ZimmComm – New Media, LLC

For those of you (like me) who were wondering why Microsoft would spend millions pushing a digital audio player that doesn’t let you auto subscribe to podcasts – wonder no more. Now you can FeedYourZune.

FeedYourZune is the perfect companion software for your new Zune Player from Microsoft! And it’s 100% FREE to download and use! FeedYourZune is a full featured RSS reader and Podcast Media Player.

I wonder why they didn’t do this to start with and bundle it in the software that comes with the Zune. Whatever the reason there’s now more choices in hardware/software for the consuming public to get their podcasts. It’s getting easier every day folks.

How many of you remember when most households didn’t have a television set or even a radio? It wasn’t that long ago. A new estimate by the folks at eMarketer shows that when it comes to broadband internet access we’re fast approaching a saturation level. Are you making sure your communications strategy is geared up for this?

According to eMarketer’s estimates, an important milestone will be reached over the next 12 months — high-speed Internet penetration will surpass 50% of US households, equating to over 60 million residential broadband subscribers.

They also state in this article that “an increasing number of broadband households are utilizing their high-speed connections for value-added services such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), Internet protocol TV (IPTV), paid audio and video content and more.” How are you fitting into these new value-added services?

I’ve written about comment spam before. Since that time when I installed the Akismet plugin on our websites it has caught 111,000 comment spams! 41,000 of those have been received on my AgWired site since last Friday. Unbelievable.

Now, one way to look at this is to get angry. That big of an attack from spambots of what they call “pills, poker and porn” has caused problems with that website. Maybe that’s their goal.

On the other hand when I look at each of our websites I can see that the more times I’ve posted and the more traffic the website receives, the higher the number of comment spams. So one way to look at it is the price of corporate blogging success.

That’s the way I’m looking at it right now.

The Blog Business Success show went well last night I think. Hosted by Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World.

You can still find the Blog Business Success Radio show on Blog Talk Radio.

We had a nice hour long conversation which you can still listen to if you missed it live. We talked about agricultural communications, Talking News Releases, blogging, podcasting and all from the perspective of how these new communications tools can be used for business purposes.

So, if you have time feel free to listen in.

One of the first people I found when I got started blogging was Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World. It was a lot of his ideas about how to use a blog as a business communications tool that formed some of my ideas about how to use this great platform.

Well, Wayne’s a podcaster too and on something called Blog Talk Radio. Tonight at 8pm (Eastern) I’ll be his guest on his program “Blog Business Success Radio.” You can listen in live or use these instructions from Wayne if you can’t:

If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.

Let’s talk with Chuck Zimmerman about podcasting and talking press releases and how they can take your media relations to the next level, on Blog Business Success Radio.

According to a new report from the PEW Internet and American Life Project the number of people who have downloaded a podcast is growing. Quite quickly it seems to me. This graphic is from eMarketer.com where I saw the report first.

Some 12% of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time. This finding compares to the 7% of internet users who reported podcast downloading in our February-April 2006 survey.

According to their February-April survey 20% of American adults own an iPod or other MP3 player and 26% of all internet users.

The report also says that people aren’t downloading podcasts on a regular basis. I’m not sure about the significance of that. I’m a pretty prolific podcast downloader and I don’t do it regularly. I crank up iTunes whenever I think of it and let it download all the latest to my iPod. I just don’t do it on any kind of regular schedule. However, I still get all the episodes I want of the programs I subscribe to.

I just thought you might want to know.