Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Today Apple made available the .Mac Podcast Pack to .Mac subscribers. This is exactly the kind of thing I’d like to see Apple release to .Mac members on a monthly basis. Along with lots of jingle loops, the Podcast Pack includes voiceover tidbits from Joe Cipriano, such as, “And now, here’s our host” and, “Welcome back to the podcast”, etc. That’s all well and good, and those blurbs are fun things to have, but it makes me fear something I’ve now dubbed Sean Hannity Syndrome.

A talk radio station I listen to airs Sean Hannity every day at 3:00. The show starts with deep-voiced announcer Scott Shannon saying something ridiculous like, “And now it time for the only light of truth in our troubled times. Sean Hannity is oooonnnnn the aiiiiiiir.” And sometimes there’s some bullshit about “the batttllllle for amuuuuurrrrricaaaa”. The show kills me. Anyway, after the booming, round, pear-shaped tones of this guy’s voice get done building things up to some impossible standard to meet, the nasaly, pinched voice of Sean Hannity comes on and says “unbelievealbe”, “on that”, and “you’re a great American” 850,000 times an hour. It’s a complete non-sequitr and a splash of auditory cold water.

I could use one of those Joe Cipriano clips to build me up to something I’m not, and immediately after his professional sounding (and professionally engineered) voice, comes my nerdy voice that can’t correctly pronounce the “s” sound through a cheap microphone. That’s good podcasting.

The .Mac Podcast Pack page has a QuickTime movie with examples of how to use the new loops to create nifty intros and whatever. Each of the demonstration intros is something like 30 seconds long with lots of rambling exposition and ridiculous buildup over music from the loops. And to me, that’s one of the bad things about amateur podcasts, or at least the ones I’ve heard. Unless your podcast is about music, it’s likely I don’t give a crap about whatever music is playing and you’re not making me happy by drawing out your intro with endless tunes. Put maybe 5-10 seconds of a ditty at the beginning of your podcast, say your name, say the name of the podcast, introduce your guest, and get right to the topic. This is essentially talk radio, and I’m listening because I want to hear what you have to say, so say it. Now.

Otherwise, the jingles and loops in the Podcast Pack are good, and I may use one or two in the future. There’s one new episode of my podcast in the dock and several more will be recorded in the coming week, so keep obsessively refreshing that RSS feed.

The intarweb is full of bad search engines. (I’m looking at you, Apple KB.) Here’s an example from my friend Mike. Click to enlarge.

Amazing. They know what I’m looking for, but can’t give it to me.

Does this not say VoIP to anyone else?

C’mon people, a VoIP service makes more sense than a cell phone network of any kind. I may not be the most articulate proponent of this theory, but it just fits in so many ways.

In a post a few months back, I gave my reasons for not attending the upcoming Macworld 2007 festivities in San Francisco. In summary, I’ve been there and done that, the user conferences either don’t apply to my area of expertise or are below my skill level, I didn’t have a decent presentation idea, and I’m paying for a kitchen remodel.

Things changed a few weeks ago when my friend and host of Your Mac Life, Shawn King, asked me to tag along as his segment producer and assistant, compensation included. That gave me a purpose for going, something to do each day, on someone else’s dime. I’ll be at Macworld this coming January preparing audio and video media for posting on the YML site.

So if you happen to see me on the show floor, please say hi. I’ve met quite a number of people (sometimes in weird places) who recognize me from TV, people who read the blog, and even Apple employees, over the past several years at Macworld. It’s a weird sort of pseudo-celebrity that’s hard to understand or describe, but I have fun with it. Have your people call my people and we’ll do lunch.

I’d like it to be noted that I never claimed this podcast would be worthwhile, or even good. To that end, I’d like to present 20 minutes of two guys talking about Clorox Wipes and the tangential issues that surround this cleaning product.

And I apologize for the long delay between podcasts.

Click here for the RSS feed to the podcast. (Copy this URL to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes also.)

Click here to listen to the podcast.

We welcome your feedback in the forum. We know we’re still learning how to do this and what people want to hear, and your thoughts about the podcast are much appreciated.