Good point Kosso 

Your rap about podcasts as advertising is along the same lines as Dave's. I'm in that camp too. But your point about testimonials is something I haven't heard in connection with this stuff. It's so true that a real person (not Mandy Patinkin) saying "I like this" is worth a lot. It's a little like old radio days in some ways, isn't it?

I talked about the Butler girl's acne medication sponsorship the other day on this blog. Here's the part that relates to this:

Maybe a product like acne medication would get a better response if the company itself produced a podcast on skin care and grooming for teenagers.

-- which ties right in with Dave's "the podcast is the advertisement" principle.

Richard had Madge say something in their podcast the other night that I thought made sense in relation to this, too. (Yes, Richard I had to listen because I spied your show note here about a random woman who was embarassed to listen to your show.) Madge said -- in a way that implied she wasn't supposed to be talking about such things -- that "the audience isn't here yet."

I think that's really true if you measure it with a mass media yardstick. The numbers are going to be laughable to a big agency planner. That's why, as Kosso said tonight, and Dave has been saying for a while now, we have to forget about the old advertising model that's been around for 200 years. Blow up that system and do something new that's suited to the medium and to our new way of consuming media when and where we want. Seriously, putting a commercial in a podcast is more like a 19th century ad selling a button hook in the penny post than it is like the General Motors promotional podcast.

What's best 

Here are instructions on support.opml.org with some comments that look like they could help if I got into similar trouble.

But I also found this tool that Cori wrote in August.

That's it; have to synchronize 

I'm going to have to sync up my work and home OPML files. Now where were those instructions and who figured it out. I'll search the newbie list. I think it was in there. I broke my little peer into project status thing because I'm not in sync. Only minutes later ... it's fixed. I like it when things happen like that. You never know. But I still have to sync up at work.

File saving shortcuts vary 

While I was ruining my status thing, which needs the OPML file saved with an .xml extension, I discovered that if you do CTRL-S in the OPML editor the file name and correct extension is preserved. But if you do ALT-F-S as I'm gotten in the habit of doing the last few years, the editor will append a .opml extension to your filename. <<<< Eh, never mind that. It's not happening at home. I have a new PC at work and maybe I still have the file extensions set to idiot or something.

Good app for OPML or not? 

There's a some interest and a little skepticism on the podcasters list about an idea to create a pool of podcast stats. (Scroll down to the bottom of the post page to read the replies.)

I'm trying to think through whether OPML would be a suitable way to store the contributed info. It has the advantage of being familiar to the podcasting community because the directories are built on it, and the ease of distributed data entry would be a big plus. But again I'm running home to the barn and thinking a traditional database may be best for this. Any thoughts? Post to the newbie list.