The Massachusetts state primaries are today, and although Chris Gabrieli and Attorney General Tom Reilly have spent millions of dollars on television advertising campaigns, Deval Patrick is the leading Democratic candidate, according to several recent polls.  Gabrieli ranks second, with Reilly trailing at third.

While the numbers favor Patrick, there are always the last minute, dormant participants who vote on Election Day, often dramatically shifting the official count.  And now that information is so readily available through the Internet with blogs, podcasts and videos, voters have instantaneous access to uncover the latest details on candidates’ opinions, views and backgrounds.

We have been encouraging voters to utilize our technology to quickly research candidates based on the information that is important to them.  Just yesterday I wanted to know Reilly’s position on healthcare, so I “Zinged” the two terms and was taken directly to where they were mentioned, saving me the time of listening to the entire WBZ NewsRadio broadcast. 

Here are some other podcasts that discuss the candidates and upcoming election:

In the Studio with Paul Sullivan – Senior Political Analyst John Henning and CBS4 Commentator/Debate Moderator Jon Keller provide their opinions on the Democratic candidates after the final debate before the primary.

WRKO - Scott Allen Miller - Scott Allen Miller interviews Chris Gabrieli and Tom Reilly one week before the primary election.

WBZ NewsRadio Headlines – Get a recap of the final debate between Tom Reilly and Deval Patrick, discussing issues such as health, education and taxes. 

For more information on the gubernatorial elections or Political Analyst John Henning’s opinion on which candidate he views to have had the most successful final debate, check out PodZinger.

Last week, Leo Larporte announced on his blog that he launched a new advertising network for his TWiT podcasts. His first two sponsors are already big names – Dell and Visa.

The ads have started running at the beginning of all the podcasts and there have been considerably more mentions of Dell and Visa in the podcasts. For example, in one of the episodes of the Daily Giz Wiz show, Leo and Dick talk about the Excalibur Motorized Pool Lounger and Leo chimes in to say how he usually uses his Visa card to make his purchases online because it’s the safest way to buy online.

Check out the Visa’s and Dell’s mentions in the shows with PodZinger’s search.

There have been a lot of mixed responses by the listeners. Although some complain that big advertisers might affect content, most listeners understand that advertising will help finance the production of the podcasts and for podcasters to devote more time and efforts for the content. We have our thoughts on the best ways to insert advertising in audio and video content, and will tell you more about them soon!

In the Wall Street Journal today, editor William Bulkeley wrote an article entitled, “Surfing the Internet for Spoken Words:  New Technology Allows Searchers to Scour Online Audio, Video to Target Advertising,” and included PodZinger as one of the leading industry experts.  The article explores how online audio and video search engines are becoming a tapped resource for targeted advertising. 

“Audio and video have been a black space that cannot be discovered by traditional search engines,” Bulkeley quotes our CEO Alex Laats saying.    

Bulkeley discusses that, similar to targeted advertising with text-based searches such as Google and Yahoo!, PodZinger is utilizing viewers’ key word searches to enable advertisers to create relevant ads that are specifically tied to those queries.

Watching television as a little girl, I remember thinking how cool it was that no matter what show I watched, there were always commercials for my favorite toys.  It took me a few years to realize that that was just targeted advertising.  Boy, it’s amazing how far technology and advertising have come since then!

I went the first part of the first day of PodCamp Boston today, and it was a fantastic unconference. PodCamp is modeled after BarCamp, where it’s not formally organized, and anyone can put on a session simply by adding it to the schedule.

I went to Steve Garfield’s morning session where he talked about getting started podcasting and demonstrated a few of his tools by putting up a few audio and video podcasts right there (one including an introduction to PodZinger - as captured on video by Beth).

The next session I attended was put on by Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan of Galacticast, where they talked about how they got started, all the different equipment they used, and the software tools they use to produce their series.

I gave a session about how PodZinger works, and had a lot of great questions from the group. [Doug Haslam from Topaz Partners had some nice things to say about my session.]

There were a lot of other people there, including Rocketboom creator (and PodZinger partner) Andrew Baron, Rocketboom producer Sherng-Lee Huang, from whom I learned how to tie my shoes, Rocketboom producer Elspeth Rountree, an old classmate of mine David Tames, and former Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon.

