[wplug-announce] The Open Pitt, Issue 17

[Vance Kochenderfer]

                              THE OPEN PITT
      What's cooking in Linux and Open Source in Western Pennsylvania

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Issue 17                       October 2005                   www.wplug.org
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In this issue:
  Linux Radio and Podcasting: Interview with Sean Parsons
  September Roundup
  Announcement: WPLUG Annual Meeting

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                               Coming Events

Nov. 5:  General User Meeting/Election Meeting.  10am to 3pm, 1507 Newell-
         Simon Hall, CMU
Nov. 19: Installfest.  10am to 5pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Dec. 10: General User Meeting.  10am to 2pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
         (date tentative)
Dec. 17: Tutorial, Topic: Intro to Objective C.  10am to 3pm, 1507 Newell-
         Simon Hall, CMU (date tentative)

                    The public is welcome at all events
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Linux Radio and Podcasting: Interview with Sean Parsons

Pittsburgh's Sean Parsons was host of The Linux Box Show, one of the more
popular Linux-related audio shows during its run.  He sat down with The
Open Pitt for an interview about the current state of Linux podcasting and
his plans for a successor show.

The Open Pitt: How did you get started doing an Internet broadcast?

Sean Parsons: I actually became a Linux user myself about four years ago
and really became interested in the community aspect of Linux.  I started
off just contributing some art.  One of the major sites I like to
contribute to is KDE-Look.  They had limited storage space, so I decided to
get my own server and start hosting my own stuff.  Over time, I started
writing opinion pieces and it eventually grew into a news site called The
Linux Box.  I had some volunteers contributing and then one of the major
tech shows that I used to listen to, The Linux Show, became defunct.  I
thought there was an opening to try and introduce Linux to people in a
similar capacity.

TOP: Was that your first experience with radio or broadcasting?

SP: That was definitely my first foray into it.  I had already done some, I
don't know if you'd call it journalism or not, but I had already done some
reviews of different distributions and products and concepts in the open
source community by that point in written format.  So this was just
applying that to a verbal format.

TOP: What's unique about audio compared to weblogs or other written media?

SP: It has a couple of factors.  I think it's much easier to express
feeling whenever you're using the spoken word.  It kind of puts a voice to
the community if you don't have a lot of contact with the community
yourself.  One of the frequent comments I got when I first started was that
they now had a voice they associated with the Open Source movement.
There's also the factor that being in audio format makes it portable in a
different way than in a text format because now you can load it on to your
MP3 player and listen to it when you're jogging or going somewhere in your
car without it being intrusive or all-consuming.

Some people respond better when they're trying to learn something new to
have the spoken word than they do with the written word.  Different people
learn different ways.  I also like to include lots of notes with my shows
so people would understand where my facts were coming from if I were doing
an informative piece.

TOP: What's the best way to get shows?

SP: These sites that offer podcasts also usually offer direct links so you
can just directly download it.  Easier to use programs, like bashpodder by
Linc Fessenden, will automatically download your favorite podcasts for you.
A tool out there that is only at 0.4 status but I think is really great if
you want a GUI tool is gPodder.  It's written in Python and GTK, so it
blends in really well with your GNOME desktop, or Xfce for that matter.

I know iPodder has been ported to Linux, but unless you're already
comfortable playing with a GUI with 50 buttons this is one of those things
that seems overly intimidating for what should be a very simple job.  I
don't mean that to bash the iPodder project, it's just if I had to
recommend one to my mother, it'd probably be gPodder.

TOP: How many Linux-related shows are there?  What do you recommend?

SP: There are a lot of Linux tech shows out there right now.  Go to
<http://www.thelinuxlink.net/>, they do a very good job of providing a
resource for the different tech shows that are out there.  I think there
are about a dozen that they reference, because they don't necessarily
include the ones that only last five or ten minutes.

