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Useful Devices for Audio Weblogging?
Henri Poole asks: "I'm advising the Kucinich Presidential campaign on technology and we are looking for an audio webblogging solution. Kucinich's assistant plans to log his own travels and would prefer to do so via voice. We're looking for a device with the following functionality: phone, web, email, audio, and calendar. Verizon is the preferred (but not essential) service and they are advising that we buy Samsung or Kyocera equipment. We'd prefer a free software solution...any sage advice?"
VoiceMonkey is a new service that lets you do voice logs. Right now it's in beta, so it's free. You call a toll-free number and it records your message as an mp3, which is immediately available online. If you have an existing journal through Blogger, Livejournal, or a host of other services, it can post to them automatically.
I think you should find out whether this assistant actually has a clue what a weblog is, and report back to us. Does he/she imagine that there are people who actually will want to listen to this stuff? Or is there another agenda -- maybe the assistant wants to take voice notes for the purpose of later writing a book? If that is the case, just use a private voicemail box with a large storage allocation.
Another way would be an audio recorder (Archos) or even a small tape recorder, a line in jack on a sound card, and a few perl scripts to upload the newest recordings to a web site. Almost any geek should be able to slap this together.
An audio blog does have the cool factor of being a new thing, but the problem is listening to audio is so linear, it consumes human time to a much greater degree than text. There are no shortcuts with audio (short of tricks that are unlikely to materialize just yet in your particular weblog). I would have the same problem with a video weblog.
The assistant was tasked to make the candidate more visible on the web. The assistant got the candidate on Slashdot.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.