Sunday, November 28, 2010

Technology and history

From a web server, a video podcast can be distributed as a file or as a stream. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Downloading complete video podcasts in advance gives the user the ability to play the video podcasts offline on, for example, a portable media player. A downloaded version can be watched many times with only one download, reducing bandwidth costs in this case. Streaming allows seeking (skipping portions of the file) without downloading the full video podcast, better statistics and lower bandwidth costs for the servers; however, users may have to face pauses in playback caused by slow transfer speeds.
A podcast client may work with a separate, or integrated player. One such example of the latter is iTunes, which is an unusual case of a web feed aggregator being added to a media player rather than vice versa.

source:Wikepedia

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Video podcast

Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures. The term is used to distinguish between podcasts which most commonly contain audio files and those referring to the distribution of video where the RSS feed is used as a non-linear TV channel to which consumers can subscribe using a PC, TV, set-top box, media center or mobile multimedia device. Web television series are often distributed as video podcasts.
However, the term podcast has from its inception described the distribution of digital media files, including video and audio via RSS enclosures and hence the terms video podcast, vodcast, and less commonly vidcast, are redundant.

source:Wikepedia

Friday, November 26, 2010

Screencast

A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. Although the term screencast dates from 2004, products such as Lotus ScreenCam were used as early as 1994. Early products produced large files and had limited editing features. More recent products support more compact file formats such as Adobe Flash and have more sophisticated editing features, allowing relatively easy changes in sequence, mouse movement, audio, etc.
A screenshot is a picture of a computer screen; a screencast is essentially a movie of the changes over time that a user sees on a computer screen, enhanced with audio narration.

sourc:Wikepedia

Thursday, November 25, 2010

More on podcasting

Health
· Health, fitness and wellness resources, both general and specific.
Special interests
· Farm Podcasting makes information available about farming. The term was coined to identify a program that is produced exclusively as a podcast on the subject of agriculture. There are now multiple companies who specialize in farm podcasting and are producing regular programming targeted to farmers and the general public on the subject of agriculture.
Non-traditional and alternative content
· A way for people and organizations to avoid regulatory bodies, such as the British Ofcom, or American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that would not allow a program to be broadcast in traditional media.

source:Wikepedia

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Publicity and marketing

As a promotional vehicle for an upcoming event, such as Pixar's Cars Video Podcast, which advertised the release of Disney/Pixar's Cars animated feature film with a series of behind-the-scenes clips.

source:Wikepedia

Monday, November 15, 2010

Politics

Politics: In the U.S., both major political parties have various podcasts, as do numerous politicians.

source:Wikepedia

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Music

Replacement for live music audio streams. Whereas streaming a performance live over the Internet requires careful coordination of person and machine, podcasting offers the ability to do slight time-shifting of performances and greatly reduces the complexity of the effort. The quality of the program is often higher as post-production adjustments can be made prior to release. For example, programs can provide a live stream of their program, but most listeners don't hear it until weeks later on NPR. Podcasted versions of the programs split the difference, usually coming out a few days after the live program, but well before the traditional broadcast.

source:Wikepedia

Saturday, November 13, 2010

News

Newspapers. Newspapers use podcasts to broadcast audio content from print interviews and drive traffic to their websites. The San Francisco Chronicle is believed to be the first major daily newspaper to start podcasting using an external website,in Feb 2005. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post was the first to use its own website and the first in Asia, having launched on April 19, 2005
Communication from space. On 7 August 2005. American astronaut Steve Robinson claimed the first podcast from space during the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-114 - although there was no subscription feed, merely an audio file that required manual downloading.
Conference and meeting alerts. Podcasts can be packaged to alert attendees to agendas, hosted roundtables and daily feedback.

