Sidepodcast

You may have already heard about this from Episode 49, or you may have found your way there by yourself, but today I’m here to promote the Facebook group.

A while back, I had an email from Paul Gibson who suggested: “Why don’t you set up a Facebook group.”

Ten minutes later, I mailed him back: “Done. Enjoy.”

This is what we’re like here at Sidepodcast Towers. Tell us what you want to see, or something you think we should be trying and we will do it. I’m not talking bungy jumping or anything like that, though, so don’t get any ideas.

Anyway, the group.

I didn’t really know what the point of a Facebook group was before, but every day I’m starting to see how fun it can be and what cool things we can do:

• Share photos
• Upload videos
• Submit links
• Discuss stuff
• Post on the wall

Continue reading…

Back in November, we pointed out that although Honda Racing have a dedicated YouTube channel, it usually lags woefully behind their own Honda Racing TV efforts. This week is no exception, as YouTube is still devoid of any RA108 launch goodness despite clips being available since midday yesterday.

Don’t get me wrong, as nice as their own website may be, and as keen as they are to have people watch videos on there, the viewing experience isn’t as good as it could be. For example, while the playback quality should be commended, it’s impossible to rewind / scrub forward, there’s no fullscreen option, and we have no way of linking directly to an individual show from here. Oh, and don’t even think about sharing the video with anyone else either.

If Bernie ever gets around to putting F1 races online, I swear he’ll base his business model around Honda’s video player.

Regardless, yesterday’s launch videos happen to be worth a cursory glance, so instead we’ll rely on the handywork of PunkStar5150, who has managed to find the “upload” button and get them onto YouTube.

Continue reading…

‘Tis the season for new podcast clients, it would seem. Earlier this week the Participatory Culture Foundation released version 1.0 of their free open-source desktop video application, more commonly referred to as Miro.

Miro has been designed with the primary goal of letting users control how they watch Internet television. Unsurprisingly this means the primary focus is video, although it will happily play audio should you want it to.

Unlike the Zune Marketplace we looked at yesterday, Miro isn’t a replacement for iTunes. For one thing, it doesn’t sync to any of your portable devices. What it is designed to do however, is offer the best all-in-one solution for watching Internet TV.

Alongside the facility to manage your video podcast subscriptions, is the ability to search multiple sources of online content (including the likes of YouTube, Dailymotion and many others). This means, not only can you find all of this years Sidepodcast TV shows easily, but you’ll also be able to keep up with the latest episodes from the likes of Honda Racing TV.

We’ve been using this application throughout its gestation period (which feels like forever). It used to be slow and clunky, but the 1.0 release has brought with it speed and stability. It looks clean and runs on almost any platform you can think of.

Internet video is big news these days, especially in the world of Formula 1. If you’re looking for a way to manage it all, you could do a lot worse than checking out Miro.

F1 teams are finally getting a grip on the video sharing revolution, and to prove the point, Honda F1 Racing have just published an interview with their new team principal, Ross Brawn, up on YouTube.

If I was being picky, I’d point out that this video appeared on the Honda Racing TV site, two days ago. What took so long to get it onto YouTube?

Nevertheless, it’s a good interview, and a great sign of things to come.

Earlier this week a brand new podcast client arrived on the scene. Created by Microsoft in response to Apple’s iTunes software, the Zune Marketplace means that owners of Zune devices now have an easy way to manage their favourite podcasts.

By all accounts this latest generation of software is a major step forward from the aborted first release. This time around users not only get a podcast solution, but the devices now support m4a and m4v file formats (essentially the two formats we use at Sidepodcast).

The first thing to note is that just like the original device, the Zune is limited to retail outlets within North America. I’ve no idea if there’s a plan to expand the sales reach any time soon, so for the moment we are zune-less. Luckily there’s no such restrictions on the software, so it was duly downloaded.

According to Microsoft, the initial directory listing would contain just 1,000 podcasts. So I was initially surprised to find both our audio and video shows listed. F1 Minute was missing, but looking at the details it would appear that the list was created some time before the show existed. All is not lost though, it’s easy to add missing podcasts, which we did.

The next thing we tried to do was subscribe to something from the directory, and this is where the system fell to pieces. For reasons unspecified, users must have a Zune account to subscribe to anything in the directory and nobody outside of the United States is eligible for one. Which leaves us a bit stuck.

Presumably the theory behind this is, users would have no use for the software without the device, but as a stand alone client it seems like a pretty decent piece of software. Shame.

However, not to be beaten, it is still possible to add your own feeds manually. A simple process but one that is ultimately an unnecessary distraction.

All said, if you live within the US, and fancy an alternate podcasting eco-system, this one’s worth checking out.

I would like to take up a moment of your time if I may. Betwixt you catching up with F1 news and having a life. It’s only for a bit of shameless promotion, but I wanted to give a shout out for the huge amount of hard work Christine has been putting into our podcast transcripts recently.

If you’re new here, or if you’ve been around awhile but haven’t been paying attention, you might be interested to learn that Sidepodcast produces text transcripts for every single podcast we produce. That includes the weekly show, the videos, and each and every episode of F1 Minute.

You’ve almost certainly seen the transcripts for F1 Minute audio, because the words spoken form the body of each post. But tucked away at the bottom of every other video / audio page, is a link to a PDF file containing all that’s been said.

We also list the transcripts next to each episode on the archives page, in both HTML and PDF format, and provide a dedicated transcript feed, should you not want to miss a single word.

Creating these texts is a laborious task, and Christine has spent more than her fair share of hours listening to her own voice. It’s all worth it though, here are just a few examples of what makes these things so fabulous:

• You can find specific topics mentioned, using the search box on this site. Transcripts can be searched like any other post.
• If you’re hard of hearing (or can’t fathom our accents), then you can follow along with each episode.
• You can link to specific content within an episode, making sharing much more straightforward.
• Text can easily be translated into other languages.

As far as I know, we’re the only Formula 1 podcast to provide transcriptions (if there are others please let us know), and if you’ve not had a peek already, feel free to look around. If, for no other reason, than to marvel at the sheer dedication involved in creating them all.

12th century monks have nothing on Ms. Blachford.