The GNU/Linux User Show is really a newbie show.  It's Jon teaching his
wife, who has been a lifelong Windows user, how to use Linux.  He sits down
in front of a KDE box with the object of teaching her one new thing and
goes over expressly how to do it and asks for her feedback.

The Linux Link Tech Show really does a good job of getting at least one to
two interviews on every episode and interviewing different people from the
community.  Usually people that are well known, involved in projects like
Debian or KANOTIX, or like Marcel Gagne from Linux Journal.  They also
share different news finds they thought were relevant and spend a lot of
time trying to make it fun and entertaining by bantering back and forth.

LUGRadio also does a good job of getting different interviews and gets some
of the most high-profile interviews on, overall.  They probably spend more
time than anyone else being zany, which is what their intention is--they're
there to have fun and a lot of people enjoy them for that factor.  It's not
necessarily one you want to play in front of your co-workers or small
children; it's not what I would call a family-friendly show.

TOP: How popular are these shows?

SP: It's very hard to say.  I know the most downloads I had from a single
show was in the range of 10,000, but that's not necessarily all-inclusive,
either.  The Linux Show, when it was still around, they were claiming to
have upwards of 75,000 listeners at times to a single episode.  I don't
think anyone else is claiming to have numbers anywhere close to that but it
shows there's a definite market there.

TOP: Has the iPod caused an increase in the number of listeners and shows?

SP: It's definitely created a major impact on both.  The whole podcast
phenomenon has really made people listen to a lot more audio *off* the
Internet, so there's just a lot more shows out there now.  Prior to the
podcasting phenomenon, there were only really three Linux shows: LUGRadio,
The Linux Show, and The Linux Link Tech show.  Now there's a dozen that
have considerable length to them, besides all the ones that are more or
less five to fifteen minutes of someone's daily ramblings about Linux.

TOP: What do you need to produce a show?

SP: Basically, get a decent microphone.  You can get a good microphone from
Radio Shack for about $30 and you'll get good quality from it.  Get a cheap
mixing board so you have something to amplify your microphone before it
goes into your computer.  That is around another $30.  Other than that, you
just record in Audacity.

Audacity, while it's considered non-professional software, really is
extraordinary.  It can do multi-track recording, it does great noise
filtering, you can add all kinds of sound effects.  It can pretty much
handle your very beginning recording to creating your finished product at
the end.

TOP: What do you plan for the new show?

SP: I really enjoyed doing The Linux Box Show, but scripting 45+ minutes of
a show every other week for myself to monologue is a lot of work.  What I'd
really like to do with the future show is to get several voices on there
and actually look at different opinions.  They may have found a really
informative article that the rest of the community should know about.  So
it would be nice to have multiple people there to give different opinions.

I'm probably approximately a month away from releasing the first episode.
I've had some people express interest, but no one confirmed that they
absolutely want to be involved.

TOP: How can someone who's reading this get involved with the new show?

SP: The best place to get hold of me right now is <sean at plan9linux.com>.

TOP: Thank you for your time!

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September Roundup

Aug. 13 General User Meeting: Nicolas Baldi demonstrated Linux running on
the XBox.  He discussed the XBox architecture and how it makes booting a
non-standard operating system difficult.  Nicolas explained a few of the
hardware and software tricks that can be used to get Linux running.

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Announcement: WPLUG Annual Meeting

WPLUG's Annual Meeting will take place on November 5.  The program for the
General User Meeting will consist of a series of five-minute lightning
talks on any topic of interest.

After lunch will be the election for the Board of Directors.  See
<http://www.wplug.org/vote/> for details on the candidates and the voting
process.

We'd like to encourage all members to attend if at all possible.  A free
lunch will be provided and there will be other giveaways as well.

So come on out, join the fun, and help make WPLUG a strong and active
organization!

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The Open Pitt is published by the Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group
<http://www.wplug.org/top/>

Editors: Elwin Green, Vance Kochenderfer

Copyright 2005 Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group.  Any article in
this newsletter may be reprinted elsewhere in any medium, provided it is
not changed and attribution is given to the author and WPLUG.