As long time listener to audio podcasts such as Leo Laporte’s TWiT network (Windows Weekly is among my favorites) and Creative Screenwriting Magazine, I can say I love listening to podcasts. There are many great shows that I have sampled, and I’ve found that I much prefer listened to audio podcasts instead of video.

The first reason is obvious: audio shows do not require your full attention. One can listen to a show while driving in the car, doing menial chores or eating lunch and allowing you to stimulate your brain while doing routine or mundane tasks.

Given its nature, video shows generally work best in shorter format. You have to be at a screen and it requires one’s full attention. That’s not to say that long-format shows cannot work. I have enjoyed Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show, Jason Calacanis’ This Week in Startups and Stupid for Movies from time-to-time, but I find it difficult to stick with them because of the screen requirement and, given their hour plus length and without an audio-only alternatives (which some of them have), they are more difficult to fit into one’s schedule of content consumption.

Also, because video requires much more production time and expense, they are consequently more limiting in terms of who has the resources to produce them. This leaves the door open for some smart entrepreneurs to bootstrap a good idea and get it off the ground with little investment in the audio realm. It also means that content producers must focus more on that what of the content instead of the how and, in the end, that generally compels podcasters to make sure they’re creating intellectually stimulating content.

This is certainly not always the case, nor does it rule out the possibility of a video show accomplishing the task of stimulating the mind. However, in general, audio shows tend to be more about ideas as such and allow for more in-depth analysis of a subject as they can be more liberal in their production length.

Such low overhead in producing audio podcasts has its negative side. While the door is open for successful shows to exist on extremely niche topics, this also means there is a lot of bad content out there one has to sift through. But generally, when you find a good one, they are extremely rewarding and enjoyable.

I do not want to say that video shows are unworthy of attention. They can be more lucrative for content producers as they command much higher advertising rates. That’s not to be discounted. The potentiality for higher profits nets bigger investment in such content, and people will make take time to watch a show if it’s good enough (see my article: Eight Reasons to Quit Cable TV as a first point of instruction for how to clear some room for any video podcasts you might be inclined to watch).

But, for the reasons discussed here, I think people tend to be more loyal to the audio shows they do consume. They’re easier to fit into one’s busy schedule and audiences therefore have more time to get to know a show’s personality and style. As a result—and content permitting—there is higher potential to become more invested in these types of shows.

Ratings by movie reviewers are ubiquitous, from thumbs up or down to a star-rating system or any kind of sliding point system. Are they a waste of time that should be avoided and abolished, a necessary marketing tool to pull readers in to read reviews, or an objective measurement of the reviewer’s overall evaluation of a movie?

During my days as Managing Partner at Box Office Mojo, when the site still published movie reviews, we struggled with this question. Initially we used a letter grade scoring system.

However, the grading system was a source of consternation for us and our reviewers. Readers of the site would often write in and say, “How could you give such-and-such movie a C+ and then give thus-and-so movie an A-?!” Some of them clearly had not even read the reviews and were writing solely on the basis of the grades—and in some instances readers hadn’t bothered to notice the two reviews were written by different people. Sadly, such trifle led us to decide to do away with the rating system.

(In July of 2008, we sold the company to Amazon.com, an acquisition for IMDb.com, which Amazon owns. Post-sale, they decided to stop producing reviews which, incidentally, was probably the right move for the company as they were a money-losing proposition and generally disliked by the site’s readers).

I’m not sure axing the rating system was the right choice. The need for succinct headlines was still there to draw attention, and we found ourselves changing our headline policy to be more evaluative in order to draw readers in. We had avoided a specific rating system per se, but succumbed to the purpose a rating system is meant to employ.

That purpose is to draw attention. Whether for a movie review or a headline to a news article, there is an objective need to draw the readers’ attention and state why an article or review is important.

Arguably, a rating scale achieves that purpose in the quickest way possible. It is a succinct, immediate advertisement of the reviewer’s evaluation of the movie. It can also help the movie-goer who doesn’t like to read reviews prior to seeing a movie be given an indication of the review without having to read or know anything about the movie prior to seeing it.

