Multimedia and more

Over the last few months I’ve been listening to podcasts during my morning and evening commutes. I’ve never been much of a podcast listener, but now that I have a 45 minute commute via BART train, I’ve turned into an avid listener, even an obsessed fan. I can’t leave home without my earphones, and if I do, I feel like I’ve wasted a precious morning that could have been spent enlightening my life.

I used to listen to the radio when I had a driving commute at a previous job, but this time I get to choose exactly which casts I want to listen to and in which order.

Lately I’ve been listening to Slate, NPR and a few others. Just so many of the segments are incredible. I actually feel rejuvinated when hearing a great piece that opens my eyes to larger world we live in. Most of the time I’m left intrigued.

So why is podcasting still a small niche in the total number of audio listeners? Well, logistics plays a big part. You need an mp3 player and, software to aggregate the casts. But more importantly you need time. Time to listen. No one actively turns on a radio to listens to news. Its a passive form of news consumption. You listen to it while doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

This question came up recently during a Knight multimedia workshop we were teaching at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Someone described podcasts as “radio without listeners” and my heart sank. How could this precious piece of daily enlightenment simply not exist in the lives of so many people. I suspect once cars become further integrated with iPod, this form of news consumption will become more and more widely used.

If you still don’t believe me, I challenge you to listen to the following cast and not be fully intrigued. It’s a piece from NPR’s Driveway Moments about a man trying to come to terms with a lobotomy he had when he was 12. I know, the topic sounds a bit weird, but this bit of audio is one of the most incredible pieces I’ve heard. The quick cross edits, the haunting voices, everything about it is so riveting I forget I’m listening to a news story. It’s 20 minutes long. You might not have the patience to listen to the whole thing sitting here on this blog (the reason why radio doesn’t work online), so remember you can always download the podcast.

Howard Dully\’s My Lobotomy piece from NPR\’s Driveway Moment

Apparently a new feature from diet.com is making the rounds and becoming quite popular. The latest is that you can text message the name of a popular restaurant followed by a menu item to “D-I-E-T-1″ or 34381, and it will return all of the nutritional facts of that item. News of this feature has gone viral and has already appeared on several news reports, numerous talk shows and radio stations. I first heard about it on the radio, and now I’m seeing it on digg and other Web sites.

I have to admit, the service works pretty well. It’s free except for the cost of the text message your carrier charges (most carriers give an allowance of text messages). In a test I text messaged “carl’s jr. six dollar” and got back information that their Six Dollar Guacamole Bacon Burger was 1117 calories. That’s not counting the fries or the large soda. Pretty soon I was texting the name of everything I’ve eaten in the last couple of weeks. (I didn’t have the six dollar burger in case you were wondering)

This type of feature isn’t anything new. Lots of organizations are using texting services to get or return information, including Google’s new 411 service. Just text your search query to “G-O-O-G-L-E” or 466453, and it’ll return local info. (Ex. “sushi 94720″ will return sushi restaurants near UC Berkeley).

Local KITS Live 105.3 San Francisco uses text messaging to get responses from listeners to polls or song requests. The DJ will ask a question like “Text in your favorite place to vacation” and within seconds the messages come pouring in. It’s crowd-sourcing at it’s most immediate form.

It seems the only people who aren’t using a text messaging service are news Web sites. At least, I haven’t seen any. A few will provide “SMS alerts” but even then, I’m not sure I want give the power to a company to send me text messages all day about a range of topics I can’t control, dwindling down my monthly 250 text message allowance. I’d rather have the query-answer method any day.

Why is it that the San Francisco Chronicle or the New York Times can’t be the one to provide me with directions to restaurants or the latest movies playing via my cell phone? Google wins again.