Server migration

Over the next 24 hours or so .. that is from Fri 15 Feb to Sat 16 Feb .. we are migrating the core scouta services onto a brace of fancy new servers. So, we might have a little downtime during the transfer, but if we do, we’ll be back really soon.

New Version of Scouta Agent

We have just released a new version of Scouta agent for Windows and Mac. This version of Scouta Agent improves performance when syncing by only sending modified information to Scouta. Caching of RSS feeds between syncs has also been improved reducing network usage where possible.

Windows users can download Scouta Agent here and Mac users can download from here.

Existing Mac users can upgrade from Scouta Agent by clicking ‘Check for a new version of the Scouta Agent’ in the menu. Existing Windows users can upgrade from Scouta Agent by clicking ‘Check for Updates’ in the menu.

How Many People Listen To Podcasts

Just over a month ago I ran a quick analysis over Scouta’s data, and found that a small sample showed that possibly only 10% of downloaded podcasts are consumed to any degree, and only 50% of those are consumed over 50%: Are Only 10% of Podcast Downloads Consumed?

We mentioned then that we’d do another analysis after a few more weeks with some more data. Today was that day, and we did another quick analysis: the numbers look smaller over a larger data-set.

A sample of 17,821 podcasts and video podcasts, with 166 members subscribing with iTunes, showed that only 4.5% of the shows are consumed more than 50%, and only 7.5% are consumed more than 10%.

If you’re a podcaster, and would like to know more about how people consume your podcasts or video podcasts, then let us know. We can help you do an analysis based on your content.

Scouta TV Episode 0

After several days of post production, which I hope to blog about, Scouta TV Episode 0 has been released.

The aim of Scouta TV is to bring great video and podcasts directly to you via a video podcast. Each fortnight Grum, Say and I plan to release a new episode that focuses on the latest and greatest videos that Scouta discovers online. If a video is watched a lot or rated highly then we’re likely to find it and highlight it on the show. So if there is something you’d like us to see and talk about, then make sure you bookmark it at Scouta.

Podcamp Perth A Huge Success

This weekend Perth held Australia’s first Podcamp. It was a roaring success, with a huge turn out, great sessions, great feedback, and much fun had by all.

We had a number of people come across to share the event, including Cameron Reilly (The Podcast Network), Nick Hodge (Microsoft), Stilgherrian (Internet and Media Consultant), and Duncan Riley (Techcrunch etc.) made a trip up from the south.

Personally I’d like to thank EVERYONE who helped and attended. The event wouldn’t have happened without everybody voting for the event to happen in Perth, and also it a *camp literally needs everyones involvement to be a success. So well done all.

Check the Flickr tag podcampperth07 for a good collection of photos of the two days.

What’s Happening With PodTech?

I discovered on Techmeme that Fake Steve Jobs has a rumor, which given the source should be taken with a truck load of salt, that Podtech is going under.

I’ve Twittered to see if Scoble is about — it’s a good method to touch base with him — to see if he has a response. It would be very unusual that he doesn’t make a comment as soon as he sees the blog post.

It’d be a shame for them to go under. Although I don’t think there content is great, the model is interesting.

We’ll see what Scoble says.

Update: Scoble’s reply via Twitter: “The reports of PodTech’s demise are total bullshit. Companies with millions in revenues do NOT shut down.”

Twitter Storming: Real Time Market Research

We’re constantly working on making Scouta easier to use, and easier to understand. It’s definitely an art and a science getting everything right.

The other day someone mentioned to me that the new front page to Scouta, is harder to understand than the older one. So I through a question out to everyone on Twitter, and over a 30 minute period indulged in a brainstorm with a bunch of people. Proving how useful tools like Twitter really are.

The end result is the new blurb on the front page: “Finding you great video and podcasts.” It sounds so simple, but getting a nice and simple description can often be difficult. More work needs to be done, but I’m really happy with the new blurb.

Thanks to Duncan Riley, Bronwen Clune, Myles Eftos, Gary Barber, Harriet Wakelam, Jodie Miners, Mike Minutillo, Twenty Seven, Elias, Chris Barraud, Kate Quinn, and Hugo Sharp. Hope I didn’t miss anyone.

YouTube’s H.264 File URL

When YouTube announced that it was going to re-encode it’s videos to H.264, we got pretty excited at Scouta. Flash is a great format for the current web, because all the major browsers support it. However, for mobile content, Flash isn’t the best.

Podcasting has taught us many things, but the most important is that media portability is incredibly important. So, we hoped that YouTube would quickly provide a way for everyone to access the H.264 files. If that happens, they’d make it possible for Scouta to automatically provide YouTube recommendations to iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, and many cell phones.

