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Aspen Institute conferences attract heavy-hitter speakers and present some fascinating topics. Talks are nicely archived here.

I've been especially enjoying the NYTimes David Brooks' talk on Neuroscience and Socicology.

Here's another good one: Clay Shirky talking about the ideas behind his book, Here Comes Everybody.

Only two criticisms of the Aspen video offerings: how about RSS and sharing?

Providing the MP3s is a nice touch. I'm going to take advantage of them this morning. Watch a little more of the Brooks talk, then listen to more of it on my commute.

The notion of switching media to suit where you are -- or what sort of media mood you're in -- appeals to me. I've often wished I could do that with books: read the tactile product when I'm at home, and bookmark my leaving-off point so I can pick it up on audio. It seems like the Kindle theoretically could do something like that.

Kindle is sold out until after Dec. 24.

Dave's been refining his experimental Flickr 2 Twitter app.

The picture part is a new wrinkle in TwitterGrams, a way to send an audio tweet -- by uploading an MP3 file, or much more easily by phoning it in using a gateway enabled by BlogTalk Radio.
It would be nice if the picstream had a little player like Blogger's Blogger Play.

I did make a no-Flash player for the audio TwitterGrams. I'm not sure I'd know where to start with a slide player (but might think on it! ;-) )

A year or two ago, IT Conversations was put under the umbrella of Conversations Network. Today the net has a new channel called "Media Conversations." Some of it is video content.

I'm putting this one, an interview with the author of The End of Control, on my MP3 player for the morning commute.

Later: I'd recommend it. Give it a listen. It's all about new paradigms in the music business -- appropriate today with the wind shifting a little more with the Nine Inch Nails move. I did think the interviewer was a little challenged to add value to the podcast. I don't know how many times he asked Gerd Leonhard the same question about how new artists manage to get noticed.

According to a story in the NYTimes, the newest Microsoft MP3 player has a software overhaul.

Under the old rules a user who received a squirted a file from another user couldn't pass it on. That's possible now but each Zune can only play the shared file three times, even if its rights are not protected.

MS is thinking hard about DRM, and will offer a large library of unprotected songs, along with a place on the web to get all social about them.

The Times article leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I'm with Dave. It would have been nice if bloggers had been clued in on this announcement. There could have been a lot more informed discussion. Maybe that's what they don't want, deep down.

My questions:

- I wonder if they still have that crazy deal to give over a percentage of each player's purchase price to a record label (was it Universal?) and if other labels haven't clamored for and been granted the same deal.

- Why limit unprotected files? There shouldn't be any restrictions on podcasts.

- Considering the Gates Foundation's interest in education, I wonder if they've considered educational uses of the file sharing feature. Like squirting lectures or guided tours. It's such a unique feature, it seems like they'd try to get more creative with it.

Here's the Zune press website with specs and stuff. Ah, Edelman is handling the launch. Maybe that's a clue to why no blogger involvement, some perceived risk of the important Christmas announcement reeling out of control.

Don't mean to pick on the Bill Moyers Journal site. I've seen other traditional media get podcasting lingo wrong too. I wonder if they know it makes them look, like, not with it when they're trying so hard to get with it.

YOU DON'T "SIGN UP" FOR PODCASTS AND RSS FEEDS. You just get them. Sorry, didn't mean to yell. I know you're trying. It's hard to get really mad at public broadcasting. Heart in the right place sort of thing.

Must be a holdover from standard language about signing up for email newsletters. Or maybe they're afraid people will be afraid of the word "subscribe."

Via Webware I see that the crazy funny Ask A Ninja video podcast now has its own social network. Well, that's smart, I thought, on first consideration. Hmmm. Targeted socnets. Maybe that's the wave of the future.

Or not, quickly came the second thought. Is this much different from the 1999 movement to put forums on every website?

I was so happy to see all the developers popping up with ideas in answer to Dave Winer's advice request for the best way to go about porting the OPML Editor to Linux. Great idea to approach it that way, and get a fresh crop of techies thinking about it. The open-source Frontier crowd doesn't seem to be doing much at all anymore.

God knows I don't work at that level, and barely even understand what's needed or what the aim is, but I know I'd love to see the Linux build so the OPML Editor Community Server can run on it. That makes all kinds of sense.

But who knows, maybe Dave is thinking more along the lines of fractional horsepower servers. That's cool, too, and even more groundbreaking.

Hell yeah, I'd put a teensy web server in my little Sansa mp3 player to sync podcasts with my home network. Put one in my cat's collar or on the bottom of my shampoo bottle. Or, how about this? In a bookmark in my paper book that tells me where I left off so I can continue in audio when I get in the car?

Check out John Dvorak's relatively new 5-minute daily tech news podcast.

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The short format is a good idea. I like long-form tech podcasts too, but not as a regular diet. I end up feeling guilty for spending all that time on the banter that's tucked in around the gist of things like so many styrofoam packing peanuts.

Story from InfoWorld:

"In a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debates could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse flush with rumors and distortions to mislead and confuse the public," said Balaji Sadasivan, senior minister of state for information, communications and the arts.

Dr. Fran talks about online personality tests in her Mental Health Missives podcast today.

She also says some flattering things about me. I suggested the topic. Fran's a fellow OPML blogger.

I like the Podcast News Network format. The 5-minute segments are scripted by the podcaster, which results in a lot of information packed in per minute. Fran does a nice job of providing a bunch of authoritative info while delivering it in a very accessible style, and throwing in her own opinions.

I like rambly podcasts too, but you just can't take the time to listen to many of those -- something I think everybody must discover several weeks after first getting bitten by the podcast listening bug.

We won't even get into podcasters losing interest. I'm feeling guilty about my literature game's hiatus. I think maybe after my vacation this week, I'll do another nine episodes to nudge it up to the magic 100. Then I'll probably do another game podcast at some point.