source:Wikepedia

Friday, November 12, 2010

Entertainment

* Comedy. Comedians such as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry have created some of the most popular podgrams.
* Television commentary. Battlestar Galactica writer and executive producer Ronald D. Moore creates commentary podcasts for each new episode of Battlestar Galactica. Other television shows such as Doctor Who have since followed suit.
* Radio series. Some radio programs such as The Now Show and The News Quiz allow entire episodes to be downloaded as podcasts.
* As a platform for fan DVD-style commentary tracks (Audio commentary). Enables fans to add their own comments and thoughts to any of their favorite films.
* Sports. In 2005, unofficial podcasts for major sports teams launched, providing fans both in and outside of the teams' direct broadcast areas with on-demand commentary. The Cubscast founders also formed the first city-specific sports podcast network, hosting one podcast for each major Chicago team.
* Pornography. Porncasting and podnography are sometimes used to refer to pornography in podcasts.
* Reintroducing Classical Childrens Literature. Podcasts such as Albert Lea Public Library's Classics On-the-Go program bring classical (non-copyrighted) childrens literature back to life for everyone to share.
* Fiction. Podcasts like Escape Pod are used to distribute short stories in audio book format. Other podcasts distribute stories in the format of radio drama.

source:Wikepedia

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Education and academia

Podcasts enable students and teachers to share information with anyone anytime. If a student is absent, he or she can download the podcast of the recorded lesson. Teachers may also create podcasts to be used as a preparation tool for students. This would be pedagogically equivalent to having students read a text before a lesson. It can be a tool for teachers or administrators to communicate curriculum, assignments and other information with parents and the community. Teachers can record book talks, vocabulary or foreign language lessons, international pen pal letters (podcast pals!), music performance, interviews, debates. Podcasting can be a publishing tool for student oral presentations. Video podcasts can be used in all these ways as well.
Mobile Learning: Podcasting can be categorised as an m-learning strategy for teaching and learning. In 2004 Musselburgh Grammar School pioneered podcast lessons with foreign language audio revision and homework. In the second half of 2005, a Communication Studies course at the University of Western Australia used student-created podcasts as the main assessment item have proven beneficial in early elementary education as well. In 2005 Students in the Write was created for second grade students at Morse Elementary School in Tarrytown, NY. By providing students with an authentic audience, teachers noticed significantly increased motivation to write. Students were also found to improve fluency and listening skills. On the 21st February 2006 Lance Anderson, Dr. Chris Smith (the Naked Scientist), Nigel Paice and Debbie McGowan took part in the first podcast forum at Cambridge University. The event was hosted by the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies.
Mobile Knowledge Transfer: Podcasting is also used as a further channel in Corporations to disseminate information and knowledge faster and easier. It can be seen as a further development of Rapid E-Learning as the content can be created fast end without much effort. Learners can learn in idle times which saves time and money for them and the organizations. If audiopodcasts are used they can be used during other activities like driving a car, or traveling by train/bus. A target group often targeted is the salesforce, as they are highly mobile. There Podcasting can be used for sales enablement (see case study) with the goal of having the sales employee aware and knowledgeable on the companies products, processes, initiatives etc. An often used format is expert interviews with statements of experienced role models to bring across also informal/tacit knowledge.
Journalism Education: School podcasts can be created to expose students to journalism and new-media concepts. Regularly released "news" podcasts can be released by a school group.
Academic Journal Digests: The Society of Critical Care Medicine has a podcast used to update clinicians with summaries of important articles, as well as interviews.
Supply Chain Management Education: In October, 2007 Dr Stephan Brady presented his paper on "Podcasting in Supply Chain Education" at the CSCMP Educators Conference. In this paper he outlined how podcasting can be used in and outside of the classroom for enhancing supply chain courses through blended, or hybrid learning.
Professional Development: Professional development podcasts exist for educators. Some podcasts may be general in nature or may be slightly more specific and focus on the use of interactive white boards in the classroom.
Religion: Godcasting has been used by many religious groups. Many churches produce podcasts of talks and sermons. Disciples with Microphones provides podcasts relating to the Catholic Church.
Tutorials: A tutorial on almost any subject can be created as either an audio podcast or video vodcast. Through screencasting, many video podcasts demonstrate how to use software and operating systems.

