To Pay or not to Pa(treon): The reboot of the podcast.
Jul 05
Having the chance to literally unplug from the daily rush of being a freelance entrepreneur (read: hiding out in the north of France for a week), has given me some time to sit down and think about what I want to do with the Knightwise.com website and the podcast. Don’t worry, we are not going away anytime soon (the fact that nothing has actually been moving on the blog for the last couple of months is evidence of that) but I do need to make up my mind on what to do next, what to do with the “next season” of Knightwise.com
Knightwise.com is essential
Knightwise.com is and has always been the digital playground of my life. Keeping track of new stuff, experimenting with technology and sharing that with the community has been one of the most rewarding things I have done the last 13 years or so. Even though I don’t have much time anymore to get into my “geek groove” because I am insanely busy with my own company, I know that “being” Knightwise and “doing” Knightwise.com is an essential building block to stay sane. I just need that creative outlet AND it’s a great idea to keep abreast of whats going on on the edge of real and cyberspace.
Downloading is doubtfull
With the advent of ubiquitous bandwidth in every corner of the modern world I HAVE been looking at the “classic” way I have been distributing the Knightwise.com podcast. Recording the audio file, uploading it to the internet archive, linking it to the website and then pushing that content to different social media platforms to get traction is .. a pain in the rectum. When you look at the average number of downloads it might be worth it, but it is hard to find new followers and “get noticed” by people who can join the community. As a little experiment I did a Youtube screencast a couple of weeks ago (Completely done on my Linux machine) and posted that online. 4 days later: 20 000 views AND a SLEW of comments. Now I KNOW its not about the SIZE but about the QUALITY of your audience, but still: its a BIG number. Part of the reason was using the platform: Youtube just has a far bigger “reach” then just a teeny wordpress blog like mine. I asked myself the question: is the “old” way of doing podcasting still effective enough ? Maybe we should quit downloading and offer all of the content on a bigger platform.
No I’m not gonna sell out.
Hold your horses, I’m not gonna sell out just yet. With over 1000 articles on the blog there is no way I’m going to ditch my little website here. And I don’t trust the lords of Youtube enough to credit them with all my content. Luckily this is not an “Or” but either an “and” problem. How about we do BOTH ?
Thank you TC
I was inspired by the return of the Spacemusic Podcast. TC followed his dream, packed up his stuff and moved to Malaga to reboot his podcast. He is doing a “streaming” version of the show on platforms like Mixcloud and a “Download” version of his show via Patreon. For 6 dollar’s a show you can get the downloadable version via a secret RSS feed and you get a premium non-stop version too. (Although I find the show LESS enjoyable without TC in it). He makes a buck out of every show he produces and that doesn’t sound so bad to me.
So what do you think ?
Now I’m pretty late to the Patreon Party and there is a reason: I don’t NEED to make money off of Knightwise.com but it WOULD be a little bit of a motivation AND a big help if I need to buy some stuff for the show. I know you have heard this before but it WOULD help me stay true to the general Knightwise.com idea: Free for everyone, at a cost when you want “more”.
As for the “content” part, it WOULD mean that you would be getting the majority of the content from the blog while the content itself will be streamed from the different platforms (Youtube/Soundcloud) and depending if I will be doing Audio or Video you can download the shows into your RSS reader of choice. Sound like a good plan ?
So help me decide: Would this be a great way to get your Knightwise.com fix and would you pay (about 1 dollar or something) per show just to be able to download it for Offline use ? I would love to hear your feedback in the comments.
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Server week : Why not “roll your own private little cloud”.
Mar 10Cloud services. We love them ! All you need to do is hand over your email address, use the same password you have everywhere and sito presto : Before you know it you are using yet another free service that does whatever you require. From handling your email, to storing your documents, from chatting with your friends to keeping track of all the Care-Bear stuff you track on line .. there is a cloud service for everything.
We are not always the customer, sometimes we are the product.
What most of us forget is that, unless you are paying for said service, you are not a customer, but a product. If your free cloud service has any plans about staying in business and paying that giant hosting bill for that ‘free storage’, it’ll better have a business plan. Most cloud services make money by selling you adds that you click on. The people who PLACE the adds are the actual customers of the service .. YOU .. are the product. This might not be true with a paid service ( Another way of working for a cloud service might be to get you hooked with a free account and then make you UPGRADE into a subscription plan). So if you are using that favourite cloud service of yours, ask yourself : Am I ok with being “The Product” ?
Just “Who IS” the cloud ?
Behind every fancy logo or snazzy name is a company. That company can be a multi brazillian dollar company who buys up instant messaging clients for sixteen billion the way you buy new socks. It might also be two crummy guys sitting in their moms basement remote controlling their servers somewhere else. You only see the flashy logo, you never read the terms of service (just click agree-agree-agree) and have no idea of who might be looking at your data. Who knows you may have signed over the creative rights of your summer snapshots to the cloud company that turns it into a “Free online picture-slideshow”.. because you never read the terms of service. And for the sake of argument : What if there is a problem you can’t fix ? Who are you gonna call … Chances are you will probably get to talk to the REAL Ghostbusters before you get a living person on the other end of the line at your “free cloud service”. So are you safe ? Is the data yours ? What happens if the bubble bursts and the service goes away ?
So what if you rolled your own ?
If you make it really simple you can say that cloud services are just servers running on applications. ( But they are actually spread out on servers all over the world and are optimised for coping with a LOT of simultaneous users). But what if you don’t need that ? What if its just you and your dog using them ? Then you could basically run them yourself right ? The answer is : YES. It takes some tinkering and having at least one machine that is online for most of the time to make sure your “private cloud” is accessible but aside from a little patience, a spare machine and an internet connection, its about ALL you need.
I don’t trust cloudy skies.
This week we boldly choose to chose “DISAGREE” on the terms of service of the cloud providers, we decide NOT to trust their free business model and we venture out on our own little geeky adventure : Rolling our own private cloud. The luxury of a cloud service, but being run on your own hardware, in your own home (or on YOUR webspace) with YOU in control. We will try to show you some great examples of just how much fun you can have while being your personal cloud provider. Most if not all services we will setup can be hosted on a Linux virtual machine and are accessible from any operating system (or device) that is capable of connecting to the internet.
Enjoy.
