Locasting Directory

Yahoo chief Carol Bartz was recently interviewed by the BBC said that she wants the firm to focus on personalised and "hyperlocal information" for users. "It's about what is going on in your local area," she said. Speculation is rampant that Foursquare is about to be bought and that Yahoo is bidding. We'll soon see...

The nice Brits over at audioboo.fm agree with us that audio has been left behind in the recent blast of social networking advances. If these guys have their way, that's about to change. With integration with Facebook and Twitter and apps for iPhone and Android, audioboo.fm looks to be ready for the next wave. For some reason, audio recordings are called "boos" on the site, hence the domain name. I dunno, maybe you have to be British to get it... I tried the Twitter integration and, after a few missteps, was successful in sending a shout-out to my tweeps.warning: as of early May, the site is still beta.My first attempt seemed to lock up my display and I had to reboot (you must accept/deny the request for location before continuing). Otherwise, it was a good experience, if a bit clunky. I used my netbook built-in mic, which requires a java applet download. After a few clicks, I had my audio content uploaded and ready. Another few clicks and the tweet was sent as well. Welcome to tweet shout-outs! Next, we tried to find some cool audio. They have a "featured boos" section for that. Good thing, as the search is limited. They have tags and some kind of text search. I tried entering a location search using a city and state. Surprisingly, it did find content right in my small town, but did not give any nearby hits. New York as a search term is better, lots of results. Entering random words gave us a few creative "boos" to enjoy: a drawn finger-puppet, recorded arguments, personal diary entry, ice cream truck music. Once I find my iPhone and pick out my new Android phone, we'll get to the mobile review.  

That's right - your car may soon be downloading and playing your podcasts if Ford has their way. Tech pioneers Pandora and Stitcher have gotten involved and are providing content and audio clients. Speech-based control is provided the Sync, the software that controls the system hands-free. For more info, check out Digital Buzz's write-up.

Stitcher Radio is an iPhone app that provides a slick dedicated podcast client. Stitcher comes deliciously close to integrating location with audio content, in this case, podcasts. The "stations" are basically search categories for the various podcasts. Stitcher's form of locasting is limited to geographic region, "stitching" together podcasts from local podcasters, including local media, newspapers and radio stations. To find the locasting area on your phone, select 'local' from the main menu. then either select your current location (first selection), or your geographic region. Regions are limited to a few major US cities, plus perhaps a dozen more international locations. Although the Stitcher has steadily released mobile clients and now support (or will support) these devices: iPhone WebOS (Palm Pre, pixi) Android phones Blackberry MyFord Touch (in-dash entertainment) The user experience is not far from listening to streaming podcasts on the web. There doesn't seem to be any streaming; podcasts are loaded completely, if you believe the status bar. Playback does begin early, but sometimes the delay was up to 20 seconds despite a good connection. There does not seem to be any preloading of the nexct podcast. Stitcher is currently ad-supported. The mobile ads take up a small area of the screen. Podcasts also have their own ads, of course. Overall, the execution is impressive: clients work, there's enough content to be interesting, and pretty much anyone with a smartphone or computer can listen. However, there's a certain lack of imagination here. The focus is content delivery, not content, so it's basically what can be 'stitched' together. The service could benefit from more focus on production and organization. Although the podcasts seem to be sorted by location to the phone, they don't often relate to the local area. It's simply whichever basement with a podcaster that's closest. Given the state of geotagging content, that's about all we could expect; oh, welll, Stitch On!