Smarter Playlists

I previously posted a screencast Managing Podcasts with Smart Playlists in iTunes about how you can better manage listening to multiple podcasts using the smart playlist feature in iTunes. In short I create a smart playlist that lists all podcasts that I have not yet played (to the end). I can then sort that playlist by size, title or date before I sync to my iPhone.

This great feature got even better in the iPhone 3.0 software because now this playlist is getting updated on the iPhone. Each time I go into this playlist it removes shows that I have listened to already on my iPhone.

Double Time

I subscribe to 60 podcasts (yes that is not a typo) but now with the new 3.0 software I am running out of content because I am using the new feature that lets me play back podcasts in twice the time. I find most (non-music) podcasts to be very listenable and some hosts to actually sound better at twice the speed. The software speeds the rate without making the speakers sound like chipmunks.

What was that again?

When that motorcycle drives by or the host gives some phone number of URL you can now quickly go back 30 seconds to hear that again. That is a big improvement over trying to scrub back to the right spot.

Sharing is Good

When you are listening to a podcast (like the Amateur Traveler podcast which was recently one of the hot podcasts according to my iPhone) and you want to share it with a friend you can now click the email icon to send a friend an email.

All of these features combine to make what was a good listening experience even better.

I just stumbled upon this old poem that I wrote:

The Shower

I stumble from bed
Like a zombie, half-dead
Groping my way to the shower
I stay there it seems
Under life giving streams
For the better part of an hour

I rinse and I scrub
In a shower not a tub
But it’s not just for hygiene I came
I lather with hope
As I cling to my soap
That I might soon remember my name

With gusto I sing
But the dreams they still cling
Inside my somnambulant head
I shower for long
‘Til the danger’s all gone
That I’ll wander right back to my bed

Wasteful you say
How I stay there all day
Draining some reservoir deep
While others abound
It’s water I’ve found
The only true solvent for sleep

When I read Seth Godin’s book Tribes about discovering the group of people who want/need you to lead them I understood it and appreciated it. But I think I didn’t get it in quite the same way as I did this week.

the problem

As many of you know my podcast the Amateur Traveler was in the running for a Lonely Planet Blog Award. This competition had two phases. The first phase was a popularity vote and the second phase was a vote of the judges. I was confident I would do well with the judges but I have always hated the popularity vote. In high school I was neither a social pariah nor was I class president. As a shy person by nature I hate shilling for votes. But this was a contest I wanted to win. When the contest started I was about 500 votes down before I even knew I was in the running. I sent emails to my small email list, twittered, got my friends to twitter for me, brought it up at work, mentioned the contest on my podcast and I closed the gap some but I was still way behind.

the power of mailing lists

But then my friend Craig Martin of the Indie Travel Podcast sent an email to his mailing list and rocketed into first place. So I went to my email box and found the emails for people who had written me about the show and ask them to vote for the show. A funny thing happened. They voted and in great numbers. When I send a twitter message my typical response rate is around one click for every 50 people who follow me. This was more like one response for every 3 emails. That was amazing enough but the next part is what really surprised me.

my tribe

No one wrote me and said to stop bothering them. Instead many people wrote emails like these:

I voted for you. I love your show, although I don’t get a chance to listen to it quite as often since my daughter Chloe was born in August. The first time I did listen to Amateur Traveler after she was born the topic was Acadia National Park. That was a great surprise because we live in Maine (about 4 hours south of the park), and although I’ve done a lot of traveling around the country and in Europe, I haven’t been to Acadia since I was 8 years old.

It was a nice reminder that even though our travel experiences will be different now, there are some great places to explore right in our own state. I also purchased a state park pass recently, and can’t wait for summer! Now if only this snow would go away…

Thanks for taking the time to put out the show. It is appreciated.

Nicole

I voted for you and I really enjoy the show. Best of luck.

Thelma in Missouri

Done. It´s a pleasure to help you and give something in return for your great podcast

Jose

Good luck Chris! Thanks for all the great shows and all the time and effort you devote to them.

Lottie

Thanks for the email. Already voted for you - both from home and at work, so the site won’t accept another email from me.

Good luck, and thanks for your continued dedication to the podcast. I thoroughly enjoy it. You continue to open up small pieces of the world to those of us who have an interest in travel but limited opportunity. It truly is appreciated.

Thanks, again, and keep up the good work. Blessings,

Gerry

Thanks for the email? People were thanking me for asking them to do me a favor. People were actually glad to help. Oh, that’s what Seth Godin meant!

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

Building a tribe is about providing value. When people appreciate what you have been doing for them they are glad to return the favor.

postscript

Ironically, I won the vote handily and then lost the judging. The judges were not in my tribe. I can live with that.

I am enjoying the meme on Facebook “25 Random Things About Me”. Writing 10 things about you that people may or may not know is pretty easy, but getting to 25 is much more difficult. Here are the 25 I came up with:

1. By day I work as the EVP of Engineering and Operations for LiveWorld which runs online communities, social networks for the likes of HBO, eBay, A&E, History Channel, NBA, Mini Cooper, J&J, Kimberly Clark, etc. I have been there 12+ years. We used to be TalkCity.com.

