A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the convenience of being able to listen to my favorites blogs via audio. My own custom radio station, if you will. What if Instapundit could be read to me while I drive around town? Or BuzzMachine? Or while I'm at work? Reading is a singular activity - and while some reading requires a singular focus, most can casually play in the background. Just like talk radio today. I can listen to Public Radio or Rush Limbaugh while multi-tasking. I like that, but in those media I can't control the content. I must tune in at 10 AM here in Des Moines to listen to Glenn Beck. I must be listening on Saturday to hear "Whad'Ya Know." I want control. I want my content and I want it portable. Conversation is more than just words. In fact, communication is only 10% verbal. In a remote world of email and text messages and IM, we've created smileys and emoticons to convey the remaining non-verbal communication. But it's still not enough. As a whole, people generally don't like reading. Talk radio and books on tape and podcasts are quite popular. People like the communication in their ear. Voice conveys the nuances we miss in reading the words of others. I also mentioned in recent post that video isn't searchable. Nor is a podcast. You see occasional references to fast-forwarding to 7:12 in the audio or video to see a relevant portion. Neither of these formats offers a way to hyperlink to a specific section to hear or watch it. But text is searchable... So what if the transcript of audio and video were made available and each word was hyperlinked to that section of the audio/video where that word was spoken? We could use the transcript, the searchable words, to jump to the portion of the broadcast that we wanted. Let's go further... Mike Sansone tells me that blogtalkradio allows me to call a phone number and have my podcast recorded via phone. It can be just me, or a conference call with others. The whole thing is then transformed into an mp3 file and made available for me to offer as a podcast. Very slick and it's a free service. Many businesses offer their employees an 800 number for teleconferences. Everyone dials the number and the passcode and 10 or 20 or 1,000 people can join the call. And this service can record the entire call. Some services can also record the video or PowerPoint presentation. That's great. But what if it also made the conversation available via transcript-hyperlinked mp3 or mpeg files? Imagine the busy executive, who hears that the two-hour conversation in a project meeting today went bad. Normally, they would just call the project manager or other trusted source and ask what happened. But what if they could listen in to exactly that section of the meeting while on the drive home? They could scour the transcript, listen to the audio, or even watch the video at a time convenient to them. Would businesses pay for such a service? You betcha. Would people love to easily have control to compose the content of their own drive-time audio if they could? You betcha. I think all of the technology to make this doable exists. Who will cobble it together to make it happen? ETC: Jeff K gives me a link that leads me to Podscope, a site that does much of what I describe here. Very cool. | 
