Don on antitrust

MP3's, please.

The usefulness of sound files is in their facilitating multi-tasking. Everyone's reasons here against video, including the one about having to download or use special plug-ins, speak for me.

Martinf,

I have a tad of experience in this, see my screen name.

Think of Don's talk as testimony to a jury whom he is trying to convince of a specfic idea.

As a lawyer paying for Don's testimony you would reject instantly the notion of him speaking of one thing while confusing the jury by showing posters that contain entirely different words. You would demand that the visual aid be syncronized with Don's talk in order to reinforce his points, not detract from them.

A jury or listener can only effectively concentrate on one or the other and if you want them to get both, sync them and make the video longer if necessary.

We out here in listener/reader land are the jury. Your video confused the issues, it did not promote them and it was in your showing words that Don had not spoken and was not speaking.

I am not being contentious, I am offering what I consider beneficial criticism.

I'm the one who edited that video. I have edited one more like this one, the same style. What I do is to choose an excerpt of some interview or lecture about some (for me) interesting topic and edit it in video.

I know it's better to have an mp3 to listen to it while doing something else, but that kind of videos aren't substitute goods for mp3's. It's a way some people watch those videos and think about it. It might change their minds.

I am an audible person primarily. I learn as much or more by listening than I do by seeing. Not that seeing doesn't improve things, but it is not necessary.

However, I found the text to be not syncronized to the voice and that was distracting. To have a voice saying things that were not presented in text is not good. One's eyes are trying to tell the brain one thing where the ears are telling the brain something else entirely.

However the subject of competition is very interesting to me and I hope you address it again in a context where that is the focus of the post/blog.

I don't like it. I thought I was gonna see the actual video footage but it's just still images.

I prefer the mp3.

As someone who listens to the podcast while on-the-go, I would never use the youtube format.

I would, however, be interested in graphics that would display on my iPod as I'm listening. Many podcasts display a different image every few moments as the program plays, so it might be feasible to display succinct factoids during the course of an Econtalk broadcast.

That would be a nifty bit of added-value in my book.

I will depart from the current trend and comment on the content (while agreeing that YouTube is a somewhat awkward venue for an audio clip, I thought the "text-over" was very helpful -- I would use this with a class).

Of course, Don is right-on: historically, entreprenuerial (market) monopolies, as opposed to politically granted monopolies, are characterized by two things -- increasing service levels and decreasing prices. As I tell my students, market "monopolies" are paranoid; they know what they need to do to stay on top. If I remember correctly, at least one oil man that Rockefeller bought out, he ended up dealing with more than once (and by all appearances, willingly), as that man went out and repeated his earlier success and made his new companies attractive to Standard.

The cost of using YouTube exceed the perceived utility I would receive from it.

I detest video formats that require me to use particular operating systems and browsers. It's like brands of gasoline that only work in certain brands of cars.

I'm also in the mp3 camp. I listen in the car, gym, bicycle, etc.

Well, it's the right medium for context-rich communication but you used plain text for most of the cognitive prompts. (Wrong tool.) This type of presentation works better with the voice-over 'talking through' images that support the terms used by the speakers.

I second John in preferring the mp3's. I believe one of the great values of econtalk is the long stream of related ideas, building upon and linking to eachother. Jumping into the middle of the conversation like this loses a lot of the flavor and richness of the podcast.

I think I prefer the mp3s. It's nice to listen to it, while being able to do other things (like commuting).

I like it the way it is, but if I'm not "on the go" a real video would be better than this.

Russ' voice + Don's Visage = Dennis Miller.

OK, Chachi?! Can we please have real video?