However, a rating is not a substitute for a review, so those who try to compare one movie’s rating to another’s are dropping the context of the overall purpose here. How could I give, for example, the movie Liar Liar an A while giving an A- to We Were Soldiers? Both are very different movies and in some ways I like We Were Soldiers better (click here to read my review of Were Were Soldiers).

But a rating is not meant to be used as a comparison tool to rank different movies and that is not its purpose. The rating pertains to the movie in question, and should indicate whether the movie was interesting, entertaining and/or fulfilling on its own terms. It is a teaser or overall summary of the reviewer’s evaluation and only that. A reviewer should expound the reasons for liking or disliking a movie in his review.

(As an aside, reviewers should only assign a rating after they’ve written their review, and make sure their rating matches what they actually say about the movie. Otherwise the reviewer could find himself trying to justify his initial rating rather than focus on what he has to communicate about the movie.)

So what is the best rating scale to use? While there are no hard and fast rules, I believe a scale of one to four to be ideal—whether stars or letter grades or some other method is used is not important. The lowest rating should be reserved for an “I hated it” or “very bad” evaluation; the second for a “mixed” review, and then two scales of positive: “liked it” or “pretty good” and “loved it” or “excellent.”

Just as the concept “big” gives an indication of something’s size, but is no substitute for its more precise measurement, so a movie rating give an indication of a reviewer’s evaluation of movie but is no substitute for reading the actual review.

A recent article in The Financial Times titled “Net Neutrality Comes Back to Haunt Google” demonstrates why Google should stand on principle in its business practices and should give one pause in advocating Net Neutrality.

Many in the tech industry advocate Net Neutrality, which is the idea that all traffic transferred over the Internet should be treated equally with all other traffic. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner are most people’s conduits to the Internet. Net Neutrality would force ISPs from throttling or prioritizing traffic through their networks. For example, some ISPs have slowed down or blocked certain types of traffic (or even prioritized other types of traffic), such as heavy users or traffic transferred by certain applications such as those involved in illegal file sharing or voice over IP data transferred by applications like Skype.

Before you jump in and say whether that’s good or bad for customers, consider that these companies own these networks and as such, it is their right to set the terms for their service. If customers do not receive the quality or quantity of service they want, they are free to select another provider (or no provider). They do not have the right to dictate how ISPs must run their service.

Google has advocated Net Neutrality, according to the article, because they believe the lack of Net Neutrality will hurt their business. But now they are under fire on a new front but up against the very principle they have been advocating. Some now want to regulate search results on the Internet, and dictate how Google must rank their search results.

Why? Google has “too much power,” the argument goes, with respect to sending traffic to sites on the Web. They determine who gets placed and how high up Web sites are shown in search results. A small change in search engine positioning can make or break a business, and an entire industry has been borne around search engine optimization (SEO) by businesses in order to exploit the value Google has created for Web publishers.

But it is Google that has created the value of search in the first place, and to dictate how they must run their business is a violation of their rights and an attempt to expropriate the value they did not earn by that which they did not create.

Google commands such “power” because it has won customers over in terms of the value of their search engine. From recipes to song lyrics to news articles to photographs, Google will help you find the most relevant content on the Web in the most convenient way possible to you. That is their purpose and that is the core of their business, and they have won customers over by being the best at it and, as a result, earned the position of the dominant player in the market.

But to force Google to modify their search results by force will destroy this value, and that is exactly what proponents of “Search Neutrality” desire. They want to make Google give results to customers according to their standards and whims, and determine how search should be optimized, not by the free choice of customers (such as by creating a competing search engine that is better than Google that customers want to use), but at the point of a gun. How did Google gain the dominant position in the marketplace? Blank out. They just are, and they want a piece of it–a piece they did not earn and cannot win legitimately.

That same threat is currently being faced by ISPs by telling them how they must run their business. Google had better wise up to the principle involved here and defend ISPs rights and oppose Net Neutrality, or they won’t have a moral foundation to stand on when regulators come after them as their next target.