AN HISTORICAL THING is happening in Ireland this summer--audio streams are connecting people interested in sharing advice, ambient sound and random thoughts while in their gardens. And thanks to Audioboo, this exchange of social audio just got easier with clever semantic audio tracking technology that makes easy work of hooking together disparate conversations in one simple button on an iPhone. There's an iTunes link that fixes a problem with listening to longer boos, adds audio scrubbing to long recordings, puts a "more" button at the bottom of the screen for the boolist, opens Google Maps and fixes some minor bugs.
This clever app works on iOS4. There's nothing like it for Android.
If this technology was used by Peter Donegan, the prolific gardening booster from north Dublin, garden landscapes could be connected by audio streams. That's because Audioboo now allows selected people to open a topic with an audio clip, then Audioboo sets up a response thread that helps listeners leave comments and cross-talk. Audioboo extends work that Robin Blandford did with subscribeable audio comments. You can subscribe to streams and easily contribute to them using Audioboo. It's like leaving a voice mail to someone but being able to listen to anyone else who left a voice mail related to yours. Even better, if you subscribe to Audioboo streams by using a program like Google Listen, you get to hear all the audio comments in reverse chronological order. I can see how this could significantly enhance the level of engagement for students attending my college lectures.
When Audioboo founder Mark Rock visits Dublin on 27 June 2010, I'm going to meet up with him and a small group of social audio advocates. I hope he'll open Audioboo streams to his Irish fans because I'd like to put an audioboo stream into my gardening. I'd also like to put an Audioboo stream into my teaching material, further leveraging the power of pocket media for my third level creative multimedia students.
Streams from Audioboo is a paid feature. With a subscription, you get multiple streams (allowing me to assign response items to different groups of students), moderation, widget embedding and technology that is evolving. Audioboo has a tiered pricing model, so I hope that means I can get an educational or a social inclusion rate. According to the first information I've see, "the big corporate version comes with a moderation interface, so you can choose which boos are published to your stream or just keep choose to them private and download the MP3’s for use in other places.
I've convinced my toddler that Sunday will be too hot to go camping and that means I'll be part of the Pubboo that will start at 7PM on 27 Jun in Dubin's Dawson Lounge. I'm looking forward to meeting the Boofather then.
Mark Rock -- "Streams and an updated iPhone App" on the Audioboo blog, 23 Jun 10.
Follow Bernie Goldbach on Audioboo.