2. By night I podcast and blog at the Amateur Traveler (and also The Bible Study Podcast).

3. I started programming just after Christmas of 1979 when my best friend’s rich aunt gave him an Apple ][ computer. If not for that I might have gone to Berkeley as a Physics major.

4. My wife and I met at college (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in beautiful (sarcasm) Troy New York. We have been married for 27 years and have two kids: Mike and Liz who are in college as a film major and marketing major respectively.

5. The hardest physical job I have had was the one week I spent after freshman year of college making 20,000 gallon wooden wine tanks at Monterey Vineyards in Gilroy. This is the only job I every worked on with my brother Eric. I do, strangely enough, volunteer building concrete houses in Mexico annually (13 trips), carrying tons of cement by hand in buckets. Normally the most aerobic part of my job is fast typing.

6. I have just the one older brother. My parents are still living in the house I moved into at 3 years of age in Salinas, California.

7. I was born in Wadsworth, Ohio and my best friend from elementary school in California (David McCray) was coincidentally also born there and delivered by the same doctor.

8. I used to be a ventriloquist although the last time I remember performing was elementary school. My cousins were still talking about it when I saw them recently.

9. I have (or rather had) 42 first cousins. My dad came from a family of 6 kids in Colorado and my mom came from a family of 7 kids in Wisconsin. My most distant cousins geographically are from Australia. Two of my three Aussie cousins have lived with us. One for 1 month and one for 2 years.

10. My mom’s family tree is confusing because a) her mother was one of 16 b) she married a widower with 5 kids c) one of her younger brother’s married the widower’s daughter (my mom’s half sister and now her aunt) d) another brother and sister married into the family and the sister married the son of my mom’s sister/aunt. We figured out at one family reunion that these cousins were first cousins, first cousins once removed and second cousins all at the same time.

11. If you watch an old episode of Rick Steve’s travel show called “Royal London” you will see me explain how the whispering gallery works in St Paul’s London. We ran into he and his two person crew while we were there. Coincidently the last time we were at St Pauls we were interviewed for a series on Discovery Channel about the human body, but I have not seen that series air.

12. One of the ways that my wife and I got to know each other was doing a late night (1-4am Sunday morning) radio show on WRPI with the Christian group we were members of. It is the only radio host experience I have.

13. I have been on 5 continents. I have seen the coast of South America from the Caribbean. I have not seen Antarctica.

14. I worked on Apple’s Newton although I was not on the Newton team per say. I wrote the email application and one had business cards (ok I still have most of them) that say “Newton Mailman”. I worked for Apple’s Online Services which also created AppleLink (before my time) and eWorld (I managed the Mac and Windows clients also).

15. I have worked in two startup companies. The first was Momenta and it failed in spectacular fashion. We put a product (a pen based computer with a Smalltalk operating environment) on the cover of Byte magazine, PC Magazine in Germany, Personal Computing, etc and then ran out of money. My second startup is still alive after 12+ years but went from 4 employees to 256 to 15 to around 70-80. It was a dot com that managed not to die.

16. I have performed in musicals in community theatre (at our church) in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Littlest Angel (The Gatekeeper), Beauty and the Beast (Lumiere), Fiddler on the Roof, Anne of Green Gables (Mathew), You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown (shaved my beard to play Linus), Cinderella (the King), Children of Eden (Father) and Mashuganas. My favorite review was when the local paper described my 40ish self as “30ish”. I think they may have said nice things about my performance as well.

17. I also write songs, mostly about my faith. I do play guitar but I am not really a musician.

18. I love photography, mostly travel photography. I don’t usually buy souvenirs, but I do drive my family and travel companions crazy taking pictures. Some of my photos I have made into travel posters in my online store.

19. I am a TV addict. If it is on in the room I will watch it. At least with Tivo I am not just watching what is on. To get things done I leave the room.

20. I hate not knowing things and I have a good memory. I love history, science, technology, etc. I am a font of useless knowledge. My wife assures me that “I heard that” and “I learned that” are not synonymous for most people. Names I have a harder time remembering.

21. I like studying languages and have studied German, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Mandarin, Swahili and Turkish. I only speak English fluently (when sufficiently caffeinated), but can get by in Spanish. In most of the other languages I can still remember how to say “I don’t speak your language very well”. You would be surprised how far that gets you. I can spell better in a few other languages than I can in English, but I swear this language was broken when I found it.

22. I grew up being told I was a picky eater and then found later on that I like a lot more things than my parents do, but I like more spicy and bold flavors than they do. I love Indian, Mexican, Greek, Turkish, Italian and French food in particular. I did grow up eating fish 3 times a week. Fish I don’t care for. I don’t like bitter tastes so I have never developed a taste for either coffee or beer. I do enjoy wine and as a programmer I get my caffeination from tea and Diet Coke.

23. Perhaps not coincidentally according to my doctor’s height vs weight chart I am, at 6 foot 3 inches, too short, but I am working on it.

24. I volunteer with Correctional Institute Chaplancy teaching a bible study on Tuesday nights in San Jose’s juvenile hall in a lock down unit for violent offenders. I know more gang members and murders than the average person.

25. I can clap with one hand.

An old saying is “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?”
Now at last that question can be answered.