We at BooHQ have just heard of a lovely initiative that is being run by (@sarcasticapple) and it seems like such a great fit for #FeBOOary that we’re taking a daring step and shaking up the topics for this week. (Apologies to @sassycat – we’re going to save your topic for week three, hope you don’t mind). Last Sunday, @sarcasticapple ran and Audioboo poetry evening, and it was so successful he’s doing it again this Sunday. Here he is to tell you more:

I had the idea for @Poetry_Night after some people who I follow posted audioboos of themselves reading poetry. I enjoyed listening to them and I thought it might be a nice idea to try to put together a kind of Twitter equivalent of a coffee shop poetry night. I asked people if they would send me recordings of themselves reading poems they had written or poems they liked. The idea was to then tweet them from @Poetry_Night account over the course of a night, so people following that account could enjoy an evening of poetry readings.

So what do you think? Are you ready to share a poem on Sunday? I think it sounds positively delightful. I’ve updated the topic list below.

FeBOOary so far

Well week one of #FeBOOary has surpassed all my expectations and we’ve had some really wonderful submissions so far. You can delve through the collection by putting “feBOOary” into the search box on audioboo and listen to new voices, new friends.

It’s not too late to join the lovely #FeBOOary community, doing a new Audioboo everyday, so why not get cracking today?

With a little help from our friends, I’m happy to present….

FeBOOary week two suggested topics:

FeBOOary 8th – Ideas to beat the winter blues (suggested by Caroline Hooley)
Feb 9th – Tell us about your online name, where did it come from? Or do you have any nicknames?
Feb 10th – Do you still have the accent you had when you were younger? Do you have a ‘boo’ voice? (thanks @Nyssapod)
Feb 11th – What’s your favourite smell and why? (Ken Gordon’s suggestion)
Feb 12th – Join @poetry_night and record a poem today. One you like or one you’ve written – your choice!
Feb 13th – What was the first record you bought?
Feb 14th – It’s Valentine’s Day – why not tell us a best date/worst date tale?

Go go go! Have fun – and don’t forget to tag your audio with the #FeBOOary tag, and add location info so we can plot your boo on the map!

FeBOOary map

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To make it a bit easier for you, we have a list of suggested topics to get you going. There’s no need to follow them if you’ve got ideas of your own, but we just thought it might be nice to share different experiences and stories on a range of themes. We’re still looking for suggestions for the next few weeks, so please, if you’ve got an idea, drop us a line – on the blog, on Facebook or on Twitter.

FeBOOary Week One: Suggested topics

FeBOOary 1st – How about an introduction, where are you from? Why have you decided to take part in FeBOOary?
Feb 2nd – Tell us a story about what you wanted to be when you grew up – and did you manage it?
Feb 3rd – Think of a time when someone did something kind for you (big or small) and tell that story
Feb 4th – Send us an audio postcard from wherever you are, talk us through what you can see and what’s going on
Feb 5th – Talk about something that interests you, can you teach us something new?
Feb 6th – Which New Year’s resolutions have you already broken – or have you kept them all
Feb 7th – Interview someone – you pick the questions!

We’ve got people all around the world taking part in #FeBOOary, and you can see some of their boos on this special FeBOOary map. If you want your boos to be included do make sure you add a location, either drop a pin on the map before you upload online, or ensure geolocation is switched on on your smartphone. If you forgot to add your location don’t panic! Log into your account on audioboo.fm, click on the boo title and click “edit”. You’ll then have the option to add a location in. Go for it!

FeBOOary map

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Audioboo fan Jonathan Sawyer tweeted us to tell us about his plans to make February into #FeBOOary, and record a new Audioboo each day for a month. We love the idea of regular boo-ing so we asked who else in the Audioboo family might be up for the challenge of matching Jonathan with daily Audioboos of their own. You’re an energetic bunch so plenty of people said they’d give it a go.

Here’s Jonathan explaining the concept in his own words:

I guess we should share some tips and tricks to make it a cracking FeBOOary, so how about these:

First – feel free to drop us a line in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter to let us know you’re going to be part of the #FeBOOary gang (and remember to use the hashtag!).
Secondly – be sure to use the #FeBOOary tag on all your Audioboos that you’re submitting for the project.
Thirdly – remember to add your location to the Audioboo, either by enabling geolocation on your smartphone (in the settings menu), or adding your position on the map when uploading via the web. That way we will be able to make a nice map of your boos, a bit like the Southwark soundmap.
Fourthly – listen to other boos tagged #FeBOOary and encourage each other with comments and ideas

All sounds marvellous, but what are we all going to boo about for a month? Well let’s open up the floor to suggestions for daily topics or ideas to get the cogs whirring. It would be lovely to get a variety of opinions on each day’s subject. Here are a few to start you off – and I’m sure Jonathan will be happy to share some of his ideas too. You don’t have to stick to them, but sometimes it helps to have a plan – no?

