I think I appreciate why people were blogging live  at the show   It's nearly three weeks now and  while many other posts have gotten into the way  the utility of finishing these is more for my own records for next years show 

I'd like to do a what's it all about  and  believe that readers should apply a "it's seems to me"  filter.  As mentioned prior the  physical space the show took up was disproportionate to the virtual space represented , I'm  not obsessed by  "toys"  but the lack of hands on gear was disappointing to me. I recommend  gear all the time   yet here I am  largest show of the type and  sparse selection of items  mostly in an unusable condition so I'm really hoping that manufacturers  wake up. It's not often niche products  (Field recorders being one) find a new consumer application and wouldn't it be nice to staff the shows accordingly?

Convention Food: Res ipso Loquitor 

Vender roundup (part 2) 

Nokia:

Showing off the N91 phone with podcast support. 4gb  mobile player that can take in podcasts via various wireless (or just attach it to the pc) 

Trying to find yet another way to turn a phone into something of a personal media empire.  Damn strange that .My bias. Cell phone service has reached the "good enough"  category for most people so the impetus to actually work on phones that function well as phones has been waylaid to stick more features in.   The UI invariably sucks and until a saner approach to marshalling all the features 4-5 layers deep in the menu appear viable( I'm sticking with my  phone as a phone, my camera as a camera and the PDA  as a pda.  Having said that   this is one nice looking phone, the price? circa $600 unlocked  Er this is where it all falls down.  Good phone, good social camera and an ipod can be had separately for the same.  Mobile podcasting while a buzzword compliant phrase doesn't seem to have taken off  despite  more capable and even customer phones the real problem lies at the  network level. Locked phones with hobbled features and dataplans to make  Croesus think about a two year bondage ( That's an industry confident in the service it offer eh ? " for a phone that ceased to be cutting edge by the time it hit these shores.

 A take on mobile podcasting that I really like? 

This company,  Fonpods takes the mobile problem and solves a large portion of the carrier's intransigence. While it's not ideal for all content , and  useless when flying,  it's as simple as a phone call.  Yep they are serving up podcasts on demand  when you call in you get to listen to your channel, or theirs.  For a mobile workforce that you don't want IT to  support yet another program this could make a lot of sense.   Enjoyed my chat with these people ( whose card I've lost)   You can  set this up to accept input from the user too, how neat is that?     An example is that every year corps have to "train"  ( insult the intelligence of) their staff in the latest bid to avoid lawsuits.  People call in, you know the number, they listen to the " stealing from your employer while photocopying credit card receipts is bad MMk"  offering then touch tone their responses to the course material.  ( basic problem, neatly solved)

 The "holy grail"  for some and the Anti-pod for others. How can I charge for my podcasts?   ( Ignoring Itunes content, and Audible they are already well known)  the choices for non custom programming whereby you can  monetize your feed by allowing subscribers to pay for content)  Bitpass has one,  I've used it as a customer but it has issues . Minimum order amount limits people that truly only want your content. e.g I do 15 minutes on a subject and charge $.50   and they would need to have  $3 from the user to fund the account. ouch  There's also a disconnect between me and the customer ( least you used to not get info from your users) 

Another  company showing a solution  was Subscribecast Technologies which also uses a secure RSS feed to track and safeguard the media.  This is one of the most interesting areas  that podcasting can  address outwith the niche programming  , and  adding in the idea from Fonpod on using feeds for business communications this could be one further step to removing the physical workspace .

I've omitted many of the trackers, and advertising inserters which may be trying to shoe more into the medium to make it work like the old one that  , at least the enthusiasts think so , podcasts are replacing.  I hope it gets a lot smarter than that

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Will this ever end?  Surely there can't be many many more posts?