For years now I’ve had people ask me about podcast transcriptions. So I’m pleased to announce that TPN has just started working with UK company Pods In Print to provide transcripts for some of our shows. We’re going to start with a couple to test out demand – G’Day World, Digital Photography Show and Napoleon.
Tom Price, the guy behind Pods In Print, has real live human beings doing the transcriptions, which is important. I haven’t found a software solution yet that could even begin to handle TPN’s range of dialects – my Aussie accent, Ewan’s Scottish accent, Dave’s geek accent….
Anyway the first transcript available is the Vint Cerf interview. Get it here. Access to the transcripts requires a subscription. It’s US$12.95 for one month or $120 a year.
Would love to get feedback on the service.
Speaking of making podcasts easier to digest, I wonder if it’s possible for you to add in chapter markers for podcasts at significant locations. So at 1:12 topic 1, 15:22 topic 2 etc. I often don’t have time usually to listen to entire podcasts (my multi-tasking skills are quite shocking) so being able to jump to the bits I want to hear would be great. I could read the transcripts, but reading is never as interesting as listening to you guys ramble.
Would be even cooler if you could click on them and the player would automatically jump, but of course that would require a different player that you’re using now, so some technical wizardry may be needed.
I’m a pain for your IT guys aren’t I, reporting bugs, making suggestions, giving them more work… 🙂
Sam, chapters is something we used to do in our show notes, and some of the hosts still do. I stopped bothering years ago and you’re the first person to bring it up, actually. As for chaptering IN the show, again, it’s something we’ve talked about doing from time to time but I’m not sure if it’s worth the extra production time. Personally, I *hate* chaptered podcasts for the opposite reason – when I am listening to a podcast and I want to skip to the next podcast in my playlist, it takes 30 “next” clicks to get through it on my ipod.
any thoughts on either of these subjects? if there is significant demand for either of them, I’ll happily consider it further!
I didn’t realise chaptering effectively breaks a podcast into chunks, and fair enough I can see why that can be annoying. I was thinking of just having links that made the player jump to a certain position in the podcast, so the entire podcast is treated as a single file. But then if you wanted to listen to a bit at the end you’d have to wait until everything before it downloads (if you’re streaming), and the chaptering won’t work on other players, e.g. the iPod.
Hmm…some more thoughts are needed to make it work, but clearly implementing it just for me would be pretty pointless (though I’d be forever in your debt) so let’s see what others think.
I know what you mean Sam, it’s something that’s needed, but something the standards currently just don’t allow for.
Podcast usability has a long way to go yet. I’m currently archiving over 12 GIG of podcasts the hard way, because apparently no one considered what would happen when the HD gets full. Idiots! I can’t download any new ones until I’ve got my old ones burned to DVD. iTunes is good at some things, but there’s still plenty of features that suck.
It’s like a pianola that doesn’t have removable wax cylinders. Why would someone design something so badly?
On March 2007, Alessandro Sorbello of New Realm Media http://www.newrealm.com.au interviewed Dr Vinton Cerf who was in Brisbane Australia to present ‘Internet, Infinity and Beyond’ excerpts from Dr. Cerf’s presentation are available online at New Realm. Mr Sorbello http://www.AlessandroSorbello.com posed questions to Dr. Cerf relating to the development of the Internet and its role in today’s society and what we can expect in the future.
Alessandro, do you always talk about yourself in the third person?