Right now you listen to your local radio station waiting for the specific type of info you want, the weather update, the traffic report, the newscast. Suppose, instead of waiting for the radio to give you the stuff broadcasters think you want, you could get exactly what you want and need – automatically. The type of news stories that interest you, the weather report for your zip code, the traffic for your own personal commute?
And suppose it would all be automatically updated wireless audio? Just like radio, but tailored specifically to you?
Who needs the All-News station when you’ve got the “Your-News” station on your iPod?
Why wait for traffic when the traffic comes to you – for the specific route you care about?
This is at the heart of personalized on-demand podcasts, illustrated in this patent application filed by Apple for a technology they’re calling “podmaps.”
From the article:
“…a subscriber may desire a podcast that is somewhat different from the available podcasts,” wrote patent inventor Ellis Verosub. “In many cases, a subscriber is not interested in the entire pre-established podcast but would prefer to modify the podcast in some manner. However, there is currently no way for a subscriber to alter the content within a podcast.” To address this issue, Verosub again suggests a sophisticated backend content delivery system capable of generating, managing and delivering personalized media items for users — essentially, a means of creating customized news broadcasts that present only the content and information desired by the viewer. For example, a user could use an application like iTunes to subscribe to and personalize a podcasts that would automatically download and sync to a device each morning for viewing over Apple TV during breakfast or on an iPod or iPhone while on the way to work.
On one hand, some of this content could obviously come from your radio station. On the other hand, much of it could come from almost anywhere else.
The future will bring us easily customized audio (and video) information and entertainment, much of which comes from outside the confines of the radio industry.
Get ready.
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