Great idea!

Can I ask how the podcast sounded while you were walking to the store? Level of background noise?
I know when I record a podcast I like to do it somewhere quiet...

I think theres potential, but the limitation needs to be recognised. Without some noise reduction software also built in, that is.

In some instances the noise might add to the ambience, sporting or music event for example.

I like the idea though, people would use it.

it would be a good idea to seek out an application that can record by filtering the noise or at the least identifying between the noise to filter the acoustics.

If one does not exist then this application could be created.

Also there could be an option to do this later when the podcast has been delivered to the website and an online tool allows editing of the audio.

I think this will have to be a custom application, but with title, description, tagging and a few other web 2.0 features would make this a prosperous idea.

The feasible options that I am foreseeing is;

1) via mobile phone browser
2) java based application

The java based application will provide a more appealing look to the solution.
Or either could give the option for a straight upload and the editing and modification could be conducted on the website.

If looking for a cheaper option then modify the website to provide a WAP url that is username/password protected. Provide a username and password when accessing via wap, once logged in provide title, description, tagging and then upload podcast. The website can reshuffle the submitted audio to the user profile automatically.

E115 -- agreed, the audio quality would be sub optimal. Still, the multi-tasking factor would far outweigh the quality drawbacks .. people with really busy lives don't have time to sit down for 15 minutes at home and record a podcast. However, if they can do it in their car on the way home when they aren't doing anything anyway .. thats a lot more useful. Also, if they can record a podcast and get it to the web without ever having to muck around with a PC, all that much better.

One further note: this type of application is PERFECT for cambrian house because of the access to a large crowd of developers and testers. Making this work on as many mobile phones as possible is no trivial task. CH would have a huge jump on the competition.

The question is if Cumbrian House is actually interested in the concept as a marketing campaign? They view may not be to endorse these ideas, but just to promote the service here, you would have to ask.

But from a PR perception there is a marketing method that can be applied quite easily if the service gets wrapped into a web 2.0 start up perception. The hype of web 2.0 start up alone could see the service blogged to the tech/geek community. This should be the initial target audience.

If the upload process is simplified and the actually modifications to the website allows a variety of features i.e. editing etc.

Another option would be to integrate twitter into the solution.

There is so much that can be achieved. One cool feature I would like to see is that once it is upload it gets shared instantly to other podcasting services that the user has assigned to via a website.

inet: thanks for the insightful comments.

Regarding the UI: What I would want as a consumer is the ability to manually push the file from the phone to the podcasting service using a variety of methods:

1. The phone's data plan (GPRS or 3G)
2. Bluetooth (which will require that an app running in the taskbar that will act as a repeater to relay the data from the phone to the web)
3. Wi-fi 802.11. In a few years every new handset sold will have 802.11.

In addition to being able to manually push the file, the software should have a setting to enable automatic push, where it chooses the cheapest and fastest way to send (eg, wi-fi) and goes into a retry loop. Eventually it might fallback to a less desirable alternative after a fixed number of failed attempts, like GPRS.

Regarding biz, marketing, CH, etc. I think its inevitable that CH will end up with their own podcast hosting service (CambrianPod) with some whizzbang core feature(s) that none of the other podhosting services have. This idea regarding capture/upload from mobile devices would really just be another "arm" of the CambrianPod service. It would definitely give a competitive edge though, because people want to record podcasts on the go, since it allows them to multi-task. Also other podcast hosting services will have trouble matching this feature, because it will literally take an army of programmers to develop, test, and support the mobile app on a wide array of mobile devices.

very good idea...

Make the business

if it hasnt been done good luck

Think audioblogging rather than podcasting and I think this is a good pitch. If you turn it into a business I will be happy to develop a prototype.

You might need to look at http://www.gabcast.com It essentially accomplishes your goal using a phone call to record the podcast. The people who created gabcast are planning to use CH for it too.

Hey techguy,

They look like they have a nice offering and thats definitely a useful service to know about... and yes there is a bit of overlap.

I don't think it necessarily nullifies this idea, however. If you are at home and want to record a podcast, I think gabcast looks like a great option. But if you want to record while you are on the move, I think this idea wins hands down over gabcast.

