moment is with using podcasts on my Mac, not with how their application handles the transfer to my iTunes. Presently in iPodderX there is a drawer that expands to show a media reader, but it doesn't actually do anything yet. I was thinking of how the application could be made more functional if that media player were functional and if OMPL show notes could be used with the playing podcast somehow. I was thinking that the OMPL could be tied to time markers in the show so that those branches of the show notes could be shown during playback. See the screen I proposed below, showing how some of this might play with the iPodder UI. I'm not really to big a fan of the drawer for the media player.
When I'm listening to Adam Curry's DSC, for instance, he often mentions other podcasts or web sites, which are captured in the show notes. If I'm listening on my Mac, I have to browse to his OMPL notes on his site and then click through the tree until I find the matching node to click the link. Wouldn't it be cool if that branch just expanded in the iPodder Media Player when that part of the show passes the play head?
I can think of a lot of other use cases for Podcast applications, mainly taking some relevant features of RSS News Readers (especially in the area of feed management) and incorporating them into iPodder. Some of typical News Reader features might be overkill for iPodder, but importing feed lists via OPML seems to make sense. The show notes concept may be sort of a reach idea because it would require some standardization of OPML show notes, but I'd like to see that happen if possible in the future.
I've been listening to Adam Curry's Daily Source code for the last couple of months. His January 7 podcast is amazing. He's decided to change things up a little and took his iriver out for a stroll through South Beach, where he's meeting for a week with his partners Dave and Ron.
What I really loved about this podcast is that it really creates what he refers to as the "theater of the mind". On his walk, you hear: street construction sounds; a chat he has with a crazy misanthropic passerby who seems to care a lot about getting a swimming pool and a Walmart in South Beach; lots of Spanish as he passes sidewalk cafes; and a chat with DuoLive, some Brooklyn kids selling their CDs.
This was like an audio snapshot. Audio has an amazing ability for allowing you to create an image in your mind of what you are hearing. This is the theater part, but it's participatory theater. It's not as passive as watching video. The imagery of the scene is built by your imagination, which constructs what it thinks you would see to match what you hear. It demands a lot more of your participation than video, and because of that, the end result is somehow satisfying in a very different way. The sound, by the way, was quite good considering the tools he used.
Very exciting stuff, partly because he's in such a busy part of the city. This somehow reminds me of stream of consciousness and Linklater's Slacker. It's so much like life. Random bits of life and serendipitous moments. I got chills when he segued from the chat with DuoLive to playing their track. It's one of the moments where you think, "damn, this is the kind of shit that blogs are good for." The way Adam has turned people on the Lascivious Biddies, and made me a fan of NY local singer/songwriter Bari Koral is one of the reasons I dig his podcast. It's just regular blog stuff. He points us to his picks. But with this new format, he is also letting us into his surrounding environment as well. The monologue has turned into dialogue and everything is a bit more off the cuff and real. I want more of this. I want to hear other people podcast on the street and talk to people. I want to also hear more artistic forms of podcasting emerge.
I've wondered what kind of audio experimenting I could do and this gives me some ideas for interesting blogging. I've been excited by some of the video blogging Peter has done, but the podcasting thing can be interesting in a different way because good audio can really transport you somewhere. I totally got into the bit of audio Adam played a few months ago of someone's walk with their dog. The sound for that is incredible.
Anyway, go check it out. Oh, to Adam, I'd say, forget about these people who want to tell you what to do. Whatever. They can take it on the arches. It's his show and the way he gets his creative mojo on his business.