It's Audcast, Silly

I've been following Leo Laporte ever since he started audcasting. He's shown a pretty good nose for serving the new medium of Internet distributed media, and while he may not have been first out of the gate, he's certainly been one of the best. As a practiced hand in television and radio, Leo has brought a degree of professionalism to 'casting that was dearly lacking in the 'casting community at large.

So given his position I've been struck by certain things he's done. He lacks a certain amount of perspective of his own value and importance and when dealing with topics of interest to himself. An example of this is an infamous episode of TWiT wherein Leo fawned over Steve Wozniak for an hour - quite possibly the worst hour of media ever produced (Yellow Lasers - kudos to Leo for being sensitive to but not undermined by criticism). I nearly unsubscribed from TWiT after that but I'm glad I didn't.

Speaking of rushed judgements and ill-considered decisions, Leo also seems to make decisions far too spur of the moment. There's one particular instant that sticks out in my mind when he was congratulating Kevin Rose on being featured on the cover of Business Week. John C. Dvorak thought the BW article wasn't actually very flattering and Leo turned his opinion on a dime and was passionately angry.

(I think it's possible that Leo's willingness to consider others viewpoints before his own might be part of his appeal - he's very approachable, so what I've described above might be unavoidable.)

Leo's latest cause, dropping the word podcast in favor of netcast, is a good one but also ill considered. Audcast and vidcast are the way to go instead of netcast. Here's a few reasons:

1. Audcast sounds like broadcast (and like podcast) - not so much with netcast
   
2. Audcast and vidcast aren't ambiguous like pod and netcast are - you know what kind of media you're getting. This avoids the problem of "get the audio podcast, not the video podcast," in the cases where there are alternatives
   
3. Audcast and vidcast are great for noobs - it's obvious you're getting media, not so much with podcast and netcast (am I getting pod? Or am I getting net?)
4. No threatening letters in the mail from Apple with audcast or vidcast
5. No unwanted associations with the iPod with audcast or vidcast
6. Audcast and vidcast can both contract to 'cast when you want to talk about all forms of 'casting. The terms 'caster, 'casted and 'casts also work when dealing with 'casts in general

I like Leo a lot and think he's doing a tremendous job. I do think, however, that he chose the wrong term to coin and has chosen a poor way to champion the cause. Instead of being shrill about Apple's legal tactics, I'd like to see alternatives with real benefits presented. And the only real alternatives, as I see it, are audcast and vidcast.