In the inaugural column of this series on hypermedia, I mentioned an MP3 clipping service I wrote to enable quotation of sound bites. Before I explain how it works, let’s review why it exists. Audio content — and of particular interest to me, spoken-word audio content — is flourishing. In the tech world, Doug Kaye’s ITConversations web site is a great example. It features audio interviews with IT personalities, as well as recorded speeches from conferences — including the recent O’Reilly Open Source Convention.
Kaye’s audio engineering credentials are impeccable, but nowadays anyone can pick up a microphone and speak into an MP3 file. Today, for example, I listened to Dave Winer’s thoughts on the business model for Wi-Fi and blogs, recorded while he was driving northward in Wisconsin. In my own journalistic work, I increasingly record and post audio interviews.
Although the amount of audio content keeps growing, the time available for listening remains constant. Until and unless we achieve a radical breakthrough in speech-to-text translation — and I’m not holding my breath — we’ll need to find another way to make audio content more granular, and easier to consume selectively. [Full story at O’Reilly Network]
I’ve been using the service described here for a while now. For this column, the second in a planned series on hypermedia, I rewrote and published the code in hopes that others will be inspired to help move the project forward.