Getting sound out of an iPhone and online quickly has been pretty easy for a while, and there are a number of startups playing in the space. Trottr works from any phone and is a simple call-in or upload system. The Tweetmic iPhone app has been gathering lots of speed in the U.S. due to its ability to publish on Twitter – but it has no attached social network. But it’s AudioBoo.fm, launched in December last year, which has been making waves with an iPhone-only app which works very well.
However, a new entrant, ipadio, is potentially about to steal AudioBoo’s thunder with a new iPhone app which covers all the bases: live streaming audio into a web page; high quality uploads from the iPhone; live phone-in service; upcoming Android app – plus, crucially, a business model.
Released to the public at the end of April the existing iPadio iPhone app is simple enough. However, not unlike BlogTalkRadio, it was based around making a phone call to get your audio online. But the new version of the existing ipadio iPhone app [iTunes link], poised for approval in the App store, brings a ton more functionality to the platform.
What the new app does is now give the user a choice. You can make a live telephone call via various global numbers (it works in the US, Europe and Asia) which are designed not to be premium rate – I did it today with the Yahoo/Microsoft press call. Ipadio tells me they make no percentage out of this call other than covering costs. In addition, it does something AudoBoo and other can’t – live stream your audio to the Web via a phone call. The call can be of an unlimited length. A premium “all you can eat” SpinVox/ipadio service which will cater for up to 10 minutes of text conversion, with users charged a small fee.
In addition to embedding calls to other systems and web sites, ipadio can also trigger updates automatically to Facebook and Twitter, while with, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Blogger, Posterous and Windows Live Spaces it creates a new entry with the player embedded. Users can subscribe to ipadio “phlogs” (a pretty bad phrase I hope they dump) via email, RSS and iTunes.
But the new and more powerful addition is recording not via a scratchy phone call but via the iPhone’s in-built mic. This creates dramatically better audio quality, the ability to pause and resume (as with AudioBoo) and, a very long recording time: up to 60 minutes. The file generated also gets automatically geo-located on a Google map.
iPadio is also announcing a deal with Spinvox, the voice to text service which recently launched an API, which means iPadio broadcasts will be able to be translated in to text. Spinvox will also automaticaly add metadata like a title though the translation is limited to the first 60 seconds if the piece.
ipadio is essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of digital communication company Nemisys which provides a live-to-the-web broadcasting platform. Nemysis has plans to make the platform available to companies as internal communications and braodcast tools. Since Ipadio is basically a telephony product adapted for the Web it can bring multiple people to one call, as in a one to many broadcast. So a “large utility company” is currently using it to communicate with 20,000 field staff who don’t have smartphones. It can also perfom DTMF functions like phone polling. In the the meantime, Nemisys giving the iPadio consumer spinoff its head.
I have been using the Ipadio service for a few weeks now, and I have to admit that it is excellent.. very simple to use, nothing to download, and the quality is great…
Recently, they provided me with my own player on my own website, that auto updates when I record a new message…
I would highly recommend ipadio to anyone that is not great at writing blogs etc.. but that can talk all day about their products / services or themselves..
You can also do a interview with another person.. all cool..
Mark Shaw
Can you record an interview you’re making ON your iPhone?
This is awesome – Audioboo has made it so easy to publish audio, but iapadio solves the publishing issue – can´t wait to test it
I agree!
This is a great app to use.
Not sure about the SpinVox deal though…considering the privacy issues with SpinVox right now:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/spinvox_mechanical_turk/
Very interesting! Eager to use it
So in theory any phone can call to use this service, you don’t *have* to have an iPhone; it just has a benefit for the device since there is an app for it, correct?
Could one call from Skype or other such service from a computer and use a higher quality mic for better quality recordings?
Very interesting stuff, would love to use it once I play around with it!
I think ipadio’s existing service is great for ’shared ansaphone’ audio. Personally, I’d have more use for the new better quality audio features. Doesn’t seem much new here though – compared to what’s out there already – except the bolt on voice to text via spinvox.
Consumers of these services, like myself, are after quality audio and great design and functionality. My own experience as an enthusiastic user and member of the AudioBoo community, is that whilst it’s great to speak to the ether – it’s better still when the community using the service responds and interacts. Truely social.
Lets see if iPadio can get that aspect right. In the social space they’ll be judged on different criteria to their other role on worthy, more NGO focussed projects. I’ve yet to see them show a good understanding of community and truely social media.
What most of us really want is an easy way to get good quality audio, tagged and shared or archived, on the web. All other features are secondary and will do little to differentiate competitors.
Good to see them making the effort though. The healthy competition in this area at the moment is ensuring all platforms – iPhone, Symbian, etc will see all audio apps very shortly – I’ve just been lucky enough to get my hands on an AudioBoo API key and have a Java app which runs on most mobile devices ready to give away with Audio Geek love
Hi Muky Bear. Yes, truly any phone. First use was satellite phone from mid-Atlantic. Honest
Have a go on a live demo at http://www.ipadio.com/live – it shows the any phone function.
iPhone app gives more functionality from the phone and better audio quality, but actually through your web account you can also geolocate, add 4 photos, tag, description etc.
And also replace the MP3, so if you really want to you can record and edit locally and just replace your call with the locally produced audio, though that would be a bit of a faff!
Thanks for the reply!
Well, I was thinking of more along the lines to use the service to record and broadcast live an online radio show as a new alternative to the available methods out on the net.
Using a land line phone or Skype on the computer with a high quality mic (that way battery life wouldn’t be an issue), I was wondering if it was possible, and then integrate it on a blog, therefore having a podcast radio show of sorts using ipadio as the medium delivering the content to your audience.
I think I’m going to test it out on my blog soon and see if it works in that sense.
Yes, you could do that. You can embed the player on to most blog systems by just picking up the embed code, much as TechCrucnh did here – http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/listen-to-the-microhoo-press-conference-live/.
Any problems with the embed (some WYSIWYG editors can strip out code automatically, should be fine in HTML view) just drop us a line and we’ll give you a hand.
Also, don’t forget that you could pre-produce the whole podcast and just upload it to ipadio, though I guess that’s no different to other podcasting systems. jd
Expect this one to get deleted
Why did they steal Target’s logo?
*Clearly* trademark infringement.
I just email my audio clips from Apples Memo app to my account on http://chir.ps which then converts and posts them to my Twitter feed. Excellent quality and I embed the audio player on FB and elsewhere.
nice way to do it. btw – with FiRE app on iphone you can ftp from the iphone to your server – neat eh
i have a feelibg it wont be as popular as the other aps but i will give it a try
iPhones are just the best, love the touch screen technology.
Thanks for the informative post.