“Boo!”

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A few times over the past few weeks, I’ve come into direct contact with Audioboo.  It’s a fascinating idea – basically you record a couple of minutes of your speaking – or someone else speaking – or the noise going on around you. 

I first came across the idea when Stephen Fry posted a link on Twitter to his thoughts on Clement Freud’s funeral service.  A few other people were using it to capture their thoughts, but I didn’t think much more of it.

And then they cropped up in my professional life a month or so ago.  Currently, they produce an application for the iPhone to allow you to capture your thoughts directly, but that means that non-iPhone can’t join in the fun.

As well as working at Symbian, I’m also a keen user of Symbian phones, and so AudioBoo has been beyond me for the moment.  A few weeks ago, I went over to visit them with a colleague to talk to them about how to get Symbian users involved in the Audioboo experience.  And then last week I had the pleasure of attending a soirée thrown by the guys and girls of Audioboo and got to meet lots of avid users.  It’s was fascinating to see people using it to do things other than waffle into a microphone for a couple of minutes.

Of course, with all of these great ideas, there comes the question at some point of how to make money from it.  It’s not just a question for Audioboo of course, even the mighty Twitter have that problem to face.  And we’ve seen in the past few days with the news from tr.im that shortening URLs isn’t an easy thing to make money from either.

But the practicalities of economics aside, I’m dying to get started with AudioBoo.  I haven’t yet decided what I’ll be Boo-ing (is that the right verb) about – but that’s not the point is it?

One piece of good news – for us Symbian users anyway – is that the wonderful Gravity is likely to include Audioboo integration at some point in the near future – at which point you’ll by hearing my dulcet tones at a desktop near you.  Now – what to say, what to say..?

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