Will Podcasting Kill Satellite Radio

I was listening to Adam Curry's interview with Doug Kaye from IT Conversations and Adam was commenting that people are just bored with the current offerings of broadcast radio. I agree with him which is why I became a "podcatcher" early on.

It seems to me that satellite radio just offers more of the same as you get on broadcast radio - albeit in some cases without commercials, but to be honest I don't travel cross-country very often so am not to interested in listeningto the same station from coast to coast.

The other thing is that satellite is a very expensive way to distribute audio content - those birds don't come cheap and they will have to sign up an awful lot of people at $10/month to recoup that cost.

Lastly I'm just not interested in paying $10/month for basically the same content as I have on broadcast radio.

Now Adam has 50,000 subscribers to his podcast - how many podcatchers are there in total then, at least 100,000 would you say? And this thing is only, what, 4 months old. How many will there be in a year? And how many of those people might have become subscribers to satellite radio if not for podcasts?

I know myself that even if I was given a free satellite subscription tomorrow I just wouldn't listen to it, I don't have the time. My listening time in the car and at home and work is already taken up with content I want to hear in the form of podcasts, there is already just too much for me to listen to. Now I don't claim to be unique and I reckon there will be a lot of people in the same boat as me.

Maybe the audiences are different, maybe your typical satellite radio listener is not the type of geek who would listen to podcasts, but my feeling is that podcasts just have to be taking potential subscribers away from satellite radio.

Junxion Box - turn your Aircard into a Wireless Access Point

This is a great idea, if you find yourself needing internet access for a few folks where there is no ethernet or 802.11 then turn your data card into a Wireless Access Point.

It is called Junxion Box and I don't know what the status is, but I wish them well.

There is a review of the product here.

Windows Sound Control & Skype

Anyone who is experimenting with Skype or podcasting has probably come across this, and that is the pain of working with the Windows Sound Control application.

Invariably when you start with Skype you can't hear your callers and they can't hear you. Thankfully Skype has a test account - echo123 - that you can dial up so that you can test your sound configuration, but that is only successful after you have minced around for ages trying to figure out which microphone is being used - the one in my Thinkpad or my headset - and which speakers are being used.

It really is painful. And when you get that set up you find your other apps don't work - like TotalRecorder - it records from the microphone instead of the incoming audio stream from the internet. Jeez!!!

And don't even get me started on trying to record your Skype calls.

A long time ago in a Galaxy far far away I used to be a recording engineer and was used to patch panels where I could route the sound from one device to another - wherever it needed to go. I wish we had something like that in Windows. Anyone who has seen the beautiful Reason will appreciate being able to patch from one device to another.

Or maybe what we need is to be able to save Sound Profiles, so that once you get a setup that works for Skype you could save that profile. One that works for your TotalRecorder recordings - save that profile. Then be able to switch between them whenever you like. Now there is an app I would pay for.