AudioBLOGGER

February 27, 2003 7:12 PM

Say hello to audioBLOGGER - a service ("simpler than publishing a text post") that lets bloggers post 2 minutes of audio to their blogs from any phone.
posted by boost ventilator (21 comments total)

Call me old fashioned, but isn't "driving down the road" and blogging sound a little too dangerous?
posted by boost ventilator at 7:13 PM on February 27, 2003

BUZZWORD ALERT: "audblog" enters the arena, first in its weight class, for UGLIEST WORD EVER award
posted by kevspace at 7:24 PM on February 27, 2003

A. Couldn't they have come up with their own logo?
B. A user would have to give them their blogger name and password? Yuck. This seems like it would be a good fit for a publish and subscribe scenario, rather than giving them the keys to your blog.
posted by machaus at 7:27 PM on February 27, 2003

Finally, we can see the horrible writing on blogs translated into the Intro to Speech 101 "uhm....ah..... so uh...." torture.

Please, please, allow this only to be used by people who know how to present themselves.

And AudBlog Phone Sex. Definitely leave room for that.
posted by Stan Chin at 7:34 PM on February 27, 2003

So this is a pay service, after the free tirl runs out?

If this were Slashdot there'd already be a team of nerds working on an open-source equivalent...

I think if you were to take a little of this and a little of that it shouldn't be too hard to whip something up.

Not that I'm really looking forward to whiney goths being given another medium of expression, but information, once free, still wants to be useful.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:47 PM on February 27, 2003

Finally, everyone can hear my deep, cathedral-filling baritone as I talk about feeding Oreos to my dog.
posted by Hildago at 7:47 PM on February 27, 2003

Or perhaps something a little simpler.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:49 PM on February 27, 2003

As far as names go, I still like Oddpost.

Am I the only one who never clicks on audio links on weblogs? The first prominent weblog with audio was Jish's experiments more than a year ago, and even he conceded that it wasn't that compelling a medium.

I like text because I can quote it and copy it and link to specific sections. And I can read text weblogs at work, without speakers or headphones. Or on my PDA's tiny screen. Or in an RSS aggregator. Audio doesn't succeed in any of those applications.
posted by anildash at 7:54 PM on February 27, 2003

AudioFilter - now we can all harass each other in stereo.

Would a community "audblog" be the answering machine of the future?

This also makes skimming a whole lot harder.
posted by ArsncHeart at 8:06 PM on February 27, 2003

This is the same service as AudBlog, as far as I can tell. Noah from AudBlog/listenlab registered the domain.
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:21 PM on February 27, 2003

I am jack's disinterested cochlea.
posted by shoepal at 8:51 PM on February 27, 2003

The act of writing often imposes some amount of coherence on raw thought. Now, with the advent of audio blogging, webloggers can be free of this limitation.
posted by chipr at 9:08 PM on February 27, 2003

hey. i saw this just the other day, but it was called something else ...

nope. wait. it's the same thing. and still only blogger compatible. no thanks.
posted by grabbingsand at 9:19 PM on February 27, 2003

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a two minute audio clip worth?
posted by smackfu at 9:33 PM on February 27, 2003

To go against the negative grain here, I think Audblog/Audioblogger/ListenLab is pretty cool.

I've used it on my weblog a bit. Here's an example.

I've spoken with Noah Glass about the future and they are working on interfaces to Movable Type and Radio. I think they will have Radio working very soon.

The future of this tech is what intrigues me. We discussed there plans to allow speech to text translation and posting. Imagine speaking your post into a phone, and the text gets posted on your weblog.

The expectations of the MeFi crowd that every possible feature must be included upon launch and the Slashdot crowd that if you can cobble it together from sourceforge parts the new thing sucks is unreasonable.

Give it a try, I think you'll find it fun.
posted by Argyle at 10:32 PM on February 27, 2003

Dave Elfving at greasyskillet.org was the first person I've ever seen to use audio in a weblog for daily entries. He used QT and they were not just audio versions of his text entries, they were unique. That was back in early 2000, perhaps even late 1999.

I'm not sure whether it was lack of time, bandwidth, or interest that made him stop but, IMHO if there are dibs on "being first" then, credit should go to him.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 11:07 PM on February 27, 2003

I'm not convinced that audio is the best medium for weblogging. Sure, it's interesting and novel, but it's not ... beefy. Here's a direct quote from my site:

"Personally, I'd rather NOT click on a "listen to this" link, download an mp3 file, and then get to the content. It's not that it takes too long (though it could) or that too much effort is required, it's just that I'd much rather scan over lines of text. With text, I can quickly scan ahead to the next paragraph, and jump back and forth at will ... with audio, I'm pretty much at the mercy of the speaker. Once I've clicked, I'm committed to listening to the entire audio file, I'm not able to predetermine if it will be of interest to me. The addition of a short summary helps (i.e. "this audio will tell you about my latest purchase"), but it takes away from the nature of the audioblog ... you might as well bang out your thoughts on your keyboard.

Granted, there are some instances where audio is warranted and adds flavour to the content (to hear the author's inflection, an instrumental clip, or to record something "as it happens"), but in most cases text appears to be the format which best transmits the message."

Of course this is all related to my experiences with jish.vox, which I experimented with almost two years ago.
posted by JISH at 11:22 PM on February 27, 2003

Perish the thought that people would rather read the written word than to listen to someone with a scratcy voice and no training talk about whatever is on their mind.
posted by benjh at 5:14 AM on February 28, 2003

anildash: thanks for linking to jish's experiment. i haven't seen it before.
for commentary, linking to an mp3 can be a bit difficult.

jish: i like your audio experiment.

i can think of a lot of different ways audio can be interesting on a webpage or blog, but audio containing only someone's voice seems a bit too close to being like talk radio or something.

a great non-voice audio page (not a blog) that is updated weekly with sound clips is quiet american. i'm doing a semi-daily blog of sounds but i've been slacking a little lately.
there are tons of great audio pages on the internet. though many are related to public radio somehow.
posted by alicila at 9:33 AM on February 28, 2003

Finally, we can see the horrible writing on blogs translated into the Intro to Speech 101 "uhm....ah..... so uh...." torture.

oh um like hell (gumsmack) yes i agree! SHUT UP MELANIE I'M ON THE PHONE ... uh ... so brad is like .. rilllly CUTE and uh this movie? whaaat? this movie? oh i uh liked it but it kind of sucked. and uh BRAD IS REALLY CUTE

audioblog by SUZY (audiocomments: 3) record a comment
posted by Peter H at 10:35 AM on February 28, 2003

"Imagine speaking your post into a phone, and the text gets posted on your weblog."

I just saw X-Men 3 and boy, it wasn't so great. I mean OH SHIT I think I just ran a red light! Heh anyway as I was HONK SCREECH CRASH (two minutes of silence)
posted by kevspace at 5:26 PM on March 1, 2003