Cnet says:

The Ricky Gervais Show, one of the most popular podcasts on Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store, is moving to a paid-only format to be sold by audio book specialist Audible.

Audible plans to announce on Tuesday that it will start selling episodes of Gervais’ show beginning with a new “season two” collection of episodes, which will begin next week. Audible will charge $1.95 per episode or $6.95 for the season, which will include at least four episodes by the creator and star of television’s “The Office.” Audible’s exclusive deal also runs for a “season three,” which will start in the fall.

Now, The Ricky Gervais Show has been one of the top-rating podcasts on iTunes. The whole show is prety loose, very like that jokey style of morning-show radio. I’m not sure people are going to pay for it. My feeling is that people might pay for more ‘solid’ podcast content, particularly something that would benefit from two or more listens.
But we’ll see, won’t we? If it were me, I think I would have done a sponsorship deal for the show. After all, they have a lot of listeners. They might not have that many left after charging $1.95 an episode.

And after the meetup at Ginos a couple of us walked over to the Mint Leaf restaurant where we had a couple of glasses of Cognac and inked a rather exciting deal with the Seven Network. We’ve now committed to take part in a new reality show to be called “My Blog Rules” where bloggers from all over Perth will compete for readers and comments in a new crossover Web/TV show. And best of all there are prizes, with $1M for the best and greatest blog and endless promotional opportunities to follow. Barking Owl is going to be producing the web content part of the show with Richard Giles and The Podcast Network managing video and audio podcasts.

Exciting stuff, eh? If you want to take part, leave a comment here. Entries close at noon on April 1st. See you ON TV!

I’ve just registered for the Online Social Networking 2005 conference. This is a wholly online conference running for a couple of weeks discussing all aspects of online social networking.

It should be really interesting, both for the discussions of social networking and the experience of an online conference.

OSN2005 will be a summit for all those interested in working with social networking processes, tools, and media. In addition to attending many workshops, panels, and presentations by leading experts and practitioners, attendees will have the opportunity to be part of a community with a significant role in defining the future direction of online social networking. If you want to help shape this industry, come to OSN2005!

During the OSN2005 summit we will co-create and publish a manifesto describing what we want and need from online social networking tools. What are the key criteria for choosing and assessing OSN products and services? What gaps exist in currently available software and related tools? What needs to happen before it’s common knowledge that OSN products and services can deliver significant value? What are the most promising developments in the OSN industry?

This is great news. It is the first good thing to happen to copyrights in Australia for some time. It feels like a little bit of an antidote to the Free Trade Sellout Agreement,

Here’s a first hand report of the launch from David Jacobson. See also his highlights of the Creative Commons and Open Content Licensing conference proceedings. Thanks for putting them up, David. I really wanted to get to the conference and just couldn’t get there.

More info here.

They present an ever expanding set of beautiful and convincing manifestos from diverse people about things the need to be changed in the world presented as beautiful PDF presentations.

Download a manifesto and enjoy. Or propose one of your own.

All of the New Matilda website is free until 8th September, after which you will need a subscription to view some sections.