Dialing in via a cellphone is going to give inferior quality because they use low bitrate codecs in order to reduce network bandwidth, so basically it will sound awful. On top of that, you would be using minutes and possibly incur roaming charges. Although they offer a few international dial-in numbers, there is a decent chance you'll find busy signals or choppy quality with those dial-in numbers.

Many people wiill think 'Yeah, well I have a ton of unused minutes anyway'. That might be true for _you_, but there are a ton of users in the world that only use prepaid phones and pay for every minute. Or if they have a plan, they are just barely scraping by and staying under the limit.

Also think about this .. you might want to record a podcast on the top of a mountain, or on a desert island, or even in a cave. There are lots of interesting places where you might want to record .. places where you wont even have a prayer of getting a cellphone signal. Its an interesting inverse relationship -- the more inspiring the place, the less chance you have of getting a cellphone signal.

Does that get your vote?

I'm thinking capture-and-upload has been done. But maybe ANDROID devices could stream live? Has that been done? Does anyone see a demand?

Well regardless of whether the data is streamed/uploaded, ANDROID looks like a great platform to build upon. Great suggestion!

I think it should support both modes (streaming and upload).

Cool, this resubmission actually brought a member back to active status, AND its a pretty good idea. Nice work Gord and Branchcut.

TechGuy beat me to the punch about gabcast.com. In my pre-Cambrian House days, I was one of the developers of Gabcast, so I'm quite fond of it. LOL

great idea n makes lot of sense...and like GMD said if it live its beautiful :)

TravellingGuy says GabCast waited until an entire conversation was completed before it would compress, then host it for download.

I think the problem here is podcasting remotely has been done. You shoot a video or record audio. Upload it to YouTube or Blip.TV. And its ready for public consumption.

If we could stream a signal while it was still being recorded, that might be innovative. But I'm not sure its possible... the capture stream would be relayed in real-time, the web server would be accepting and transcoding in real time, AND it would be hosting an FLV stream. All that would be fairly new... but it would be very compelling.

Or perhaps interrupt the recording every 3 minutes for a moment so the last capture could upload while the current segment is being recorded. Less interesting, as a 3 minute delay would kill some social aspects of this. But I bet it could be built from existing components, and video hosting services.

http://www.mebeam.com/
Flash webcam conferencing. Knew there was Flash live streaming out there, but hadn't seen it myself yet. If a mobile video signal was being pumped in there...

Ditto E115: Good idea, but poor sound quality would kill it.

E115, daretoeatapeach... naw. If its convenient people will still use it, I assume we're not recording rock concerts here. Tons of podcasts are conducted over phones.

Goto http://cmap.ihmc.us/

Download and install
Klick on shared IHMC Public CMaps
Goto CambrianBrainMap
Click on Brains...and let's make one big CambrianBrain Map:-)

Perry

I don't know about mobile podcasting but you can post mobile audio blog entries using Jot.com

oops, that's Jott.com :-)

"If we could stream a signal while it was still being recorded, that might be innovative."
"Has that been done?"
Hell's yes it is called a answering machine. You can even use your computer if you have a wildcard for the phone all together.

Kevin_Cox ~ "Hell's yes it is called a answering machine."

And re-broadcast while its streaming! ON THE SERVER END. Hello incoming video stream, I'm transcoding you and sending you right back out. Even GabCast doesn't offer its recordings on its website until the conversation has ended.

One area you could look at is a little bit more low-tech and have the podcasting done via a standard audio call to a remote location. At that point you don't need to worry quite so much on the quality / horsepower of the recording on the phone and may be able to enhance the quality through higher-end tools on the remote server. LD is really cheap right now and can be part of the fee.

I think I've seen something like this once before so it may not be a completely new concept but definitely not well marketed.

The answering machine streams live. You can hear the conversation as it is being recorded.

You can do it streamed on the internet buy a wild card. You can even set up an entire phone system (With the right software) there is free Linux phone app. Except be warned wild cards are easy to break if you don't hook them up right.

I'll make no excuses nor prolong extrapolation...

I like this period!