FeBOOary Week One Topic Ideas

FeBOOary 1st – How about an introduction, where are you from? Why have you decided to take part in FeBOOary?
Feb 2nd – Tell us a story about what you wanted to be when you grew up – and did you manage it?
Feb 3rd – Think of a time when someone did something kind for you (big or small) and tell that story
Feb 4th – Send us an audio postcard from wherever you are, talk us through what you can see and what’s going on
Feb 5th – Talk about something that interests you, can you teach us something new?
Feb 6th – Which New Year’s resolutions have you already broken – or have you kept them all
Feb 7th – Interview someone – you pick the questions!

So that’s one week dealt with, but you can shape the next week. What shall we add to the list? Let me know and I’ll share it with everyone else and soon we’ll be well on our way to a jam-packed month of interesting content.

Recycling Oral Histories with Audioboo

I came across Audioboo while searching for a more creative and open-access way to publish a set of oral history interviews I had carried out around waste picking in India. I hope that sharing my experience of using Audioboo will help others looking at alternative methods for storing and presenting oral histories; especially the oral histories of marginalised groups who have little representation in mainstream media or conventional historical archives.

The women of Land Lab – a waste picker cooperative in Bengaluru

The Waste Pickers’ Oral Histories

The interviews took place with the help of waste picker organisations in some of India’s biggest cities (Delhi, Chennai, Bangaluru and Pune), amid the constant honking of passing traffic and endless cups of sugary chai.

Waste pickers make their living from collecting waste and carefully segregating it into its recyclable parts which they then sell to scrap dealers, who then sell these materials to industries for re-use. They gather this waste from landfills, community waste bins or from door-to-door collections. Despite providing such a valuable social and environmental service they are some of the poorest and most marginalised sections of Indian society. With the use of Audioboo it is possible to listen to some of the waste pickers, and waste picker activists, analyse and discuss in their own words, the issues they face in their daily lives and work, and how they have formed unions and organisations to struggle for social justice.

Dipanwita who works for the SWaCH waste pickers’ cooperative explains about the impact of local governments privatising waste management over to large corporate companies:

Ambrish Rai, an activist with the All India Kabadi Mazdoor Amassing (AIKMM) waste pickers’ union, talks about the discrimination waste pickers face:

Nalini, national coordinator of Alliance of Indian Waste Pickers (AIW), talks about their struggle to get official recognition and ID cards for waste pickers:

Further recordings of interviews with waste pickers and waste pickers activists can be found on Audioboo.

Audioboo let me share the stories

One of the main purposes of my project was to create an archive or resource that would be of help to waste pickers and their allies in struggling for recognition and rights. Above all this meant doing something with the interviews afterwards, not finishing with them once my research was complete, or locking them away in some library or archive. This seemed particularly important considering waste pickers make their living from the re-use of discarded objects – it seemed only fitting that their stories and narratives would likewise be re-used and re-heard, and not disposed of at the end of the research project. I also wanted the interviews to be freely and widely available – the waste pickers and activists had something important to say and I wanted those things to be audible. This especially so, in the context of a media both in India and internationally, that has not only failed to take notice of waste pickers, but actively puts forward a construction of Indian prosperity and success contrary to the experiences of the majority of citizens there, and especially that of waste pickers.

It’s simple, and free!

With neither the I.T. expertise nor financial resources required to make an online archive or website, and as any such website would almost certainly have remained in obscurity on the internet – I was happy to find Audioboo. (Thanks to a Guardian online report of the Arab Spring,  which used Audioboo to embed some short audio reports in the news story). Audioboo’s popularity ensures that the audio on it appears high up on search engine results. The facility to embed Audioboo clips in web pages or in other social media such as Twitter and Facebook likewise expands the scope for access and opportunity to listen to these audio. But more than this, social media platforms have become important tools in building social struggles, therefore linking in audio recordings that have a social purpose makes sense.

