Some interesting stats here:

• Awareness of podcasting grew from 37% of Americans to 43%
• Podcast listeners are extensive social network users.
• One in four Americans indicated that they have ever downloaded and watched/listened to an audio or video podcast
• The number one reason given for podcast consumption was time-shifting–the ability to consume content whenever the consumer desires.
• Podcast consumers continue to be attractive advertising targets; yet are increasingly unreachable through traditional, interrupt advertising
• Podcast listeners are a highly educated and affluent
• Podcast consumers spend more than 7hrs per week on line.
• 18-44 male listeners tends to be the major consumer demographic
• Power watching is an interesting term

The suggest that 27M Americans have listened to a podcast because they want to listen or watch content when ever they want to. They (Americans) lke the time shifting convenience.

With recent sales calls that we at Knowledge Hemispheres have made in the UK, we notice that there is still limited awareness of what a podcast is! However, this may change as the purchase of MP3 players continues to rise. It is also worth considering how much is downloaded Vs how much is watched/listened to ondemand.

It would also be interesting to see what type of podcasts are popular.

Let us see what the shifts will be in 2010?

Although the session had an agenda, it suffered from the following issues:

1. Long sessions for each subject  – I could see the expressions on peoples faces, gasping for a water!
2. No time-outs
3. Simplistic use of note taking, for example: A list of issues parked on route on one flipchart rather than using consolidating techniques such as 6 hat or Yellow Post it. NB Over 26 attendees sat in a u-shape room layout and the room was very stuffy after the first hour.
4. Very quick introductions
5. Limited context outlined for the event
6. Other attendees who appeared as interested parties rather than main contributors
7. Loose agenda
8. Strategic importance not communicated
9. A dominance of resolution passing by a large number of supplier attendees
10. Low interaction between the attendees

The two latter items were of most concern. For example, at one point a resolution was agreed regarding the provision of data entities for the deaf. It emerged at the end of the workshop day that the attending representative of the deaf medical team felt shy about contributing. Maybe it was the facilitators responsibility or the structure of the day that contributed to this failing. Or, was it because sometimes people can feel it easier to communicate discretely!? Consider how vocal some people are by email and when you meet them in-person, they are as sweet as pie! It is almost as if they have a different personality or feel more liberated to speak their mind with the protection of the machine in sight, especially if you set-up a masked identification.

Using Twitter  could be one way of bringing greater contributions from the range of personalities in attendance at a typical project or discussion workshop, training session, classroom or website / development / test feedback session / webinar / discussion panel / public meeting.

A practical example can be reviewed here.

Twitter can support

Remote monitoring in the classroom or project workshop session – project #tags via a white board in the classroom
Remote monitoring for distance learners / Attendees – (see below for a list of on line tools)
Opening up discussion to students who would be reluctant to participate.
Collated writing notes can be posted later

The following on line resources can prove invaluable for getting people to engage either in public or via a protected name.

What the Trend?: Learn about what tags are currently trendy – suitable for research

Twubs: Aggregates tweets and imports pictures to help illuminate the topics being discussed.

Hashtags.org: Great at showing you its use over time and recent tweets.

Tagalus: A dictionary for hashtags.

At yesterday’s ‘Future of Online media conference‘, Spotify’s Daniel Ek, CEO suggested that,

The key for us is getting music in to people’s existing billing habits

It is interesting how it all relates to numbers at the end of the day.
For example, Trillions of listeners with a low % conversion rate to paid subscribers will work.
In addition, establishing an easy to access ‘subscribe now’ function can also help.

The stats for Spotify are show a rapid climb, proving that people do want access to such content and its associated delivery flexibility:

Spotify User Growth

NB It doesn’t stop at just being a paid subscriber as consumers can be influenced to buy an artists/bands merchandise, concert tickets or track/album downloads.

If you have a personal website and Google Analytics installed or access to stats from your ISP, you can review the average time that a user spends on your site. Spotify users stayed logged on for an average of 72 minutes per day. With out looking at the detail it is difficult to tell if these is all in one sitting!?

The video provides a fascinating insight into what could follow – i.e: Going for mass appeal with a number of models rather than just backing one.

Another dimension to throw into the mix is the potential of technology convergence. For example, more TV’s are arriving with Internet links built-in. This offers more channels to expose and tempt potential consumers to choose from a variety of models presented, even easier if packaged as part of a TV subscription. For example, Sky offer TV, Broadband and Telephone packages. Why not add a service like Spotify for a few Dollars/Pounds more!

However, is there not a danger that without proper policing/moderation it could be vehicle for spammers delight?!

For corporate testing of view-point / gaining instant feedback it will be extremely useful.

It is clearly early days as Facebook have recently announced a concept called an ‘inlay’, i.e: As a user you can view links shared in the Facebook newspage in the context of your friends.

The power offered by Sidewiki is that now potentially every webpage has become social.
To avoid chaos I suggest the need to develop procedures, moderation/monitoring panels, roles with escalation policies and published Net-etiquette.

Facebook has recently introduced an app that allows you simultaneously update both your facebook and twitter, in order to save a lot of time and keep both social friends from either network updated on your everyday activities, leaving no one in the loop.

The tool is known as  SocialToo Status which allows the updating of your personal wall or status with one update through Facebook.

The only downside to this tool is that in order to take full advantage of the dual status updater you will need a SocialToo account, to connect both your Twitter and Facebook feeds. The process from here is fairly simple as once you are signed in your practically ready to tell both worlds what you are up to!

According to SocialToo Status :

When your status is published via SocialToo Status your updates appear in your personal stream, along with a link to each destination we also sent the status update to.  This helps promote your other Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts.

