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MIT Plans To Convert Cell Phone Users Into Podcasters
robyn217 writes "A new research project at MIT's Media Lab, entitled RadioActive, aims to turn every cell phone or PDA carrying member of the public into a podcaster, and every mobile device into a virtual podcasting studio. The project defines a large-scale asynchronous audio messaging system in which voice messages can be threaded like text in a discussion forum (like on Slashdot) as a method of 'discussion-on-demand.'"
MP3 ON THE INTERNET" confirm/deny
[x] confirm
Perfect! This is just what we need to get the general public even more convinced that they have a damn clue what they're talking about.
Another useless feature that I don't need on my cell phone. The phone companies will probably charge the heck out of it. Bad enough I'm paying $0.10 USD per instant message spam that I'm getting every month since I can't turn it off.
In Russia, you listen to podcast. In Soviet America, podcast listens to you!
As if there aren't enough totally useless text-based blogs filling up the internet, now our phones will be able to stream a constant flow of totally useless podcasts. I'm not sure which is worse, reading poor grammar in blogs on ugly looking websites, or trying to understand the voices of numerous self-important podcasters.
/. post was a min-podcast instead. How'd you like to try to listen to them all? The different voices (accents, etc) would drive me away in very little time.
Just imagine if ever
I guess what they REALLY need is a life. This is just bandaid'ing the underlying problem.
I mean, leaving video messages back and forth is no more useful than leaving text messages for one important reason: You lose the fluidity of real conversation/discussion. If I'm having a heated discussion with someone about something, it's nice to be able to get a word in edge-wise so I can properly have a conversation with them. And facial cues/expressions kinda don't work when you can't gauge audience reaction.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
... hundreds of people in geek-infested cities all shouting "First!" into their cell phones.
its only 'podcasting' in the sense that you're recording audio for others consumption. its much more about the discussions within a community (local physical/social context)....
For more info here's the project website
this was recently used in the elens project, and its video can be found here.
a live demo should be up this weekend
im the creator and i can tell you it was pc mag that used the term not i.
There are some very high quality podcasts and these will take approx 10 hours of editing etc per hour of audio, but for the most part podcasting is becoming a way for people to dump their vacant minds on audio. Podcasting is much like blogging in that respect except it is far easier to generate a crap podcast (push mike button and spew forth) and far harder to generate a good one (editing audio is harder than editing text). Further, for the reader/listener it is far easier for a reader to skip through a blog to see if it is worth reading than to do the same thing with audio.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Honnestly, some people talk so loudly on their cell phone, it's already some form of podcasting.
[x] Deny
An mp3 on the internet is an audio download
An RSS feed that contains audio downloads for the purpose of automatic and easy synchronisation to a digital audio player is a podcast.
People like the linked article don't know what they're talking about when they say that an ordainary download can be called a podcast. You could call it a threaded audio message board, but it wouldn't be a podcast.
One disadvantage to discussion boards that are audio based is that you can't search or index the information without some kind of speech-to-text recognition.
That said, what if you could search audio by speaking into a mic and having the search engine search for those sounds. An intersting case, humm.......
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
http://www.vaestro.com/ is already doing this in a web based version. It is pretty clear to see how this could be integrated with a mobile phone interface.
www.wisdomproject.net The open source think tank.
I live in Tokyo half the year and I'm much more likely to see people video conferencing or using 3D GPS mapping, or using it as a credit card than using the grandpa phone. Of course people hardly talk on the phone in Japan. My Japanese calling plan give me 50 minutes of talk time a month, but unlimited text messages (the most popular plan with my carrier). In hind sight I should have gotten the 10 minutes of talk time plan. My Japanese phone I bought about 6 months ago has TV (with DVR) 2mp camera with "flash", full featured GPS (integrated with train schedules, etc), miniSD, barcode reader, music service, Java and Flash player, English and Japanese dictionaries and a bunch of features I've never bothered translating. All for about half of what I paid for my craptacular Razr. I never did figure out how to do half the crap on my Razr, but I can use most of the features of my phone in Japan (In a language I, for the most part, can't read) because they designed and engineered it well. I'd be happy with an American phone that just made calls, however I'm sure someone would screw up the UI to even make that stupid.
To stay on topic...
It's a shame that a company is trying to make money by increasing noise to signal when everyone knows the money is in the signal, not the noise. (Ask Google.) Maybe they're going to make money by charging people to not have access totheir crap.