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The first whitepaper I have personally come across on podcasting, and a pretty good one from Rodney Rumford of Podblaze on the Business value proposition and how to get started easily.

It covers all of the bases, and although it does mention the podblaze service quite a bit, it's unobtrusive and a well thought out document on communicating why businesses should podcast.

He centers most of his explanations around how Podcasting is a medium that is valuable through the use of RSS, so I find that most of the benefits he outlines can be attributed to normal blogging as well, but overall some really valuable points of interest that include some market data such as:

The large majority of podcasts (over 70%) are currently consumed (listened to) directly on the listeners desktop and don't ever make it to a portable media player such as an Ipod.

That shows that consumers of podcasts are not only Ipod owners, and this medium crosses the boundary of portable devices which indicates a broader spectrum of potential growth and interest.

Currently there are 6000 podcasts being produced. The listener market that consumes these podcasts is currently estimated at over 6 million and growing rapidly.

Although he does indicate that the exact listener demographics are not available at this time, this does go to re-inforce the discussion in the last article where there seems to be no real demographics available. He does cite the PEW report which has already been debunked, the Forrester report that is quite vague, as well as hinted at an IDG Research study that purports even higher numbers, but I have been unable to confirm any of their validity.

One really interesting statement of note is:

You can also create a podcast with some Blogging platforms by doing some custom tweaking (this is fine if you are a hacker). Not all Blogging platforms can or will support podcasting. The other major drawback to this is that you need to be concerned with the reliability of a free Blog (such as Blogger) and its ability to deliver podcasts reliably.

I couldn't agree more, and just so all of you are aware, Blogware fully supports Podcasting, is NOT a free service, and it's as easy as attaching an MP3 file to a regular post in order to have your podcast inserted into your RSS feed. In fact, we are pretty much the only provider that supports up to 5 files (RSS enclosures) per article.

A very good friend of mine who owns an '04 Subaru WRX has invited me to a group event where around 28 cars are going to rent a racetrack for 3 hours on the 31st of July.

Although I have raced amateur in my youth, this is a bit different. In my old age I have to think about all kinds of things including self preservation plus making sure nothing happens to the 4 month old car which keep zipping through the mind no matter how much I want to step on that finely polished aluminum gas pedal..

We will have a short briefing prior to getting out on the track, followed by a few warm up laps, then lapping for the rest of the day. “Lapping” refers to just that, doing laps. Passing is STRICTLY prohibited except on the back straight, and only when the person in front of you has allowed you by signaling you to pass. We reserve all rights to kick people off the track that are driving dangerously and/or aren't listening to track marshalls.

So there you go, safe, fun, and should be a total blast. Although this is an event organized by a bunch of Subaru fanatics (A make of vehicle I came very close to buying myself before the leap to Mazda), another friend will also be joining us who has a BMW 540I with over 280 HP. So far the Bimmer, my RX8, and a Honda S2000 will be the only non Subaru entrants, but there will be pics, and possibly my first Video cast so stay tuned.