I was on my way back to Piccadilly Station in Manchester last Wednesday evening when I heard one of @Documentally’s classic Audio boos – saw this:
And clicked on it and heard the Boo. And this is the Boo:
So I thought, wouldn’t be good to tell @Documentally that I was in Manchester and I was sorry I’d missed him. So I made this:
And then, of course, this being Digital Britain and all, I couldn’t upload it. At least not until I got home. Wifi on the train wouldn’t let me upload it and the 3G connection wouldn’t play ball either.
So we had this conversation on Twitter:
Using Audioboo as a discursive medium
And then I had another idea. What if a group of us decided to use Audioboo to discuss a theme or topic, have a debate or argue about something. We could tag them and listen to them, creating an archive of the discussion. Next steps? Find a few people to test it out?
excellent idea, and it also means you are archiving history… future generations will unearth this stuff. mega.
(course it will only be with urban types, us rurals still way behind you guys yet) 😉
chris
I am curious. I am not sure I get Boo: it feels too much like eavesdropping. And I can’t get Boo – the site says it is iPhone only, thereby limiting their users to the few – yes, the few – who use an iPhone.
One of the things about audio for me is that, unlike text, you can’t easily scan it – maybe there are search systems out there that would help one find the bits that interest, but I don’t have them.
I can really see the benefit for “citizen reporting” – capturing the scenes of the G20 demonstrations, for example – and paying witness; but for general use, I think I prefer text. Plus you can’t link in audio…
I also see the benefit of audio in learning/training programmes – something I have been thinking about with Twitter (a post in the making!).
As a discursive medium, why not record the conversations themselves – over Skype, say: posting alternate (or multi) sides of a conversation almost seems to defeat the object.
(Still, I used not to get Twitter either; and now I am addicted. So feel free to discount my views!)
Hi Brian,
I wouldn’t use Audioboo for this unless the responses etc went to a completely different RSS/timeline. My boo’s in my feed on http://www.audioboo.net are my new podcast. No they aren’t edited in any polished way and quite often they are just thoughts thrown into the stream. Never-the-less, should someone subscribe to my feed in iTunes they will get standalone audio and if i do mention other audiboo users etc I try to include the whole context i the one boo.
12seconds tried the same thing and I had a strop asking for replies etc to be taken out of the main time line.. they were and i think this has kept 12seconds a great platform uncluttered by the chaos of the conversation but also incorporating it. If Audioboo could do the same thing but still maintain the integrity of the feeds I would be all up for it. 🙂
Maybe a new app in the pipeline..? 🙂
Hi Chris
If by ‘you guys’ you mean me – I’m rural as you should know, despite being 60 miles from London. The only reason I have decent broadband is that a little local company inherited a Fixed Wireless network. So I nominally have 2 MB symmetric (just did a measurement, I have 2.5 down and 1.5 up at the mo). When the weather is really bad it’s slow and it’s not mega reliable.
I am in a ‘notspot’ – my village has very poor or no broadband. We share this problem with about 120,000 households in Kent.
As far as archiving is concerned; yes. As it happens, I had a request from the British Library a while ago asking if they could archive my blog as apparently it is of ‘research interest’. So all this will be part of their Blog Collection. Cool eh” 🙂
Brian
Hi Christian
Hmmm – I see what you mean; your use of Audioboo as podcast which is clearly in the spec (otherwise why provide the iTunes capability) does make it a bit tricky.
Some way of tagging content or possibly routing it selectively might work.
Thanks for the comment!
Brian
Hi Patrick
Audioboo feels odd at first; but I think it’s only eavesdropping in the same way radio is eavesdropping.
Your scanning point is a good one also – it’s why Liveblogging is valuable even when there’s a live stream of audio or video from an event. Afterwards you can scan the notes and see if you really want to listen through an hour of event audio.
I was playing with the idea of asynchronicity (rather like Twitter or e-mail) and whether it’s even possible to sustain an audio-based discussion in this way. It may not be!
Thanks.
Brian