Apple's HomePod new voice assistant, plus podcasting's distributed future

Apple promises a new device, the HomePod - the company’s entrance into the Amazon Echo and Google Home space. Has obvious benefits for podcasting and on-demand audio (as well as live radio), though Apple’s website seems to only promote music as a use-case for the HomePod. They’ll cope if you have more than one HomePod in the same room, and balance each other out (not sure if that means stereo sound), and do multi-room synchronised audio with AirPlay 2. Can’t work out whether it will allow use of Spotify as well as (or instead of) Apple Music. Out in December, in US, UK and Australia (the latter is interesting, given that neither Amazon Echo or Google Home are available in Australia yet). Apple also announced MusicKit, a way for apps to play full tracks from Apple Music (presumably, subscribers only).

• 11 podcasts for anyone who wants to get smarter about money in 2017 - listicles like these are clearly useful ways to get names out of podcasts, and this is an interesting example: there’s a “listen first” link to an episode the author particularly likes. Something to emulate?

  
  Jul 22 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• AudioBoom, which hosts podcasts in the US and UK, keeps its NY-based PR agency, Diffusion.

• A blog post from April from Doc Searles. “Nobody is going to own podcasting”, he argues - which is probably good news. It’s a precis of a conference he went to at Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and worth a read.