Phlogging IT with ipadio

My Phlogs from ipadio is my latest addiction!

ipadio allows you to broadcast from any phone to the internet, live. Phone blog, commentate, collect audio data, record and update the world or simply let your mates know what you’re doing – ipadio is integrated with Twitter & Facebook

In today’s society immediacy is all the rage, and ipadio allows you to immediately capture your thoughts, observations and views on audio directly to the web, including your site and social networking favourites. It is as easy as making a phone call, with the one added step of adding the PIN code for the account you are recording to. I am using it from both an iPhone (very efficient application to download) and the Nokia N95 (just a regular call). You can register two phones per account, so I have the landline as well, not that I would ever really use that, and you can use Skype so long as you have a Skype Out set up.

If you are planning on using it with Skype then you need to call the number as normal, but then rather than get a confirmation that the number is registered and a request to enter your PIN, you are told that the phone isn’t registered at which point all you need to do is to enter your phone number that you registered on the account, and then your PIN number and you are good to go!

The web interface is atractive and easy to use:

As you can see there are a number of options to share your phlogging (after all what is a good phlogging worth if kept to yourself eh?) including RSS feeds (mine is below), following on ipadio.com, Permalinks, Embedding etc

If you are phlogging from your iPhone then once you have phlogged don’t forget to hit the Your Phlogs button as that provides you with a range of editing options including:

• Change the title
• Add tags
• Add a description
• Allow the location to be used
• Add photos

i.e. everything that you can do on the web interface. This is a great feature, but it can be overlooked until you get used to phlogging!

Facebook, Twitter and Embedding on your site

Goes without saying that the integration with Facebook and Twitter is seemless and exactly as you are no doubt used to by now ….. click on the button and follow the instructions! As for embedding the channel on your site there are three options:

Please note though that the channel embed option is only available to a certain amount of the early adopters, although long term it will be available one way or another to all users.

Using Phlogs for Interviews

I suspect that most people will at least initially use the application to do some live audio blogging to their sites, as we will be on Almerimar Life, or to record reviews like I have for this one, but another use that we will hopefully be using on both sites is the ability to record and post interviews!

Two way interviews are easy so long as you can run a conference call from your phone. You just call your interviewee, put them on hold, then call ipadio and conference them together and you’re off.

By way of example check out:

• Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson in a Sporting Greats interview.
• Journalist Guy Clapperton interview of Mike Brace non executive director of ipadio

and of course the interview I did with John Duffy (below) we recorded as well.

A slight hiccup

Registering I had a (very) slight hiccup. Initially I signed up via the web, which was absolutely fine, but I then decided to download the iPhone application and that sort of signed me up again, so the net result was that I ended up with two PIN numbers allocated to the same phone number, which seemed to confuse the software a little.

It appears that the system should match new iPhone accounts with existing web accounts, but for some reason didn’t pick up the 00 in one of my numbers. I think that is because I used the +34 rather than 0034 when I entered my phone number!

The upside of this is I got to chat and communicate with a number of the ipadio team who were all extremely helpful and accomodating. They got my issue sorted out just fine, and have tightend the logic so that it shouldn’t happen again BUT to be 100% I would probably suggest iPhone users started off signing up with the iPhone application as after all that is what you are going to be using most if you have an iPhone. It is then really easy to sign into ipadio.com with your iPhone number and PIN and edit your profile which is what I did when setting up Sands account on Almerimar Life Strays

Now I am not technically expert (as you know) but I suspect this is probably some security level with Apple not letting applications poll for a number from within the application …….

I also decided it would be really cool to do some phlogging on my Road KIng Classic. I have a Garmin Zumo 550 that I connect via bluetooth to my iPhone and Jawbone 2, and you can use the Zumo as a ‘conduit’ to make calls. Works great, but it falls into the Skype scenario above i.e. it doesn’t recognise the number so you would have to enter the number as well as the PIN. I figured the PIN was just about safe enough on the Harley, but to enter the whole number too risky BUT next time I will set it all up before I start riding and it should be fine ….. watch this space as they say!

