According to Derrick Oien, Myspace.com has quietly rolled out podcast and RSS support. I don’t have a Myspace account, so I haven’t been able to examine any particulars.

Depending on the actual level of integration, this could be big news. I read somewhere recently (I think it was in Rolling Stone) that Myspace.com is the fourth-most visited site on the web behind Yahoo!, eBay and MSN. The Rolling Stone article highlighted how bands are making heavy use of Myspace as a way to reach out to fans. If those bands find themselves jumping on the podcasting bandwagon, it could prove to be another watershed moment for both podcasting and the music industry. Stay tuned.

Hi everyone. Hope you had (or are still having) a nice holiday.

Just making a brief visit to point you in the direction of the new Authors on Tour - Live! series, courtesy of the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver (a wonderful and increasingly rare independent bookstore). The title is pretty self-explanatory, but the Tattered Cover is basically making some of its more high profile in-store author visits available via podcast feed.

“I can’t possibly imagine how libraries could use this same marketing approach to get greater value out of their programming,” he said facetiously.

I have an admitted uneasiness with describing the series as “live podcasts”: the events are live, but the mp3 distribution method is not. Seems like a contradiction in terms, but I suppose that’s me being unnecessarily literal.

Anyway, the Tattered Cover is unquestionably THE place for authors to stop when they’re passing through the Rocky Mountains, so this feed is going to have some great content. Upcoming authors include Neil Gaiman, Al Franken, Carl Hiassen, Dr. Andrew Weil and Susanna Clarke, amongst many others.

Kudos to Chris Deweese for his wonderful work on the Carnival of the Infosciences #18. Go check it out over at Clam Chowder.

The Carnival will take a break for the next couple of weeks. Activity will resume over at Wanderings of a Student Librarian in January. Carnival #19 will be posted on January 9th, so anything posted between now and then is submissible. Send submissions to joy at moll projects dot com.

Just found another library using podcasting as a means to distribute their programming to a wider audience. This time it comes from the Memorial Hall Library in Andover, MA. They podcasted their Teen Poetry Contest, including individual readings of the top poems and a single recording of the whole reception. Here’s the poem that tied for second place. Nice! And of course, here’s their podcast feed.

Incidentally, I came across a presentation (available online through January 2006) given by Memorial Hall Library’s Dean Baumeister, in which he talks about this podcast pilot project and assesses the results. It’s nice to see someone provide some concrete numbers and be realistic about their meaning.

Almost forgot to share the results of my live program for OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries).

Here’s the link to the mp3. It’s about 75 minutes long. Of course, if you subscribe to the podcast feed, you’ll get it automatically. And if you’re subscribed to OPAL’s podcast feed, then you got it automatically a few days ago! I was having some issues with a dry, scratchy throat, so you’ll have to excuse the occasional coughing, but otherwise I think it turned out reasonably well. The feedback has been positive, which is always nice.

I used a simple one-page wiki to run my presentation. I had originally planned on using the wiki as a jumping off point for visiting various sites, but I was having some problems making the free Google-ad-supported pbwiki behave nicely in the cobrowsing interface we were using. So in the end, I invited everyone to surf from the wiki at their own leisure. Just as well, since I talked for over an hour without ever leaving the cozy confines of my outline. Anyway, here’s a link to my podcasting presentation wiki. If I’m good, I’ll keep it up to date and use it as the basis of future presentations.

So how was using the wiki for presenting? OK overall. I don’t think it helped or hurt the actual presentation, but I’ll say this much: It was many times easier than putting together a PowerPoint for what I must admit was very much the same end result. And I’m left with a much more flexible, living resource. I wouldn’t go this route for every situation, but I have to say that I enjoyed the process of putting it together and would always consider as a possible avenue for organizing my presentations.

In a year full of joy and surprises, I am quite stunned to have been nominated for an Edublog Award. I can’t imagine who would have nominated me, but I genuinely appreciate it. That said, there are five other excellent candidates for Best Library/Librarian Blog and I can heartily endorse all of them as worthy recipients. Voting is open until December 17 (my 30th birthday, yikes! - that’s worth a vote, right?) and here’s a link to the ballot.

Please take a moment and visit Carnival of the Infosciences #17, hosted by The Krafty Librarian. My thanks to the host and everyone who submitted this week.

Next week, the Carnival will be hosted by Chris Deweese over at Clam Chowder. Send submissions to chrisd at lcls dot org.

After that, the Carnival will take a two week hiatus for the holidays and return on January 9.

More info is available at the Carnival wiki.

In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, I’ll be doing an online introduction to podcasting tomorrow (Thurs. Dec. at 2 PM EST, hosted by Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL) and sponsored by the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center.

It’s free. No registration necessary. You just have to go to this URL: http://67.19.231.218/v4/login.asp?r=67955673&p=0. You’ll need to accept the installation of a small plug-in, but otherwise it’s totally painless.

This is the description from the website: “Podcasting, an exciting new model for distributing audio content, is generating buzz across the Internet. But what is it exactly? And why should librarians care? We’ll discuss the hows and whys of podcasting, including how to tune in, how to find interesting content and how your organization can take advantage of this powerful technology to reach more people in your community.”

If you can’t make the live event, the audio will be available from the OPAL archive or, better yet, subscribe to their podcast feed. Don’t know what a podcast feed is? Better come to the program.

OK, kids, we had a paltry two submissions for the Carnival over the past two weeks. That doesn’t make for much of a festivity, now does it?

So let’s try this again. Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by The Krafty Librarian. Send your submissions to mak1173[at]yahoo[dot]com and mention the Carnival in the subject line. For the purposes of getting the ball rolling again, let’s open the floor for any posts from the past few weeks.

As always, I’m still looking for hosts. Want to bring some much-deserved attention to your own blog? A great opportunity awaits you as host of your very own Carnival of the Infosciences.