I wish I could have stayed past lunch on the first day, but I had some prior family commitments.

Check out a few more photos in the PodCamp Boston 2006 photo album I posted.

Amanda Congdon and Henry Houh

The first game of the NFL kicked off last night with the Dolphins vs. Steelers.  Although the polls predicted Miami to win, Pittsburgh came through with a triumphant victory of 28-17. 

Living in New England, it’s pretty hard not to have at least some idea as to what’s going on with football.  If you’re not particularly interested in it yourself, you probably still hear your co-workers, friends, family members, grocery bag boy or someone else talking about the Patriots.  Fans feel that it is the Pats’ year to win the title again.  I mean, they have won the Super Bowl three of the past five seasons.  They are bound to win it again soon.  Right?     

I myself am not a fanatic fan, but I do like to catch the highlights here and there, and with my busy schedule, it’s easier to listen to podcasts on the go.  I’ve included some of my favorite NFL ones below.

Sports Podcast Network - NBA, NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Boxing, Golf, Tennis, and More Sports Radio On Demand!
Around-the-clock sports coverage through blogs, podcasts and message boards.

Gridiron Grumblings Live! Football Show                                                                                        A live internet broadcast with Gridiron Grumblings and sidekicks Roy ‘The Instigator’ Cankosyan and John ‘Statmaster’ Rakowski.  Discusses news of the week in football, and provides some fantasy strategy, tips and more.  Airs live every Friday evening at 9:05PM ET.

The Fantasy Football Guys
Hosts in-depth discussions on the NFL in general, and Fantasy Football in particular.  

If you want to discover the most talked about teams and players or more podcast suggestions, visit PodZinger’s Zing Index at PodZinger. 

Alex Williams of Corante notes that a lot of the nominees for the upcoming Podcast Awards do not have what he calls “elements of a podcast,” which includes RSS feeds, show notes, podcast feeds and contact information.

Here’s a summary from Insomnia Radio on some of the statistics Todd Cochrane found on this year’s entries:

* 78% of the submissions had invalid feeds, according to FeedValidator.org.

* Of the remaining feeds, 96% had glaring errors.

* 42% did not have an RSS feed button on their home page.

* 26% did not have a link to the file in their show notes.

* 21% had less than 2 lines of show notes.

* Some feeds were huge, as big as 500K and 367 entries.

* Only 49% of the submissions provide a way to contact the podcaster.

* 200 of the submissions that called themselves podcasts had no podcast feeds.

Williams thinks that podcasters should market their podcasts a little better and we agree with him that it is important to promote your podcasts and put your show out there to be discovered. Yet, we also know how much work it is to dive into a whole marketing campaign, especially if you are working on a small budget and podcasting is not your day job.

That’s where PodZinger comes in – we help listeners find podcasts that are deep in the dark alleys but yet are still relevant to the listeners.

*Note: The Podcast Awards will be held at the end of this month at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. We’ll be there and Alex (our CEO) will be on the discussion panel for “Podcast Metrics: Gauging Success with Different Audience Segments”

eMarketer just published an article, “What Do ‘Heavy Users’ Do Online?,” citing a study from Universal McCann that discusses how “heavy” Internet users are utilizing the Web and the impact of new media on advertising.  Since we’ve been talking about several trends in media lately, I thought it would be interesting to include some of its results. 

• 16% of people ages 16-34 used podcasting and 20% plan to use podcasting in the future

• Close to 100 million people in the U.S. (about 1/3 of the population) fell into the category of a “heavy” Internet user, which is defined as someone who’s accessed the Web at least 11 times in the past week

• IM, price-comparison sites and social networks were the most popular uses for the Web

• The most common activities were shopping and buying.  84% of the people polled said they had done both.

• 62% said that they had participated in blogging one way or another

I didn’t find the above stats too surprising, but one that definitely caught my eye was the type of technology that ‘heavy’ Internet users would miss the most if it were taken away from them.  My first guess would have been the Internet, but it is actually television with 28% of respondents.  Only 24% said that they would most miss Web sites, with email coming in close behind at 23%.  These stats exemplify how important video still is today and why content creators continue to seek new ways to drive revenue from their extensive video libraries.

