ZimmComm – New Media, LLC

After deciding that it’s not time for me to get an iPhone yet I did purchase an Touch. That’s one of the new Apple iPods. It’s got a big screen and connects to the internet via wi-fi. Like the iPhone this is really a revolutionary product.

Yes it let’s you listen to your music but it really makes video more enjoyable and with internet access you can watch YouTube videos and even download them to the unit. I think you have to look at it as more than an iPod. It’s a computer in a very small package. I can do email using my Gmail account and I’ve already posted onto my AgWired site with it.

I’m married to my Palm Treo for another year or so and I’d rather take pictures with one of my cameras so I don’t miss that on the iTouch.

We’ve come a long way with these devices in just a couple years. Think about all the people who are growing up with these and don’t remember when we didn’t have them!

• Now playing hotel california (by RealPlayer Windows Plugin)

I don’t know how many of you out there have considered video blogging or podcasting but YouTube is making it a lot easier to do. Anyone with a point and shoot that does video, including camera phones, can now quickly and easily create and upload a video clip. I’ve been doing it for over a year and have 92 videos uploaded to my account. They’ve been collectively viewed about 100,000 times now.

I now have a new iPod Touch and with it I can log on with a local wi-fi connection and view my videos directly from YouTube. Now that’s cool!

Here’s an example of one of the latest ones from the Country Living Olympics last weekend in Kansas City, MO. The Country Living Association hired me to come in and take pictures, conduct interviews, shoot some video clips and post onto our AgWired site. I took several hundred pictures, did 13 audio interviews and have uploaded 5 YouTube videos including this one:

So far I’ve done 18 posts onto AgWired and have about 8 more to go to get the content online. This doesn’t count the 155 photos in my online photo album from the event.

• Now playing greatest hits (by RealPlayer Windows Plugin)

Earlier this week I participated in Blog Action Day through our AgWired site. Now that’s it’s past the organizers have a pretty comprehensive summary of what they accomplished. The theme was “environment.”

For example:

20,603 Blog Participated
23,327 Blog Posts (Google Blog Search)
14,631,038 RSS Readers

That RSS Readers number doesn’t count visitors to the respective websites which is a much bigger number generally speaking!

The graph below shows the frequency of terms appearing in the blogosphere courtesy of BlogTrends. Additionally “Blog Action Day” was the top Technorati search term AND tag for the day.

Pretty impressive showing for the blogging community if you ask me. That’s what I call a viral campaign.

• Now playing roxette mp3 (by RealPlayer Windows Plugin)

I’m not trying to be an equipment review site here but I get asked often enough about types of equipment to use for production, especially audio. Here’s one I’m looking forward to adding to our tool kit. It’s a Marantz PMD620. I got to demo this one at the Podcast & New Media Expo. It’s supposed to be coming out some time in November.

Here at ZimmComm New Media we’ve got a Marantz PMD 660 which is the best you can buy right now but it’s still a large form factor. So you’ve been seeing me with an Edirol R-09 and Cindy with a Zoom H-2. Of course we still have our trusty Sony MZ-B100 too. Pricing should be comparable to the Edirol from what I understand.

You can read more about the new unit on Podcasting News.

Before the end of the Podcast and New Media Expo I got to interview the founder, Tim Bourquin. I was surprised to learn that Tim has a unique background that includes work as a police officer. He just saw a need for an expo of this kind when he got into podcasting and so he started one.

Next year Tim’s moving the conference to Las Vegas to as he puts it, “move it to the next level.” Over 2,000 people were registered here for this year’s conference and my guess is that there’s still a lot of growth potential. For example, I’ll bet some international expos would work well like in Europe or Asia.

Thanks to Gary Cooper, Southeast AgNet, for taking the picture while I interviewed Tim in front of the trade show entrance.

You can listen to my interview with Tim here: pnme-07-bourquin.mp3