Audible's podcast measuring system
Dave Winer has posted on Audible's announcement of a podcast listening measurement system, with two quips on how the scheme might work.
If he is correct that the Audible requires both content producers and media users to lock into Audible's proprietary .aa format, it seems they've drastically missed the mark on what fueled the podcast medium. First let me say that good content and the lack of better alternatives in terrestrial radio and satellite no doubt is the primary driver. But the MP3 format also had a bit to do with it, especially after users became comfortable with the format during the Napster days.
MP3 worked for two reasons. First was that it provided quality at a reasonable cost. The integrity of the sound was just good enough at the cost of a 3MB+ download, which was nothing to scoff at in the days of dialup. If I was going to spend 30 minutes downloading it, it better sound good. Second was the relative openness of the format. By openness I mean that media device manufacturers were not stifled from enabling their devices to play the MP3 format through a restrictive central organization with whom they had to have a formal agreement. (NOTE: this seems to be changing as Thomson, the current patent holder, realized what they had. See http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty. The lack of anyone actively enforcing patent rights and extracting royalties kept things moving at a fasat pace. Media software players were in the same boat.
Yes, MP3 has limitations, notably its lack of bookmarking capability and that its compression and quality have been superceded in recent years. But it's now a standard and standards, once they've taken hold, are tough to change. As just one example, ask Novell and Microsoft about TCP/IP.