Most important of all – it is free to upload and access audios on Audioboo. This was crucial as I wanted the oral histories to be as widely available as possible, and more specifically, easily available for waste pickers and activists. What’s more I hope this to be the beginning, rather than the end of such an archive. Being online and free, opens the possibility for waste pickers, activists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to add further interviews and recordings. It is this potential for individuals or institutions with limited resources – and especially those in ‘developing’ countries – that it may well turn out that Audioboo has a particularly important value for.

Audioboo – the accessible oral archive

If the writing of history and remembering of the past relies on archives, then what is in them, and who is able to contribute to and access them, becomes vitally important. Open source platforms for the storing and publishing of oral histories and other such audio are therefore important in creating an alternative archival practice outside of the control of the institutions and individuals who have been the traditional gatekeepers of what enters archives and how. Audioboo, used as an online oral history archive, might fulfil just such a purpose; functioning as an alternative form of archive, and so also as an archive of alternatives.

A massive thanks to all the interviewees and others involved in this project, including those at the following organisations: Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP) and its sister organisation the SWaCH cooperative. The Land Lab Cooperative and parent NGO Waste Wise Trust, GAIA (Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance), Nirman Mazdoor Sangh (Unorganised Workers Federation), The Indian Association of Waste pickers (AIW) and All India Kabadi Mazdoor Amassing (AIKMM).

Luckily, it can be! With Audioboo, you can add an extra level of content to your blog, by using our embeddable players. We’ve a Flash player, HTML5 players, and even a special player to allow you to post audio to WordPress.com blogs. Download our free app for iPhone, Android or Nokia and start experimenting with sound – it’s a lot of fun.

But wait! There’s more! Did you know that you can automatically post to WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr too? You can! That means that as soon as that bright idea for a blog post pops into your mind, you can capture it, speak it, and post it straight to your blog at the click of a button. Meeting someone interesting that you want to write about? Why paraphrase them when you can capture their voice, their emotion, their passion? We’re here to make it easy for you.

No more letting great ideas fall by the wayside because you’ve not had the time to create a literary masterpiece and make sure you’ve uploaded the right sized pictures to go with it, now you can Click, Record, Share with Audioboo. Add a photo and some geolocation data from your smartphone and post directly to your blog. Genius.

Okay, sounds great – how do I do it?

• Sign in to your account or sign up for an Audioboo account if you don’t already have one (where have you been?!)
• Click on “Settings”
• Then select “Posting to other sites”
• Choose where you’d like you Audioboos to post to – Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous and now WordPress are all there for your delectation
• Authorise those you’d like to utilise (the more the merrier) and click save

Job done!

It works with WordPress!

If you have a self-hosted WordPress installation (e.g. domain.com) we’ll use the HTML5 player and if it’s hosted by WordPress (e.g yourblog.wordpress.com) you’ll get the Flash player.

NB: In order to allow Audioboo to post to your WordPress blog you’ll need to check that you have enabled XML-RPC posting in your blog’s “Writing” settings. (Log-in to your blog, look for the “Settings” menu on the left, click “Writing”, scan down the page for “Remote Posting”, ensure that you’ve ticked the box for “XML-RPC”. It may say “enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols” beside the box.) Don’t worry, you should only need to do this once, as long as you save changes!

Go create!

Go have fun, Click, Record and Share your content online. You can find more Top Tips for Audioboo in our FAQ section.

Working in conjunction with the Radioplayer team, we’re enabling radio stations who hold Audioboo Pro accounts to make selected boos available in a specially-adapted version of their Radioplayer console. This will provide an on-demand ‘listen again’ service for audiences and give radio stations a new channel for syndicating gems of content that may otherwise get lost.

Stations can easily select and moderate the clips they want to share, and boos will also be integrated into Radioplayer’s centralised search functionality. This means a listener searching for the latest Christian O’Connell show will also see the latest Audioboo content related to the programme.

We like to think it’s the perfect way to get the top content in front of your audience, and of course the more interesting content you add via Audioboo, the more often you’ll show up in search results.

As we type, Boo boss Mark Rock is demonstrating the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with partner Absolute Radio. The offering will be rolled out across the Radioplayer platform in early 2012, so watch this space.

Read what the Guardian had to say about the news http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/11/radioplayer-audioboo-listen-again-service?newsfeed=true and feel free to get in touch to find out more about the benefits of Audioboo Pro.

