Well here it is, ipadio’s first blog. Odd when I’m such a prolific writer that I don’t write more in this form. I blame the fact that whenever I started a diary my sister used to nick it and then read it aloud. That all stopped when I wrote about different places I would bury her remains after I’d trained the spaniel to be an attack dog. It was only years later after extensive therapy that I overcame my phobia of diaries. Oh and the spaniel died after a glorious attempt to attack a lion in Woburn Safari Park. My god did its ears flap about that day.
So ipadio then. Well what a fantastic journey this has been. Ipadio is short for internet protocol radio which kind of says it all (albeit in a slightly geeky and clever, clever way). The idea is a very simple one and it’s this:
From any telephone, anywhere in the world you can call an ipadio number and your voice is streamed out live (with a few seconds delay) on the web.
Try it out – it’s really that simple: http://www.ipadio.com/
The idea actually has its origins nearly 2 years ago now. My other business Nemisys (http://www.nemisys.uk.com/) mostly works in the not-for-profit space, and a large proportion of our work is in sport – the amateur end of sport mind you (damn – the bit where the money isn’t) so people like England Hockey, the Rugby Football Union, The Angling Trust etc etc work with us. They all have championships and the all have little money to spend on TV or Radio (well Rugby have a little bit more but you get my drift). So we often (and still do) build techniques that allow for text descriptions of games (yuck!):
Minute one: Hans passed to Gunter
Minute two: GOAL! Germany 1 England 0
Minute three: They think it’s all over…….
Minute four: It is now.
So there we are at the European Hockey Champs in Manchester in August 2007 (look it’s still online: http://www.eurohockeymanchester2007.com/) and we provided a rather lame text thingy which we expected only a few people to use (maybe a few 100). Anyway on the 22nd August there was an amazing coincidence. The championships had indeed attracted TV and Radio (unusual in this sport these days – but it was the Europeans, so second only to the Olympics in importance) but on the 22nd August there was an England Germany men’s hockey match and also an England Germany men’s football match (yes we lost 2-1). So the TV and Radio boys cleared off and the only source of live commentary was our shonky text chat system (look: http://www.eurohockeymanchester2007.com/matchdetails-1128.htm) which went from being likely to be used by maybe 500 people to being used by 30,000 concurrents!
Arrrgggghhhh.
Whilst Andy Ayers (Nemisys chief teccie) and yours truly were talking on our mobiles whilst watching the match unfold on the nasty text system – light bulbs appeared on our heads and we wondered why there was no phone to web service out there. So we made one. And called it ipadio.
In my next blog I’ll explain what happened next and why it was 18 months between the invention of ipadio and the http://www.ipadio.com/ website going live!
So ipadio then. Well what a fantastic journey this has been. Ipadio is short for internet protocol radio which kind of says it all (albeit in a slightly geeky and clever, clever way). The idea is a very simple one and it’s this:
From any telephone, anywhere in the world you can call an ipadio number and your voice is streamed out live (with a few seconds delay) on the web.
Try it out – it’s really that simple: http://www.ipadio.com/
The idea actually has its origins nearly 2 years ago now. My other business Nemisys (http://www.nemisys.uk.com/) mostly works in the not-for-profit space, and a large proportion of our work is in sport – the amateur end of sport mind you (damn – the bit where the money isn’t) so people like England Hockey, the Rugby Football Union, The Angling Trust etc etc work with us. They all have championships and the all have little money to spend on TV or Radio (well Rugby have a little bit more but you get my drift). So we often (and still do) build techniques that allow for text descriptions of games (yuck!):
Minute one: Hans passed to Gunter
Minute two: GOAL! Germany 1 England 0
Minute three: They think it’s all over…….
Minute four: It is now.
So there we are at the European Hockey Champs in Manchester in August 2007 (look it’s still online: http://www.eurohockeymanchester2007.com/) and we provided a rather lame text thingy which we expected only a few people to use (maybe a few 100). Anyway on the 22nd August there was an amazing coincidence. The championships had indeed attracted TV and Radio (unusual in this sport these days – but it was the Europeans, so second only to the Olympics in importance) but on the 22nd August there was an England Germany men’s hockey match and also an England Germany men’s football match (yes we lost 2-1). So the TV and Radio boys cleared off and the only source of live commentary was our shonky text chat system (look: http://www.eurohockeymanchester2007.com/matchdetails-1128.htm) which went from being likely to be used by maybe 500 people to being used by 30,000 concurrents!
Arrrgggghhhh.
Whilst Andy Ayers (Nemisys chief teccie) and yours truly were talking on our mobiles whilst watching the match unfold on the nasty text system – light bulbs appeared on our heads and we wondered why there was no phone to web service out there. So we made one. And called it ipadio.
In my next blog I’ll explain what happened next and why it was 18 months between the invention of ipadio and the http://www.ipadio.com/ website going live!