source:Wikepedia

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Uses of podcasting

Public services
Unofficial audio tours of museums.
Official cultural or historic audio tours of cities
A way for news organizations to distribute audio or video as an addition to their existing text (or mostly text) news products. For example, Wikinews began to podcast its News Briefs in 2005. Companies are also using podcasts as a way to distribute their multimedia news to journalists and consumers through companies like MultiVu. In 2006, the online magazine Slate began textcasting articles to their readers, by attaching a written article to a blank audio file and delivering the content to readers through their regular podcasting mechanism.
Advocacy. The 5,500 locked out staff (editors, journalists, technicians, hosts, etc.) of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were podcasting news and other programming during August and September 2005.
Youth media. Podcasting has become a way for youth media organizations, such as Youth Radio, to bring youth perspectives to a wider audience.
Public libraries can podcast local publications free of Copyright, offering spoken word alternatives to the visually impaired. Non-profit organizations podcast readings of short-format magazine articles for visually impaired readers.
Law enforcement. The Chicago Police Department has a free video podcast of its half-hour weekly news magazine called "CrimeWatch," which airs on local TV. It documents community policing (CAPS) success stories.
Educational Institutions use Podcast for self guided Campus Tour.

source:Wikepedia

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Cyberstalking legislation continued...

Australia
In Australia, the Stalking Amendment Act (1999) includes the use of any form of technology to harass a target as forms of "criminal stalking."
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the Malicious Communications Act (1998) classified cyberstalking as a criminal offense.
Spain
In Spain, it is possible to provide information about cyber-crime in an anonymous way to four safety bodies:
Grupo de Delitos Telemáticos of the Civil Guard (Spain)
Brigada de Investigación Tecnológica of the National Police Corps of Spain
Mossos d'Esquadra in Catalonia
Ertzaintza in Euskadi
It is also possible to provide information to an NGO.

source:Wikepedia

Monday, November 8, 2010

Cyberstalking legislation

United States
The current US Federal Anti-Cyber-Stalking law is found at 47 USC sec. 223.

The first U.S. cyberstalking law went into effect in 1999 in California. Other states include prohibition against cyberstalking in their harassment or stalking legislation. In Florida, HB 479 was introduced in 2003 to ban cyberstalking. This was signed into law on October 2003.

Some states in the U.S. have begun to address the issue of cyberstalking:

Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, and New York have included prohibitions against harassing electronic, computer or e-mail communications in their harassment legislation.
Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and California, have incorporated electronically communicated statements as conduct constituting stalking in their anti-stalking laws.
Texas enacted the Stalking by Electronic Communications Act, 2001.
Missouri revised its state harassment statutes to include stalking and harassment by telephone and electronic communications (as well as cyber-bullying) after the Megan Meier suicide case of 2006.
A few states have both stalking and harassment statutes that criminalize threatening and unwanted electronic communications.
Other states have laws other than harassment or anti-stalking statutes that prohibit misuse of computer communications and e-mail, while others have passed laws containing broad language that can be interpreted to include cyberstalking behaviors
Cyberstalking has also been addressed in recent U.S. federal law. For example, the Violence Against Women Act, passed in 2000, made cyberstalking a part of the federal interstate stalking statute. Still, there remains a lack of legislation at the federal level to specifically address cyberstalking, leaving the majority of legislative prohibitions against cyberstalking at the state level.

Most stalking laws require that the perpetrator make a credible threat of violence against the victim; others include threats against the victim's immediate family; and still others require the alleged stalker's course of conduct constitute an implied threat. While some conduct involving annoying or menacing behavior might fall short of illegal stalking, such behavior may be a prelude to stalking and violence and should be treated seriously.

