Memex 1.1

I’ve been looking out for ages for an acceptable way of recording MP3 audio — without going in for the kind of obsessive pre-amp sophistication that audiophiles insist is mandatory. I think I’ve found the answer — the Zoom H4. I’ve been testing it out and it produces audio that is, in Roger Needham’s timeless phrase, “good enough for government work”. Not that I do any of that, of course.

The H4 records onto an SD card in Wav or MP3 format and has two modes: stereo and 4-track. Plug it into the USB port of my Mac and it looks like an external drive. Useful review here which says that the 4-track operation is a bit lightweight. But that doesn’t bother me: all I wanted was ol’-fashioned stereo.

I got it from here. £220 inc. VAT.

It was Dan Bricklin who put me onto it, btw.

From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Who’s listening to podcasts? Apparently no one. According to a new report from Forrester,  only 1 percent of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts.  “Podcasts have hit the mainstream consciousness but have not yet seen widespread use,” Forrester analyst Charlene Li explains. “One-quarter of online consumers express interest in podcasts, with most interested in time-shifting existing radio and Internet radio channels. Companies that are interested in using podcasts for their audio should focus not only on downloads but also on streaming audio as a means to get their content and ads to consumers.”

So podcasting, for the moment at least, is not only a bare trickle in the media stream, but one whose appeal is limited to those who use it to time-shift broadcast radio.  Now to be fair, we’re only 18 months or so into the podcasting phenom, and Li predicts that  it will grow to reach 12.3 million households in the U.S. by 2010.  So there’s a chance yet that it will someday become a mainstream medium. But right now it seems there’s little evidence to merit all the bloviating we’ve been hearing from podcast evangelists.

Podcasting, says Christopher Breen, is “so last month”. (Cries of Hear! Hear! from Memex readers.) So he’s produced a useful step-by-step guide for producing and publishing ‘Vodcasts’ (where the V stands for video).

From an interesting article in the New York Times about another subversive use of podcasting.

If you soak up the Jackson Pollocks at the Museum of Modern Art while listening to the museum’s official rented $5 audio guide, you will hear informative but slightly dry quotations from the artist and commentary from a renowned curator. (”The grand scale and apparently reckless approach seem wholly American.”)

But the other day, a college student, Malena Negrao, stood in front of Pollock’s “Echo Number 25,” and her audio guide featured something a little more lively. “Now, let’s talk about this painting sexually,” a man’s deep voice said. “What do you see in this painting?”

A woman, giggling, responded on the audio track: “Oh my God! You’re such a pervert. I can’t even say what that - am I allowed to say what that looks like?”

Hmmm… An interesting way to bring younger generations back to great art?

Podcasting is an interesting development, but currently is not for the technologically naive user. Steve Jobs has announced that within two months Apple’s iTunes will offer support for podcasts. Lots of people are pondering what this might mean. Here’s Eric Hellweg on the subject.