Today PodZinger announced its first partnership with a nationwide network radio broadcasting company. Entercom Communications Corp. is now using PodZinger to power search capabilities on two of its Boston radio stations, WRKO-AM and WEEI-AM, allowing its listeners to search for specific content in previously aired broadcasts.

Although the venture establishes Entercom Boston as an industry leader, being it is the first broadcast radio network to utilize PodZinger’s innovative technology, similar cross-media partnerships are becoming an up-and-coming trend among traditional medium outlets. But with the Internet playing such a powerful role in most people’s daily lives, conventional media will eventually have to come up with original ideas to maintain a loyal customer base.

Just last Thursday, The Economist ran an article titled, “Who Killed the Newspaper?” discussing the steady decline of it and citing it as the type of “old” media that has the “most to lose from the Internet.” It cites Philip Meyer’s book “The Vanishing Newspaper,” which calculates that the newspaper will officially die in 2043. In response to that decline, the article says classified ads are shifting online and more stories are being targeted to a younger audience. At the end of July, research group Nielsen Analytics, produced a study reporting that more than 9 million Internet users in the U.S. downloaded podcasts in the last month, and 38 percent of the 1,700 participants said that because of podcasts, they now listen to the radio less. Entercom integrating podcasts into its business is one way that radio broadcast networks are reacting to the change.

It’s exciting to see how new-age technology is being incorporated into mainstream media. I must admit though, one of my favorite Sunday rituals is making a cup of piping hot coffee, listening to relaxing music and reading the paper, so I’m glad the “official” death of the newspaper is not anytime soon!

Evan Williams (founder of Odeo) posted an interesting overview of podcasting companies. He compared the site’s popularity using Alexa rankings and added some of his own thoughts.

Interesting thing is that Evan combines all the companies together, even though they represent different categories. For example, a podcast hosting site would have a different target user compared to a podcast search site. (Podcast creator vs. podcast listener)

I’ve split his listings into different the categories below. It’s good to note that even though podcasting only started about a year ago, there are already around 20 podcast directories available. This reminds me of the time, back in the days when internet text content (or sites) could only be found in site directories and people were barely using search to find information. I am sure podcast search is going to change as more podcasts become available and people start to shift their habits to searching for more specific content within podcasts.

Content Creation
Podtech

Podcast Hosting
Libsyn
Hipcast
Blubrry (Also has a directory)
Gcast (Has a community)
Podomatic (Also has a directory)

Podcast Directories
Odeo (Podcast publishing available)
Podcast Pickle
Podshow
Podcast Alley
Podcasting News
Podcast.net
Podcast Directory.com
Plugged
Digital Podcast
Click Cast (Also has publishing tools)
Indie Podder
Podfeed
PodNova
Podcast Bunker
Podcast.com
Loomia
ZapZap
TalkShoe
Podcast Player
Yahoo! Podcasts

Podcast Search Engine
PodZinger
Podscope

Social Networking for podcast
Melodeo

The viewing decline of TV commercials, partnered with the rise of users turning to the Web to watch audio and video segments, have created a natural evolution for the shift of advertising from television to the Internet.  This current hot topic has content providers across the Web searching for ways to make their site stand out as the one that can drive the most revenue for the advertiser.  YouTube is one of the most recent Web sites to announce its new video ad platform. 

YouTube’s platform offers two main features: brand channels, which allow advertisers to create their own programming; and “participatory video ads,” which appear on the upper right-hand corner of its home page and allow users to click on the video to view it.  With this new platform, advertisers can link ads that appear on the homepage to specific clips on the site or to the advertiser’s brand channel.

The platform is an innovative idea, but it leaves me to wonder if it could not be done more simplistically.  I went to the YouTube site, clicked on channels, and scanned the first page to see what ads I would be able to view.  Maybe it is just because the campaign is just being launched, but I only found one advertisement: in the Paris Hilton Channel with a promotion for Fox’s Prison Break.  I don’t know about you, but to me, I don’t really see a correlation between Paris Hilton and Prison Break, and I wouldn’t think that the typical fan would be one in the same.  Who knows though?

PodZinger is currently in the process of developing an advertising platform of its own, but hopefully one that will be a little more straightforward.  Although I cannot reveal the details to you right now, we will soon be releasing an innovative idea on the world of Internet advertising.  I promise to keep you updated as soon as I can reveal more!