We here at Kwote.Me have been working.  As pretty and informative as this blog is, it’s not the reason Kwote.Me was brought into existence.  No, we’ve been sneaky.

As we’ve mentioned before, Kwote.Me is interested not only in exploring the bleeding edge of podcasting technology, but also in creating the bleeding edge.  What fun would it be if we just wrote about stuff we should do?  Well this time, we did it.

Before I go spilling the beans, allow me to set up the suspense.

Houston, we have a problem.

Podcasting has been around in it’s current form for years, but it’s popularity has plateaued over the past couple.  We explored one of the reasons for this in our Transcription post, and it’s significant:

Unless looking for a podcast in particular, a typical Googler will not download a 20mb – 60mb file to find the information they were looking for.  Likewise, they’re not going to listen to 20 – 60 minutes of content to find the information.

We’ve been limiting our audience only to those who were willing to download large files and invest the length of the podcast looking for their answer.  Imagine if Google required up to a 60 minute wait time before your results came back.  That’s what we’re doing with our podcasts.  In today’s information age, quickly finding information is key, and it’s been a major disadvantage to podcasting.

What We’re Up To

Advantage, Podcasters.

Imagine if Google required up to a 60 minute wait time before your results came back.  That’s what we’re doing with our podcasts.

Now, imagine if we had a way to dynamically extract as little as 10 seconds, and as much as 5 minutes out of a podcast.  Imagine finding a bit in a podcast you thought should be shared, and you could share only that bit.  Imagine immediate access to specific parts of your podcast without the listener having to download the entire podcast, and most importantly, without them having to wait.

This is what we’re up to.

We’ve created a tool that will allow anyone to extract up to 5 minutes from a podcast and create a new file from it.  Sounds simple, yes, but consider the possibilities.  Any of your listeners can create a small bit (or Kwote) of a podcast they found interesting.  Kwote.Me would extract the Kwote from the full podcast, generate the new file, and provide a tinyURL-esque url for it to be shared.  For instance, if you pulled a 30-second Kwote out of a podcast, it would be found at a small url such as http://kwote.me/H4s2.  It could be tweeted, emailed, shared any way you want, and the users would have instantaneous access to just the part of your podcast that contains the juicy information they’re looking for.  No more listening for half an hour to find what everybody’s talking about.

“But what about Copyrights?”

No more listening for half an hour to find what everybody’s talking about.

Techically, when you create a Kwote, it alter’s the file.  Of course that breaks most (if not all) copyright laws, which means we can only offer the Kwote.Me tool to those podcast owners who allow us to alter their podcasts.  Is this a problem?  No, in fact it’s a solution.  Podcasters will benefit most from these tools, and if they choose not to participate, they won’t benefit.  The tool works just as well with one podcast as it does with thousands (we already have 2).  If your podcast is included in the Kwote.Me tool, your listeners will be able to share the best parts of your podcast.  If you don’t, they don’t.  No skin off our backs.

“I have to spend the time extracting the Kwotes to get this to work?”

You have listeners, don’t you?  This is the beauty of the tool.  Anyone who wants to share a Kwote from your podcast can.  This isn’t a tool for you.  This is a tool for everybody.  If somebody likes a bit from your podcast, they can create a Kwote with zero interaction from you.  Zero interaction means zero work.

“But they can listen to my podcast without the download being recorded”

No, they can listen to part of the podcast without the download being recorded.  Besides, we’ll be tracking how many times your Kwote has been listened to, and anyone listening to a Kwote from your podcast will have the opportunity to download your podcast while listening to the Kwote.  We’ll have a link to both the podcast page, as well as the file itself right above the Kwote player.

“Does this work with .ogg files?”

No.

“Will this work with .ogg files?”

No.  Get over it.

So there you have it.  What we’ve been spending our time on the last few weeks.  The Kwote.Me tool isn’t public yet, but I can assure you it works.  Stay tuned to this blog as we slowly release functionality and keep up with bugs.  Soon, we’ll have the full version Kwote.Me tool available for your podcast.

You can’t play with it just yet, but we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of possibilities with this.  How do you think this could be used to benefit podcasting?