The Long Island Mega Blog

Bruce C from Long Island Podcast Network led the session at Podcamp NYC called The Magic of the RSS Feed and Leveraging It To Increase Traffic and Subscribers To Your Podcast Or Blog. The event took place int he New Yorker Hotel on 34th and 8th in NY City at 1:00 PM on Saturday, April 7th 2007. Bruce’s event was in the Central Park conference room.

The room held 80 chairs, but Bruce’s session was populated by over 110 podcasters with a large group of people standing in the back.

“The event was a success”, quoted Mark Tafoya of the Culinary Podcast Network, “I will take your advice and use your RSS feed theories to increase my traffic.”

The Culinary Podcast Network also joined Bruce’s new web site “Podcaster Who’sWho” at www.PodcasterWhosWho.com.

Bruce will be speaking at other Podcamp events including Podcamp Philly and Podcamp Toronto.

So Apple has sent Cease & Desist letters to Podcast Ready and forced GoDaddy.com to shut down their site. As of this writing, the site is still up so I am not sure what is going on but that is the buzz in the blogger community. The reason Apple has tried to shut down this site is that they claim that products such as this derive their name from the iPod brand and causes confusion. At first it seemed like nonsense on the part of Apple to me. On closer inspection, I see the corporate mind in play. The Podcast Ready site is very similar to the Music Store on iTunes. It offers a way to subscribe to podcasts. The difference is that this site allows you to port those ‘casts to non-iTunes aggregators.

I am an Apple fan but never was I a staunch defender of everything they do. I personally, think that Apple has no business claiming trademark of Podcast. In fact, I think it’s stupid of them to try. Podcast (the term) is free advertising for them. Just like Google as a verb is free advertising for Goggle the website. When your brand becomes an accepted verb in the English language, you rejoice, you do not send out the legal goons.

I think Apple is smart enough to know this. What I think Apple is doing is protecting the software it has in iTunes and Music Store from websites who skirt the line of copyright infringement. Podcast Ready is a terrific site from what I see. But it is not a “podcast.” It is a business site that offers a service. (Admittedly, I do not know how it makes money if it ever does, but it is clearly not a site to promote a creative podcast of its own like mine or the Dragonpage or TWIT.) Apple is not shutting down “Podcast” the word with this action; it is shutting down what clearly is a product that is riding the coattails of the “Podcast” and “iPod” brands.

Even more, “MyPodder” is a clear analogy to “iPod.” The words are too close for any corporation to allow. Had it been called “My Podcast Aggregator” perhaps Apple would not mind so much. Perhaps not, I do not know.

What people have to understand is that a brand is a very precious thing to a company. By talking a known and famous brand that has entered the culture (like iPod, or Coca-Cola, or even Kleenex or Band-Aid!) and then making ancillary products and services that are clearly connected in some way to the business that owns that brand, you are deliberately causing brand confusion. I am not saying you are deliberately causing harm or intentionally trying to “copy-cat” but everyone knows that iPod (or even Pod as it applies to portable media) is Apple’s thing.

Apple fears that they will loose control of their popular brand. An aggregator site that is very close to the iTunes Music Store look and feel and that uses “pod” in its name is just asking for trouble from Apple. You must realize the money and resources that a company spends promoting and protecting their products.

I do not care how many people say that the POD in podcasting stands for Portable On Demand or anything like that. It is both Portable On Demand AND iPod! If we do not want the stigma of iPod then this group of creative individuals can come up with something else. Leo Laporte suggested “Netcast.” I remember before podcasting that web based broadcasts (like the infamous Victoria’s Secret broadcast of their fashion show) was called a “Webcast.” Those two terms are fine if not a little more sterile than “podcast” and not nearly as sexy. We can also call ourselves “eCasters” or “nCasters” (for Narrow or Net) or whatever we want.

Just like I can’t come out with a soda can “Cozy” and call them “Coca-Cozy” or a Kleenex storage device for my car and call it a “Kleenex Kart,” I can’t go an making a service that provides a way to gather portable music or radio programs and call it a “Podable Media Player.” Apple, Coca Cola and Kleenex companies (or the companies that own those brands) will be all over me. It implies that the product I am promoting is somehow attached to the company that sells the original, well-known brand.

All that being said, I thing the Podcast community (myself included) must draw the line in the sand. We can’t allow Apple to take “Podcasting,” the term or the art of podcasting, away from us. However, at the same time, we have to respect their position. Paramount and Lucasfilm allow fan films to exist, utilizing their clearly owned characters and storylines, as long as those fan film producers do not overstep the line and start making it look like Paramount and Lucasfilm have made or are making movie on that particular film.

The technology and the proliferation of both Apple’s iPod brand has helped us immensely. It has help create that buzz in the media that we needed to be heard. Without “iPod” would “podcasting” have grown so large?

L.S.C.

It’s about time that Long Island is finally starting to have decent prices for homes. It’s ridiculous. Ask any middle class Long Island resident if they can purchase their home now and most of them will tell you that they cannot. That is my one of my only two complaints about living in Long Island…the other is the bad drivers causing horrible traffic conditions, but we will talk about that another time.

Long Island is just ridiculous when it comes to buying homes. I am glad to see some real estate agencies spending more money in marketing expenses because they simply are making less money selling homes. I am happy about that. If a real estate agent wants to make money, let them spend money and they have done nothing to keep the prices of homes down all of these years.

I am not sure who to blame about the high prices for Long Island’s real estate. Do you blame the idiots buying homes at the high prices? Or do you blame government officials for not regulating the prices like they should to make it more affordable for everyone. OR, do you blame the real estate agents for not trying to lower prices in order to increase their sales? Either way, Long Island is just fool of idiots who don’t have the guts to fight for lower prices. We need to band together lower housing prices so everyone can afford them.
Yes, it is down 14%, but the prices still suck compared to other areas nearby. Long Island is not a great area to move to because of these high prices. Now, other people are seeking homes in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida all because of the high prices here. That should say something to local officials and real estate agents who’s sales are going down to do something about the prices of homes.