Podcasting to my blog from a mobile device

I agree with Sarah Hollands comments in her May 19, 2010 blog entry that, "podcasting is a great technology that allows students to present and share what they have learned, their opinions etc. with the focus clearly on the learning". As an ICT specialist I used podcasting with the middle and senior school around speech time and witnessed the advantages. I would get the students to read their speeches and record them using garageband. They would then be required to reflect on their use of expression, timing, clarity of their voice and make appropriate changes. A second recording was usually required. Once they had a good copy checked by me they could upload their podcast via iweb to their classes webpage. The children enjoyed listening to each others speeches and learnt a lot about what it takes to deliver an effective speech. Knowing that they could access the speech online anywhere and share it with friends and family gave them motivation and encouraged them to take greater pride in their work.

Seeing that I have podcasted before I thought it would be useful for me and others reading my blog to investigate ways to podcast to my blog from a mobile device. With the huge rise in mobile phone usage and their potential to publish material like blogs and podcasts ubiquitously I believe this is very topical.

For this investigation I wish to fine a way to create a podcast on my iPhone and upload it to my Google based blog in the fastest and easiest way possible.

In beginning my search I went to the iPhone apps store in the hope to find an application that would allow me to record a podcast and upload it to my blog. I did find that this is possible through using an app called "Audioboo"




however, it would not publish my podcast to my Blogger page as it uses it's own server to store entries. After reading the following article at http://www.blogger.com/mobile-start.g I came to understand the repercussions of the bad relationship Apple and Google have. Whilst Sony phones have an app that you can use to blog directly from ones mobile phone there is none for the iPhone. The article does suggest ways around this by using SMS and MMS, of course both paid options, but nevertheless an option for people who wont their blogs updated instantly where ever they are.

So somewhat disappointed with this discovery I set my mind to problem solve a way to get my podcast onto my blog page, maybe not as fast as an app would do but free and reliable. Here are the steps I took:

1. Download the app "audioboo" via your iPhone apps.
2. Open downloaded app and create a log in name and password or use your twitter details as directed.
3. Record audio using the available voice recording option in audioboo.
4. Publish this as prompted. If set up correctly it should publish to both your twitter and audioboo websites.
5. You can visit http://audioboo.fm to listen to your podacast.

My overall goal of getting the podcast into my blogger.com page has not been achieved yet though. Currently my podcast is being housed by a third party. Like most mobile devices when accessing the internet the user is limited by browser options. This is also true when using Safari and Audioboo. I had hoped that like on my desktop computer I would be offered the option of exporting the embed html code onto my mobile device. Unfortunately this is not possible. The mobile-based browser and Audioboo together allow selected social networking sites to share content but not with blogs like blogger.com. So this lead to the following steps:

6. After listening to the podcast online using Safari on the iPhone copy the URL.
7. Log into your blogger.com site and start a new post.
8. Paste the URL link into the text area and create a hyperlink.
9. Publish your blog

You should now have a link in your blog that will take the reader to your Audioboo page where they can listen to your podcast. The process is longer than what I had in mind but nevertheless the outcome is the same. We have achieved podcasting from a mobile device to our own blogger.com blogsite.

Here is the link to the podcast I created and linked to Audioboo via my iPhone:
http://audioboo.fm/boos/137706-podcast-test

Hopefully in the near future Google and Apple might work out their differences enough to provide an app that lets you record video and audio on your phone and upload it to your personal blog directly and quickly. Until then I have supplied an alternative.