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Podcasts Vs Netcasts

I’m sure many of you reading this are a fan of Podcasts, there a great way of keeping up with the goings on and I for one find them an easy way of assimilating alot of information which also doing work.  I’d also be willing to bet that if you are a fan of Podcasts you’ve also heard of Leo Laporte of This Week In Tech (TWiT) fame and podcaser of the year.  I was suprised to hear him speak up against the word podcast in a recent TWiT podcast.

My suprise if born from two things, firstly, Leo is a Mac (and therefore Apple?  Debate…) fan.  In fact one of my favourite podcasts as a Mac user is MacBreak (check out the MacBreak vidcast, its production values put most TV shows to shame), which is presented by Leo among others (It’s strange that I feel comfortable calling Leo, Leo, almost like I know him through his shows).  The second reason is that Podcast is actually a very clever term to use with regards to marketing.  The iPod brought digital music to the masses.  No longer was it the preserve of nerds in their bedrooms, the average person understood that this white box could store their entire music collection.  It broke down barriers.  Now we have podcasting which, for the most part, is limited to tech savvy people, standing on the brink of wider acceptance.  I would argue that by associating it with the iPod, rightly or wrongly, will give it the final push into mainstream acceptance.

One other thing that sticks out with this, as the unofficial apple weblog (TUAW) points out, is that Leo wants to coin, and trademark, a new term, netcasting.  I can see two problems with this.  Firstly the term conjours up nerdy images for me, things which alot of people don’t want to be associated with for whatever reason.  i can’t see people like Ricky Gervais, the UK’s number one podcast, using the term, its just not cool enough.  The other problem I have is the fact that Leo wants to trademark this term.  Supposedly the reason for this move away from Podcasting is partly down to Apple putting legal pressure on people using the term.  Now correct me if I’m wrong but I was under the impression that under Americal Trademark law you have to make efforts to protect your trademark or you will lose it.  This is the reason Apple gave for their legal pressure and I for one would like to believe them.  The flipside of this is that if Leo is successfull in trademarking his term, he also will have to enforce it or risk losing the trademark.  Its the use it or lose it mentality.  I’m not suggesting that Leo Laporte wants to trademark this term for personal gain but surely he will have to become the thing he hates, a litigous entity, if he is to be successfull in establishing the term.

This post was written on Saturday, October 7th 2006 by Simon T and has been categorised under News , Technology , Web 2.0. The trackback URL is here or you could add a response. If you really want to you can Digg Story or add it to del.icio.us, Technorati Cosmos, Blinklist, furl or Reddit.

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