We’re still waiting.

So, today I grabbed a little command line application called tcpflow, so that I could watch my home network when I browsed YouTube from my iPod Touch.

Here’s some of the output.


GET /videodownload?version=0&secureurl=sAAAALxRpszUgT
K_K_xaZ04iy5tG5s0RQGCogbu2j7BRaDGlNUv_oRDCosYqQ2m
hyWH6ROC25CylWLkipiikyQ97c3BCl2u1oDLrNNmn8NfBQVH7
K586K8rKe9duBiKIrFEfZ46utV6egrAmilzAKQOnpUG8YNA8Oz
6Jhzcv6Hx7wHsnESwNF9XrwO_pnP1x5O7W367U3uI585NSGf
f0UapBOQO-1rkBSaoA3g8yExqnvjVvY-rhOOFptCTRaPPjjvfy5g
&sigh=cdwzKab_vQuTVjgHSBfXHDBtB4Y&begin=0&len=96000
&docid=-4739947727435681593&rdc=1 HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Cookie: PREF=ID=5af2541129cf8155:TM=1190888574:LM=1190894284:
GM=1:S=6a4wxk3bXXUt_t7a; SID=DQAAAIAAAACnwx-TfmGUo8rZC25O
UipW5UUislyZM3MJBYVws8uJJOIrF75qawK5Q-PzADqxKJcrv1BES7ELImq
kiM-xZLvGe0c4PvhR-pYD0xXqHgVVNuAp44oQtyoXCwPIUB_vRXNQR5GK3
dv_NPLdKBd0W312_q3xu66fD412BaeGJ_-c0A
User-Agent: Apple iPhone v1.1.1 CoreMedia v1.0.0.3A110a
Connection: keep-alive
Range: bytes=0-1
Host: annz.vp.video.l.google.com


This shows us the host, and the URL that the iPod used to grab a YouTube video. Put it together and you get:


http://annz.vp.video.l.google.com/videodownload?version=0
&secureurl=sAAAALxRpszUgTK_K_xaZ04iy5tG5s0RQGCogbu2j
7BRaDGlNUv_oRDCosYqQ2mhyWH6ROC25CylWLkipiikyQ97c3
BCl2u1oDLrNNmn8NfBQVH7K586K8rKe9duBiKIrFEfZ46utV6eg
rAmilzAKQOnpUG8YNA8Oz6Jhzcv6Hx7wHsnESwNF9XrwO_pnP
1x5O7W367U3uI585NSGff0UapBOQO-1rkBSaoA3g8yExqnvjVv
Y-rhOOFptCTRaPPjjvfy5g&sigh=cdwzKab_vQuTVjgHSBfXHDBt
B4Y&begin=0&len=96000&docid=-4739947727435681593
&rdc=1


Several interesting things are immediately evident.

First, it’s not simple to convert a normal YouTube link to this H.264 URL. Here’s the original URL:


http://youtube.com/watch?v=vjhSp7xGsMc


Second, they’ve implemented security: a secureurl parameter.

Third, you can’t open this URL in Firefox. Opening in Safari has a different result: the .mp4 file downloads. So it would seem they have implemented a couple of security features.

Understandably Google/YouTube want to protect their business to some degree. But, it would be nice if YouTube would open up the H.264 URL to potential partners. After all, the wider their content is available, the better their chance of monetizing. Right?

So, consider this an informal “pretty please” from Scouta to Google: Please allow us to access your files in H.264, pretty please.

Are Only 10% of Podcast Downloads Consumed?

Scoble mentioned in Twitter today that Eric Nolan “doesn’t think anyone watches my whole video.” I’m assuming that Nolan makes that comment in a recent vodcast that Scoble published, but I’m not sure. I’d have to download and watch the whole show, and based on some recent stats we’ve pulled from Scouta, there’s only a 10% chance that I’d watch any of the show, and only a 5% chance I’d watch more than 50%.

Now, don’t get me wrong, these stats aren’t definitive. There based on a very small sample size:
- 117 people
- 4329 podcasts

Here’s what the statistics look like randomly.

Here’s what the statistics look like with the most listened/watched shows through to those that aren’t consumed at all.

So, based on this very small sample, only 10% of downloaded podcasts are consumed to any degree, and only 50% of those are consumed over 50%.

As far as we know, this is cutting edge information. I’m certainly not aware of any hard data about podcast consumption, because usually the statistics are based on number of downloads.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be playing with these statistics some more. Undoubtedly we’ll have much more data to play with, and we’ll have a pretty clear idea about how many people consume the podacsts they download.