Here’s how to get Started:

1. Go to http://socialtoo.com and click on the “Facebook App” link in the upper-right corner – you’ll want to hit “allow” on the prompts when it asks you so we can properly publish status updates to your stream.
2. Once the app is added to your account, you’ll notice on both your home page and/or profile page  a new green SocialToo Status quote icon in the “attachments” section.  You’ll probably have to hit the down “more” arrow to get to it. The more you use it, the more likely it will appear outside that drop down in the future!
3. Click on the green quote icon, and a new SocialToo Status-branded Publisher will appear.  Congrats – you’re all set up!

So no need to be switching back and forth through your social sites to update your status or even worrying that any are being neglected!

We’ve been busy putting the final touches to the site, it has been put off on a few occasions, just to ensure it is more consumer friendly and has a much greater accessibility.

The website has been redesigned to make it easier to use and understand the services that we offer, how you can use these services to advance your business or organization and how we can help you in doing this.

The new site our team have been working on now includes our four main areas of expertise which our business engages in, Audio, Video, e-Learning and Web Development and Training. Under each main heading we further branch off into sub-sections, giving a detailed outline of the different types of features that each main topic will contain (ie Audio – Audio Podcast), and how we can help you in developing each area for your organization according to your specification.

We’d love to hear what you think about the new site – so any and all comments are welcome.
To subscribe and listen, head for i-tunes or listen now by clicking on the play button below:

The wonderful featured music is courtesy of the amazing Travis Vega

Ever wondered what email would look like if it was invented today?

What new tweaks and tools would email have if it were invented now or re-invented?

Well Google gives you that glimpse into email re-invented. From the creators of Google map, Lars and Jens Rasmussen, comes the highly anticipated Google Wave.

Starting with a simple question, what would email look like if it was invented today? Lars and Jens re-imagined email and instant messaging by merging both in a connected world. Thinking of email not as game of sending a message from one place to another then waiting, but as a live conversation in the ‘clouds’, effectively a wave of messages and communicating tools.

Starting with a set of tough questions:

•    Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication-email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?

•    Could a single communication model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum and how simple could we make it?

The answers simple: with the re-invented communication there is no need for divide, there will be a merge of the two worlds of instant messaging and electronic mail. Allowing the user to send both messages in real-time threaded and delayed messages, where with the addition of edition tools makes the process very interesting. The single communication model is known as a ‘Wave’. With cool extensions added for easier interface, the wave lets you posts items such as blogs, youtube links and there is even a tweet feed where you are able to tweet into and out of a wave!

Though still not fully developed this technology is promised to not only use an instant messenger technique but also combine a social network feel to communicating by email.

Google’s relentless focus is on bringing the online experience closer and closer to our real world experience of face-to-face communication.

For more information on Google Wave – Email Re-invention  Click Here

Often used in automated voice messaging in telephone banking, the technique “Voice over” has become very popular. As technology evolves new methods of using media are discovered to appeal to the public’s attention, one of which is using the technology of voice over. This is usually done where actors with professional sounding voices are hired by companies to ‘lend their voices’ to various projects.

But is voice over the right technology to use when advertising?

From radio and television commercials, through to corporate and multimedia applications. It has proven to be an effective marketing tool that attracts customers to many different business, by improving the quality of advertisements on a website page, transmission messages through radio and or television frequencies. Even some of the most popular such as movie trailers, where ‘The Voice’ is used to add dramatic effect to picture.

However there are several reasons to really consider using voice-over instead of the traditional marketing techniques, banners and videos. One of which is the most obvious and the most important, is that voice-over is an audio transmission, it has the disadvantage that the only interaction is through a single voice connection. There is often no visual appeal, putting more emphasis on the scripting and the quality of the voice.

Through there are some limiting factors there are however positive sides to doing ‘voice-over’ advertising techniques. By using Voice-over it can be done not only by radio transmission but can also be paired along with text located on a webpage, which caters also for those who are visually challenged. Just like video adverts special effects can be added accordingly but sparingly.

Though not as popular as visual media using voice over can be quite an effective tool, and may prove to be just as effective or even more than other advertising methods.

Click Play for a quick sample of our ‘Voice-over’ Podcast:

For more information on how voice over can help market your business visit our site here www.kh-2.com

Download your missed conference using Video  Share.

Attending meetings within an organization is very crucial, no matter the magnitude of the meeting or the organization. Video share is an easy quick and hassle free method of attending meetings on your own time. Video share makes it easy to relay a message through various media mediums, with the members of an organization at a convenient time, all of whom share the same or common technology.

How this works?

The meeting or presentation is pre-recorded, including video audio and presentation slides/graphs, where it is then packaged and uploaded on the company’s website in a format that makes it downloadable to devices such as an I-pod or phone. It is also customised so that the audio, video and the power point presentation can be downloaded together as well as individually. So the package its much more than just a “talking head” on the screen.

With access like this there is no chance of missing another meeting. This is useful for people constantly on the go, for employees that are on vacation and would like to keep abreast with the changes or updates within an organization, or even the employees who work regularly from home.

This system can save the company and it’s employees a lot of money, where meetings no longer need to be rescheduled, adding unnecessary expenses to the company and you start saving substantial money due to reduced travel.

There are so many different this that can be accomplished with this combination of technology, where it can be used for other means and not just in the co-corporate world.

Knowledge hemispheres offers this as a service, where we record, package and upload the conference for you and we make available the option of downloadable audio as mp3 file format, video and power point presentations if needed.

To get more details of how Conference share can work for you visit our site at www.kh-2.com

To subscribe and listen, head for i-tunes or listen now by clicking on the play button below:

The wonderful sound is courtesy of the amazing Travis Vega