Sorta a mention of the iPod shuffle I bought Dawn (not completly accurate either, oh well)..plus a great story about podcasting and The Dawn and Drew Show, which is what counts most:

MiPod or yours?

Couple's oft-racy talk show, podcast from home, draws a global audience

By KATHY FLANIGAN
kflanigan@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Feb. 8, 2005

When Dawn Miceli and Drew Domkus settle down after dinner for a talk, they're never alone.

iPodcasting

Photo/Jim Bovin Drew Domkus and Dawn Miceli recently got 12,000 hits for their downloadable talk show, making it one of the more popular shows available through iPodder.org. That’s up from 64 hits in the fall.

Quotable

The whole goal is making the person feel like they’re sitting in our living room with us. - Dawn Miceli

Quotable

We're gaining friends around the planet because we just talk so casually. - Drew Domkus

Related Links

dawnanddrew.com iPodder.org

The walls have ears - digital ones.

Miceli, 28, and Domkus, 33, broadcast their chats to an international audience. From the living room of their 1895 farmhouse in rural Wayne, the couple yak about topics ranging from Miceli's unadulterated love of porn to . . .well, frankly, it's tough to get past that one topic sometimes.

The young marrieds - the piercings in their tongues are their engagement rings - are podcasters, amateur talk-show hosts armed with a cheap microphone, a PowerBook hard drive and no supervision from the Federal Communications Commission.

"The whole goal is making the person feel like they're sitting in our living room with us," said Miceli, who likens the show to overhearing a couple's conversation in public, but with permission. Think audio blog.

On Monday night, the atmosphere was casual; a sweat-shirted Domkus sipped a soda from a spot on the couch next to Miceli, his laptop open on the coffee table. Occasionally, their four miniature Doberman pinschers barked in the background.

30-minute show

Three or four times a week, the couple said, 10,000 people download the 30-minute "The Dawn and Drew Show," which would make it one of the more popular shows available through iPodder.org. iPodder, developed by former MTV veejay Adam Curry, is one of a few programs that allows listeners to download free audio files, usually MP3s, directly to an MP3 device, so they're portable. Or you can listen the old-fashioned way by going to the couple's Web site. (Because of the site's risqué content, a warning page appears when viewers go to the site.)

Any topic fits. Miceli, an artist, is prone to conversing about sex, her farmhouse and her lust for Curry. Meanwhile, Domkus, who is in charge of technical support for a Milwaukee business, is agreeable to playing the husband who's not quite up to his wife's erotic appetite.

The talks are unscripted, but they can have a topic. On Monday, Miceli, her dark hair framed by magenta bangs, urged her husband to take their show to a hobo convention. A past show was all about the word indigent. On another, Miceli described an adult movie she was watching.

"It's kind of low brow," she said of the show, then shrugged. "It's just somebody's life."

Miceli remembers the first night they attempted podcasting last September.

"We just sat down and pressed 'record,' " Miceli said. If podcasting were human, it was a newborn then.

The couple met a decade ago. Domkus, a California native, was in a band on tour in Milwaukee. Miceli went to hear the band because a friend promised her a turkey sandwich - a story made for a podcast.

Podcasting pioneers

After 66 shows, Domkus and Miceli are considered podcasting pioneers. In a few months, podcasting has grown exponentially, helped along by new technology and holiday sales of digital players. Now, the number of regular podcasts is more than 800, according to The Associated Press. And the software to retrieve podcasts is growing as quickly as the audience, Domkus said. The radio industry is keeping an eye on the popularity of podcasts, in the same way that newspapers track the impact of Web logs.

Domkus was incredulous when 64 people listened as they started podcasting in the fall. A recent show got 12,000 hits.

As expected, fans aren't the quiet types. When Miceli talked about a brush with a woodchuck, an emergency room doctor in New York expressed concern about her health. When Domkus said he didn't have an iPod, a faithful listener sent along his old one. They received one of the new shuffle iPods in the mail the first day they were available in the stores. A listener in Shorewood claims to have lost 25 pounds listening to "The Dawn and Drew Show" while on his treadmill. The couple touts it as "the Dawn and Drew diet."

"We're gaining friends around the planet because we just talk so casually," Domkus said.

The show's often risqué content can make some people queasy about listening - Miceli's mother, for one. Her father has made two appearances, enough to draw his own fan base. Still, "He thinks it's a little dirty," Miceli said.

There seems to be no forbidden subject except podcasting itself; it's the one thing Domkus said they won't discuss. But "public shaming," as Miceli calls it, isn't out of the question. Listeners were asked to send letters to Miceli's sister while she serves time.

"We just talk about our day," Domkus said. "We talk about world domination. Well, Dawn talks about world domination."

11:43:35 AM  Comment [] Trackback []   

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$50...Geez....$50....

MUCH THANKS to Richard for the amazing donation of $50!!!!

This thing is really taking off..we are about to cross the $200 mark...it would be awesome to do that today.

Richard leaves this note:

Note:

Never let down. mc$c from www.pullwithbothhands.com

We are at 29% and have:
Amount collected:      $178.83

Awesome job everyone!!!

8:06:58 AM  Comment [] Trackback []   

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