Podcast.com News

The George Lucas Educational Foundation has started a new educational and podcast project called Edutopia, an attempt to raise the standards of education in the 21st century through the use of leading-edge interactive tools and resources.  The project features a large podcast presence with eight unique podcast feeds on subjects including integrating new technologies, assessing student progress, developing learning techniques through unique projects such as gardening and recreating communities from faraway countries, and much more.  Check out the Edutopia channel on Podcast.com to learn where this acclaimed Hollywood producer wants to lead the educational field in the years to come.

The most prominent bike race in the world, now in its 95th year, is getting some podcast love. Go to cycling.podcast.com and find special tour-specific podcasts such as the Daily Tour (brought to you by the excellent year-round cycling podcast the Fredcast) as well as coverage from BikeRadar.com. The tour’s 28 stages stretch out until July 27th, which gives you plenty of time to get in the action.

The BBC is socializing their social media with Pods and Blogs. The weekly audio podcast reflects the opinions of the online community, offering up the weekly world news filtered through the mouths of bloggers, podcasters, and citizen journalists.  Get your news the new-fashioned (podcast) way with a dose of the Pods and Blogs.

Not all sports fans in the USA follow college/university sports (or podcasts about them), but come March each year it’s hard for them to not get excited about “March Madness”, a single-game elimination tournament of sixty-four college basketball teams.  In a few weeks one of those teams will hold the championship trophy, and many people who don’t even follow college basketball (or any sports!) will try to figure out who that winner is via ‘pools’ with their friends and coworkers.  If someone asks you join their March Madness pool, make sure you’re not guessing who to pick — get informed by listening to the ESPNU College Basketball podcast.

Podcasting: it’s for cops AND robbers! (OK, an inmate, not a robber — nothing wrong with being a little dramatic, eh?)  In our fictional journal called “You Won’t Believe Who’s Podcasting Now!”, we have another entry: it’s from the Dagupan City Jail in the Philippines, where a technically inclined inmate has started a blog and now a podcast about what he and his fellow inmates are doing to better themselves and their community.  The blog and podcast cover topics such as “rehabilitation of their facilities like the visitor’s waiting shed, cooperative store, guard house, basketball court, revival of their saloon, repair of their infirmary …” and other tidbits about how these inmates bide their time. Some of the podcast is in computer-generated English, but some is in Filipino — so you’ll just have to guess what it’s about (unless you have Filipino skills).  Regardless, kudos to inmate Bill who made this podcast happen for using his jailtime wisely (with podcasting)!

The CBC, Canada’s official public broadcaster, puts out high quality audio programming about and for its home country much like the BBC and NPR do for the UK and U.S., respectively.  For pure listener satisfaction, the CBC takes it one step further by accepting requests from its listener line for the Listener’s Choice podcast.  The idea is simple: each podcast starts out with listener requesting to hear a particular CBC story, and the host comes on and plays that story.  Giving the people what they want, when they want it … sounds a lot like podcasting in general, doesn’t it?  Subscribe here.

The first presidential primary in the United States is today, and what better time to announce a new video podcast by veteran videoblogger Steve Garfield and friend Phil Johnson (who would be writing for Letterman if he wasn’t on strike) called Cup O’ Politics, which puts the spotlight on the funny in the big political game.  Make your vote count and cure the ‘too many candidates blues’ by watching this podcast.

It will be a happy new year in New York, again, when the lighted ball will come down from a 70-foot flagpole atop the tower in Times Square for the 100th year in a row. In commemoration the New York Times Only in New York podcast made an episode entitled ‘New York’s new New Year’ (the 12/27/2007 episode). Check it and have a ball!

We’ve seen many an award-winning media company produce regular podcasts that blow us away, but it’s not often we hear an award-winning talent put out a weekly podcast all by herself/himself. That’s what science fiction author Spider Robinson is doing in his weekly audio podcast called Spider on the Web, where Robinson tackles everything from “space exploration to technology, books, music, and anything else this writer’s fertile mind settles upon.” Robinson is already a juggernaut in the science fiction field with 3 Hugos, a Nebula, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and many other writing awards. Looks like he can add “pro podcaster” to his resume.

To select a wine from a particular country you aren’t familiar with and have no recommendation for, you have no choice but to find the nearest wine retailer, read the labels of bottle after bottle and eventually make a choice based on (what you hope is) an educated guess. That was before podcasting. Now, before you even make the trip, you can experience the sound of a glass pouring, the look of the wine swirling in a glass, and learn all about the history and production of that wine AND an entire country’s wine through podcasts — direct from the people who know. Head over to our wine, beer, and spirits collection to find podcasts from the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation, who produce an audio and a video podcast that details regional and varietal wines from Australia, hosted by Australian wine writer Max Allen and ‘regional hero’ Ben Glaetzer, respectively. The podcasts are a hit, as 15% of wineaustralia.com’s visitors downloading the podcasts, or 10,000 downloads, since their launch in April 2007. Now those outside Australia can worry less about a plane ticket to Oz and a series of wine tours and more about which Australian wine they’re going to buy next from their local shop.