An Interview With John Duffy, Director Nemisys

Where did the idea for ipadio come from?
• We were running the web site for the European Hockey Championships in 2007 and the “live commentary” consisted of a stream of notes typed in to a laptop. And so a chance conversation over a beer lead to the idea that you should be able to commentate live to the web using a mobile phone. We tried to find such a service, couldn’t, and so our developers got busy and came up with a solution.
• It’s frustrating now, but ipadio sat waiting for the next suitable sporting event for over a year before we launched it.

So when was ipadio first used?
• Our first proper use was in November 2008 during the Transat Classique Lagasse classic yacht race. The guys on Infanta used their Satellite Phone to broadcast live from mid-Atlantic during the crossing

Where do you see the revenue streams for ipadio?
• Commercial use, definitely, and the difficulty right now seems to be reigning in the ideas whenever we talk to people:
• Sony Ericsson used ipadio to field journalist and consumer questions as part of a press launch for their Greenheart phone. The press launch was in the form of a webcast, with ipadio fielding questions to be answered during the webcast
• In internal communications, anywhere a company has a large workforce on the road ipadio has some interesting applications. For example, a trial is underway with a large telecoms company to help them reach their 7000 people who are on the road. Ipadio can push live or pre-recorded calls out to small teams, larger groups or even all 7000 people concurrently. And because it all happens within the telephony system, we can offer services such as in-call polling (push 1 for ‘yes’, push 2 for ‘no’) to gain a consensus from the workforce
• There is also a role in consumer communications. We are talking to newspaper groups about the use of ipadio on phone-in competitions, and of course the prospect of hearing your voice back on the web is a compelling offer to them

What about news journalism?
• We’ve been surprised at how slow news organisations have been to pick up on it, but we believe that ipadio will become a serious tool in news journalism over time, just as Twitter is. Because it works from any phone, news organisations will set up an account that any of their reporters can call in to whenever they can’t get to an ISDN or Satellite phone, or whenever it’s imperative that they can talk live. On Tuesday, ipadio was the last form of broadcast communication still open to the Free Gaza Movement’s boat as it tried to break the Gaza blockade, even once their radios had been jammed.
• With even the remote possibility that a reporter will find themselves by chance involved

What about future development plans?
• Almost too many to mention, but the highlights are:
• An updated iPhone application that will offer the choice to “record and upload” rather than broadcast live.
• Editing phlogs after they have been made, particularly useful for journalists and serious bloggers
• MP3 upload, so that people can phone in when they are on the road, and use higher quality kit when they are back in the office
• Further integration with social media and blogging systems. Blogger is done, and WordPress will launch shortly.

As you would expect we recorded the interview using the conference facility that I mentioned above:

RSS Subscription

If you would like to subscribe to My Phlogs RSS feed then you can right here, and of course if you are a phlogger let me know in the comments below and I will happily follow you.

Phlogging In The Wild

For Rugby fans Gareth Chilcott (Cooch) has been phlogging from South Africa during the recent Lions tour, while the charity Scope have been using it in their Time to Get Equal Campaign

A Little About ipadio

ipadio is a wholly owned subsidiary of digital communication company Nemisys. Nemisys provide websites, database and communication solutions to sport, charities, government and business.

ipadio came about after Nemisys built several sites displaying live results from sports events. However uploading data into web forms, e-mail or text message dampened the excitement of sport and live broadcasting from events was often too pricey, with expensive people, connections and specialised kit.

It was whilst one particular competition was being displayed online using a scrolling chat method that the founders of ipadio (who were talking on their mobile phones about the challenge) wondered why it wasn’t a simple task to stream audio from a telephone though a website in realtime. A year of development and one filed patent later (GB0820862.1) ipadio was born.

If you haven’t worked it out already, I LOVE ipadio!!!! The quality is more than good enough, the ease of use is brilliant and the uses for the application are immense!