I had a note from Brian McConnell, Founder & President of RadioHandi telling me about their service. Now while this isn’t strictly mobile, it contains a mobile element.
Brian and his team have worked out a comprehensive method of enabling any device with audio/video and internet services to receive video & audio podcasts.
Think Wi-Fi enabled alarm clocks. Think internet capable refridgerators. Absolutely wicked! I would SERIOUSLY making a buying decision based on whether a funky new refridgerator could play podcasts!
I absolutely abhore getting my entertainment and/or news – audio or video – live. I don’t watch West Wing on E4 at 10pm on a Thursday or whenever. My free time is far too valuable to schedule around for a television or radio programme. Instead, with West Wing, I nailed E4 and just waited. I waited for 6 months or so and have just received the West Wing 7 series on DVD — so I can watch it when I choose to have leisure time. And without the aboslutely annoying E4 ads.
The same applies for most broadcast entertainment or news. I would genuinely look forward to going and preparing a meal ("Hi, is that Pizza Hut, could I order.." – ok, only joking), if I was able to press a few buttons on my fridge and get the latest BBC Today programme podcast playing. Wow. I can get that via my ipod, yes. But, you know, I’m all for innovation.
But here’s the real problem with the concept: How do I get the podcast feed into the fridge? Or my alarm clock?
Well that’s something Brian and the RadioHandi team have given a great amount of thought to. They’ve worked on the basis that if the device is going to be given audio/video facilities, including a numerical keypad isn’t that much of an additional hassle.
So, they work with broadcasters and content owners to assign a numeric ID. So, for example, the BBC Today programme might be 34534. If I want to get that on my fridge, I simply press ‘add podcast’ on my fridge, type in 34534. The fridge then connects to the RadioHandi service, does a lookup and finds out that this ID number refers to http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/something/something/today.rss. Done. I’m now subscribed.
The possibilities are quite endless. I think this will help out a lot of consumer goods manufacturers who may have wanted to do something with podcasts but haven’t wanted to get involved in the back end delivery stuff.
From a mobile perspective, of course, it makes receiving podcasts via an audio call a total doddle. Yes you can use any number of services to receive the podcasts in digital format, but if you’d like to just call — you can. I like that concept too. You place your call. You type in 34534 for example and woosh, you’re now listening to the latest BBC Today podcast. Nice.
The details are at http://guide.radiohandi.com/
Can you think of any uses for this? Give Brian a call to discuss.