New technologies have a way of catching on rather slowly at first, before eventually hitting critical mass and taking off. This can definitely be said of podcasting. According to a recent eMarketer report, the numbers have reached an impressive benchmark of 18.5 million listeners in the US alone for 2007 (a 285% increase from 2006). More significantly, 6.5 million of those are considered "active podcast listeners", meaning they download on average more than 1 podcast per week. According to the eMarketer crystal ball, this market is destined to grow to a 65/25 million listener split over the next 5 years. To put those numbers in perspective, the number of US satellite radio subscribers is expected to grow to 30 million in 2015, from 13.6 million in 2007 (according to a summary of another eMarketer report on radio advertising's future).

What's really interesting about this latest report is the suggestion that the medium is still mainly accessed through a PC, rather than a mobile device like the iPod. Mitch Joel, a highly-regarded socialmedia marketing podcaster over at Six Pixels of Separation, has offered his own take on the eMarketer report, in which he hints that the number of podcast-listeners who use their PC as the primary play-back device may be as high as 70%. His rationale for why Podcasting is finally catching on: because once people try it, and subscribe to their favourite shows, it's hard to go back to traditional media (i.e. radio). Time-shifting, Mitch suggests, is the killer feature, along with the ability to pause/fast-forward/rewind. I agree, and while I think that radio will always have a place for live and up-to-the-minute information and discussion (news and talk radio, essentially), where the podcast format is really going to have an impact, and probably already has, is on the mix-tape and mix-CD scene. Seamless integration within iTunes makes the entire process of managing your podcast library a breeze. And this last point will, I suspect, eventually lead to greater mobile device usage over time as people realise they can download fresh mixes of music and play them back in their iPod-enabled cars and while working out - domains long-associated with mix-tapes and CD's.

One last note about podcasts and podcasting: less than three weeks from now, Ryerson University will play host to PodCamp Toronto 2008. This free event takes place over two days, Feb 23-24, and features dozens of information sessions and presentations covering a ton of podcast-related topics by some very respected individuals. More info is available at the Podcamp Blog.

So, are you into podcasts yet? And if not, what's holding you back?

After thinking about it some more, I have some real issues with the new iTunes Movie Rentals business model. The mechanics are solid, and the idea of delivering movies through iTunes is a good one, but as with so many things, the devil is in the details:

The Bad (aka "the catch"): you only have 24 hours to watch it once you hit the "play" button. THIS is the problem.

Now I'm the first one to admit I drink Apple coolaid, but this 24-hr business is a poke in the eye with a very sharp, hot stick. I'm guessing it wasn't Apple's idea to limit rentals to 24 hours. It was probably a concession made to get all the major movie studios to sign on. Let's not forget that these are major studios that already have very cozy relationships with brick-and-mortar rental outfits like Blockbuster. So I don't know whether to be mad at Apple for going ahead with this, or be mad at the studios for being such pricks. The reason why I'm so disappointed is because I often take more than 24 hours to get through a movie (you should see how long it takes me to get through a book).

Consider this *very* typical scenario from the real world of video/DVD-rentals: it's Friday night, I'm in the local video rental store with my wife, and we're looking for something to watch that night. We can't agree on which film we want to see so we grab 2 or 3. I choose a movie I really want to watch and my wife chooses one she really wants to watch, and let's say we rent a 3rd that we're both really interested in seeing. We often do this because we know that we can start watching one movie and if we don't feel up for it we can switch to another one and finish watching the 1st one another night. The key here is "another night". Not the next morning/afternoon within a 24hr period. When we rent DVD's we have up to 7 days to return them. That's 168 hours! And guess what, sometimes that's how long it takes to finish what we started.

I understand that there has to be a time limit in the above scenario because we're renting a physical product and other people may want to rent it and they can't until we return it. But with downloads, there is no physical limitation to the number of copies that Apple can "rent". So why limit the rental by time? Why not limit it by number of plays? Can someone responsible for this absurdity please come forward to answer this question? Because frankly, the current solution does not make any logical sense whatsoever. And when everyone else realises this, there will be an uproar and consumers will not embrace it, they'll ignore it. And that would be bad for both Apple and the studios.

Update:  The plot thickens, or gets more complicated anyway. The folks over at Engadget have put together a great chart that reveals that movie rentals are not quite as straightforward (or transferable) as Steve Jobs had everyone believe during his keynote address. The game changes whether you rent/download via iTunes or AppleTV. Oh, and it doesn't work with previous-gen iPods, and none of this applies to Windows PC users. They get nada. Hrm...

In case you've been in a coma for the past 24 hours, yesterday was the 2008 MacWorld Keynote Address by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. This is the big event when Apple unveils some of its new products to kick off the year, and the presentation for 2008 was a doozy. Here's a summary of the big announcements:

• Time Capsule: an Airport Extreme WiFi router + built-in 500GB or 1TB HD that syncs with Leopard's Time Machine for automatic wireless backups.
  
• iPhone: a bunch of new features including geo-locating Maps application, SMS to multiple contacts, WebClips (bookmark icons) and multiple customisable home screens.
• iPod Touch: new apps for the Touch include Mail, Maps, Weather, Stocks and Notes, in addition to WebClips and customisable home screens.
• iTunes Movie Rentals: rent DVD-quality movies for $2.99-$3.99 or HD movies for $1 more. Watch them on your Mac, iPod, iPhone or Widescreen TV using a revamped Apple TV that is no longer tied to a computer. Only in the US right away, and internationally by end of year.
• MacBook Air: "The world's thinnest notebook". Specs include: 3lbs, 13.3" widescreen, LED backlight display, built-in iSight, full-size backlit keyboard, multi-touch trackpad, 1.6 or 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, 80GB standard (iPod 1.8" HD) or 64GB SSD, and a battery life of 5hrs. There's no optical drive, but instead it has a new application called Remote Disk that allows the MacBook Air use another computer's optical drive over WiFi. All this and it's the most environmentally-friendly laptop ever built. I reeeally want one of these.

It's really hard not to be impressed. Seriously, this is hands-down the most slick and cleverly integrated family of hardware and software products on the market today. Nobody else is even close to touching Apple's offering of innovative computing solutions. Who cares about the enterprise market?!? From the home, to the studio, to the road, Apple has it figured out. I have a feeling they're going to make a LOT of money this year.