Recorded on Friday, the 5th SMS Text News podcast is now available. This week added several more microphones and a ‘mixer’… hence there’s twice as much background noise and Dan is only partially audible for most of it (next week we’ll twiddle the knobs a bit differently). This time we kick Vodafone and Orange about data some more, anticipate the arrival of the Nokia E71 (except Ewan) and Ewan explains how he is going to build his own mobile network on a desert island as SMS Text News gets all ‘LOST’.
A transcription of the podcast will be available later this week when the lady who does them has stopped sobbing and pleading that we only speak ‘one at a time’.
Listen now using the player below or see the links below for other options:
Episode link and feeds:
[Link] Direct link to this episode’s MP3 to download
[iTunes] Subscribe or listen in iTunes
[RSS] Subscribe via your feed reader or another podcatcher
…or listen by phone on +1 206 438 4026 thanks to Greg Farrell and his team at CommerceTel.
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The contributors:
Ewan MacLeod is the mayor of SMS Text News. He built this city out of rock ‘n roll… probably.
Dan Lane’s blog is at http://invalid.name. He’s CTO at Howler Tech.
James Whatley’s blog is here. He works for SpinVox doing clever social media stuff and their blog.
Ben Smith is a management consultant. He has a blog, but anything worth reading is contributed here.
Sites mentioned in the podcast:
Vodafone’s updated data offering – 500MB per month ‘fair use’. Why isn’t it mentioned yet on their consumer-facing site?
Three’s data offering is one of our favourites.
Shozu is a clever image uploading tool we prefer like.
Qik allows you to live-stream video from your S60 handset.
Vodafone has a Forum Intervention Team who’ve stepped in several times to save the day.
Ewan made a video of the Orange brochure that stays schtum about data (mostly).
James is a card-carrying Vodafone-VIP.
Ben wrote some nonsense about the UK operator’s mobile stores.
Truphone is a smart voice-over-IP application for S60 handsets.
The Boy Genius Reports been giving lots of coverage to the not-yet-released Nokia E71.
‘Unlimited Drinks‘ is back in London on the 10th June.
DeviceAnywhere do clever application testing on all the handsets you can imagine and a few you can’t.
OJOM are the recently shut-down games development team – who will surely go on to even better things.
The S60 team are hosting another one of their excellent events in Boston.
Ricky keeps tabs on the ‘advertising for minutes’ operator Blyk at Blykwatch.
Trippo is a clever on-handset translation application.
HandyTaskman and HandyCalendar are must-have S60 handset enhancements from EpocWare.
Slandr.net is a cool mobile Twitter alternative interface.
We’re really keen to get your feedback on the podcast – please let us know in the comments or tell Ewan – ewan@smstextnews.com.
The phone number service-thing still has episode 2. Just thought I'd let you know. Also, I found a free service that does just that, gives a unique US phone number to dial to listen to a podcast, it's podlinez.com. Cool thing is that apparently anyone can submit a podcast there. So, I submitted the SMS Text News Podcast and the number is: +1 (712) 318-9820. There's an ad at the beginning, not that intrusive in my opinion, plus one caveat: if nobody calls for two weeks, the number is lost. This service comes from Phonecasting, and they apparently also have UK numbers (although they seem to be in the 084 range), but for some reason the procedure for those seems more complicated. Details (well, not that many) here: http://phonecasting.co.uk/packages/packages/pac….
Always entertaining guys, but yes, PLEASE sort out the volume levels – they go from 'so loud it's Spinal Tap' to 'so quiet it's inaudible'. 😎
Thanks for the warning Vlad – I'll check with Ewan what the score is with that service. Perhaps they just really like episode 2? 🙂
Yeah we arsed up the sound with Dan… and James seemed to be on 11 all the
time 😉
Hey Ben & Vlad, I think the chaps were just showing the proof of concept.
Are you interested in actually using this service, Vlad?
Can you recommend any decent recording software that we can monitor the levels with?
I think it was you speaking loudly.. or a shit microphone. Maybe I need to
go and buy some MORE good, decent microphones?
If we had decent software we could visually monitor the levels to get them in line so we all sound the same volume…
Simple really..
it's all one audio wave though.. can that be done? Maybe we should ask
Chris at http://www.audiotechnews.com, eh?
Four Mics = Four Audio Inputs.
No?
Yeah but it comes into the laptop as one input?
SPLITTER!
The People's Republic of Judea?
Yes – normally you balance the inputs at the mixer. We didn't do that very successfully…. The mixer can have a graphical display, but as none of use would be watching it during recording, that would be of limited value anyway. The only other option would be to get a device that does multi-track recording so each person can be adjusted individually afterwards, but this really feels like overkill(!)
The mics aren't great, but getting them in stands would be a better way than buying new ones to maintain the distance 'mouth to mic' and to limit the handling noise we got a lot of this time. If you really wanted to spend money lapel mics would achieve a similar effect.
Point me to some decent lapel mics?
There I would defer to the experts… never had to buy any myself, but have used other peoples'.
Me, not necessarily. I've no issue downloading it. And I'm not in the States anyway. Although using Rebtel I might as well be (thanks for the tip on Rebtel btw, awesome service!). Just seems to me like an interesting service. Anyway, the number I gave above is set up and working in case any of your listeners in the US fancy it…
Me, not necessarily. I've no issue downloading it. And I'm not in the States anyway. Although using Rebtel I might as well be (thanks for the tip on Rebtel btw, awesome service!). Just seems to me like an interesting service. Anyway, the number I gave above is set up and working in case any of your listeners in the US fancy it…
There I would defer to the experts… never had to buy any myself, but have used other peoples'.
Me, not necessarily. I've no issue downloading it. And I'm not in the States anyway. Although using Rebtel I might as well be (thanks for the tip on Rebtel btw, awesome service!). Just seems to me like an interesting service. Anyway, the number I gave above is set up and working in case any of your listeners in the US fancy it…