Posts tagged Soundcloud

Blogging by voicemail using Soundcloud, Tumblr and IFTTT

I’ve set up a group Tumblr for GENE, which is what we’ve called our little group of artists and creative folk. We haven’t figured out exactly what we’re going to post there yet, but every group of arty types needs a publication and these days a group Tumblr is de rigeur.

Most of us are plugged into the internet all day and night, but George lives on a boat with no wifi and no smartphone. He checks the internet once or twice a week. This probably makes him a better poet, but it also makes him an unlikely blogger.

Soundcloud

So I came up with a cunning plan. The only way we can ever get hold of George is by phone, so why doesn’t he call in his blogs from the boat? It took a few hours to find the right combination of bits and bobs to make it happen, but I got it working in the end using Soundcloud and IFTTT.

It turns out Soundcloud has a little-known importer that accepts audio by phone and has local numbers for the UK, US and Germany. You call the number, leave your message, press 5 to make it public and bingo, you’ve made some internet.

IFTTT (If This Then That)

Soundcloud has Tumblr integration, but it will only post to your default blog. Since GENE is a group blog I had to find another way. Luckily I’ve been looking for a reason to use IFTTT for ages, and it does the job swimmingly. I linked it to George’s Soundcloud account and the GENE blog, and created this simple recipe to post the Soundcloud embed to the Tumblr blog with a little message underneath explaining that George had phoned it in:

Watch this space

Of course I still need to sit down with George and explain all this to him before he’ll have any idea what it all means, but at least it works. We can all look forward to some impromptu Chopping in our dashboards…

HTML5 audio and selling stuff

I was reading an article by Kroc Camen called The Theft of Creativity where he reponds to this quote from a Flash-lover’s article called Stealing was never easier than with HTML5:

HTML5 makes adding video and audio content to your site very easy but there is currently no way to protect that content. If we’re all completely honest we know that content protection is still a big deal for record companies, movie studios, and TV channels, yet HTML5 puts their content just up for grabs.

Obviously this is the kind of writing that will get the nerds up in arms, and it panders to the egos of Flash developers and people who make money from “premium content”.

That issue aside, I’ve been having a nightmare figuring out what to use to stream, share and sell Little Fish’s new single, Wonderful.

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Life after Myspace

Now that Myspace is finally on its way out, wouldn’t it be cool to build a simple DIY Myspace alternative so that when the fearful hordes of musos come flying over the hill they can huddle around something warm and familiar?

I know there are great sites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud, and I’m not talking about competing with them. I want to use them.

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Some ideas for Dogs Running Free

Dogs Running Free: ideas by ihatemornings