Online identity stealth blurs the line on infringement of the rights of would-be victims to identify their perpetrators. There is a debate on how internet use can be traced without infringing on protected civil liberties.

source:Wikepedia

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Cyberstalker behaviors

Cyberstalkers meet or target their victims by using search engines, online forums, bulletin and discussion boards, chat rooms, and more recently, through online communities such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, and Indymedia, a media outlet known for self-publishing. They may engage in live chat harassment or flaming or they may send electronic viruses and unsolicited e-mails. Victims of cyberstalking may not even know that they are being stalked. Cyberstalkers may research individuals to feed their obsessions and curiosity. Conversely, the acts of cyberstalkers may become more intense, such as repeatedly instant messaging their targets.
More commonly they will post defamatory or derogatory statements about their stalking target on web pages, message boards and in guest books designed to get a reaction or response from their victim, thereby initiating contact. In some cases, they have been known to create fake blogs in the name of the victim containing defamatory or pornographic content.
When prosecuted, many stalkers have unsuccessfully attempted to justify their behavior based on their use of public forums, as opposed to direct contact. Once they get a reaction from the victim, they will typically attempt to track or follow the victim's internet activity. Classic cyberstalking behavior includes the tracing of the victim's IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment.
Some cyberstalking situations do evolve into physical stalking, and a victim may experience abusive and excessive phone calls, vandalism, threatening or obscene mail, trespassing, and physical assault. Moreover, many physical stalkers will use cyberstalking as another method of harassing their victims.
A 2007 study, led by Paige Padgett from the University of Texas Health Science Center, found that there was a false degree of safety assumed by women looking for love online.

source:Wikepedia

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Cyberstalking

Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization. It may include false accusations, monitoring, making threats, identity theft, damage to data or equipment, the solicitation of minors for sex, or gathering information in order to harass. The definition of "harassment" must meet the criterion that a reasonable person, in possession of the same information, would regard it as sufficient to cause another reasonable person distress.
Cyber Angels has written about how to identify cyberstalking:
When identifying cyberstalking "in the field," and particularly when considering whether to report it to any kind of legal authority, the following features or combination of features can be considered to characterize a true stalking situation: malice, premeditation, repetition, distress, obsession, vendetta, no legitimate purpose, personally directed, disregarded warnings to stop, harassment, and threats.
A number of key factors have been identified:
· False accusations. Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and turn other people against them. They post false information about them on websites. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for this purpose. They post allegations about the victim to newsgroups, chat rooms or other sites that allow public contributions, such as Wikipedia or Amazon.com.
· Attempts to gather information about the victim. Cyberstalkers may approach their victim's friends, family and work colleagues to obtain personal information. They may advertise for information on the Internet, or hire a private detective. They often will monitor the victim's online activities and attempt to trace their IP address in an effort to gather more information about their victims.
· Encouraging others to harass the victim. Many cyberstalkers try to involve third parties in the harassment. They may claim the victim has harmed the stalker or his/her family in some way, or may post the victim's name and telephone number in order to encourage others to join the pursuit.
· False victimization. The cyberstalker will claim that the victim is harassing him/her. Bocij writes that this phenomenon has been noted in a number of well-known cases.
· Attacks on data and equipment. They may try to damage the victim's computer by sending viruses.
· Ordering goods and services. They order items or subscribe to magazines in the victim's name. These often involve subscriptions to pornography or ordering sex toys then having them delivered to the victim's workplace.
· Arranging to meet. Young people face a particularly high risk of having cyberstalkers try to set up meetings between them.


source:Wikepedia

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Blogger's Code of Conduct

The Blogger's Code of Conduct is a proposal by Tim O'Reilly for bloggers to enforce civility on their blogs by being civil themselves and moderating comments on their blog. The code was proposed due to threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra. The idea of the code was first reported by BBC News, who quoted O'Reilly saying, "I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of regulation it would come through self-regulation."
O'Reilly and others came up with a list of seven proposed ideas:
1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

source:Wikepedia

Monday, November 1, 2010

Personal safety

One consequence of blogging is the possibility of attacks or threats against the blogger, sometimes without apparent reason. Kathy Sierra, author of the innocuous blog Creating Passionate Users, was the target of such vicious threats and misogynistic insults that she canceled her keynote speech at a technology conference in San Diego, fearing for her safety. While a blogger's anonymity is often tenuous, Internet trolls who would attack a blogger with threats or insults can be emboldened by anonymity. Sierra and supporters initiated an online discussion aimed at countering abusive online behavior and developed a blogger's code of conduct.

source:Wikepedia