From testing out the best mince pies:

…to an incredible rendition of Carol of the Bells, where all parts are sung by RossEskimo’s wife Christine, then edited together:

We’ve got some lively Australians getting advice on how to use feng shui can cut down on family tensions at Christmas:

..and a Christmassy ice-cream van:

There are enthusiastic school choirs, singing their hearts out:

..but if children singing Christmas songs isn’t your bag, maybe this Christmas rap will give you something to think about:

I took a trip to Budapest and came across this interesting combination of beat-boxing and handbells at a Christmas market, which I recorded to prove I wasn’t making it up…

…and we this radio report found out the truth about nativity plays:

Hopefully you’re feeling suitably festive now. Enjoy yourselves, but don’t over-indulge too much over Christmas… let this final Christmas Audioboo pick serve as a warning to you all!

We’d love you to share your festive fun with us – don’t forget to tag your audio with “Christmas” so we can feel part of your celebrations. I learnt last year that the US misses out on the joy of Christmas crackers – so perhaps you could record the cracker pulling experience – complete with Auntie Dot reading out the jokes! (Don’t forget to tag them with “#Cracker”)

If there’s one thing I like more than great images, it’s great sound – which is why I wanted to spend some time with Audioboo at the cutting edge of sound publishing.

If you carry around a camera you notice how things look, and if you carry a recorder around interesting sounds start to catch your ear.

So this week I’ve had my ear to the ground for sounds and places that help give Southwark its character.  This ‘soundmap’ is a mix of reports on important places in Southwark, interviews and more spontaneous recordings that I just had to get off my bike and capture as I rode past.

Sounds of Southwark sound map:

View Larger Map

The sound of the Southwark Cathedral boo gives a feeling of the size of the building. This one I recorded on my mic then mixed and uploaded later.

I recorded ‘Tunnel skating’ with my phone under a bridge near Audioboo HQ and uploaded it straight away. I did the same with the sneaky ‘Audioboo HQ’ boo.

‘Tower bridge opening’ was a bit of a disappointment to be honest. I was looking for a great creak from the great bridge and got little more than a resonant squeak.  The sounds of the sailing boat going under the bridge were surprisingly good though.

Interviewing good people is good for the soul and as it turned out it was good for my stomach as well – Lee in the ‘Borough Market’ boo gave me a tasty mozzarella and ham sandwich to munch on my way.

I had a whole lot of fun putting this soundmap together – and there’s nothing to stop you from doing something similar.

If you’d like to find out how to put together a map like the one above you can check out this brief discussion on the Audioboo website.

Thanks to Kate, Mark and the team for having me this week – it’s been fun and a real learning experience!

The second thing I say, is that it is all about creating good content. Interesting, witty, moving, novel, compelling content will encourage people sign up to hear more of your stuff.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it’s the way that you share your content that will increase the number of people listening to what you produce. If you can stick in link in front of someone when they are browsing Twitter, post it to your Facebook profile or embed the audio in your blog or website then it will reach a wider audience. With the new range of players that we have available, it’s even easier to embed Audioboos into your website. As well as the default flash player we’ve now got an HTML5 player, an HTML5 player without javascript (for sites like Posterous) and a player that you can embed into WordPress.com sites. To use these new embed players you just need to click on “embed” then choose “Audioboo Labs” and select the player you want.

If you’re embedding Audioboos into your website, then why not use our exciting new follow button on you site too? This button will allow people to click through and immediately follow your Audioboo profile. It’s as simple as this:

To get your own Follow button you just need to visit the widgets page from the Audioboo.fm homepage and paste the code into your site.

That’s not the only new feature we’ve added recently. After Kent Police force asked whether they could turn commenting off on certain boos (because they were worried about comments causing problems with upcoming court cases) we set to work to enable this feature. Now you can turn commenting off for specific Audioboos by logging in to your account, clicking through to the specific boo page and clicking “Edit”. You will then see a little tick box that will enable you to disable commenting if you so wish.

In general we think it’s more fun to allow comments and it seems more in the spirit of the community, but we understand that there may be times (as with the police) that this isn’t ideal.

Anyway, we hope that you’ll find these new features useful. We’re pleased to see that Audioboo champions NickHollowayVox and Documentally have already added Follow buttons to their websites. Good work guys!

At 11am today Audioboo will be joining millions of people and observing a two minute silence for Armistice Day. During those two minutes you won’t be able to upload content via our web browser. We hope that this doesn’t inconvenience you too much and that you will be able to join us in a moment of remembrance.

We know that a lot of people are thinking of their loved ones today, if you have a story that you’d like to share, then please feel free to let us know about it and we can link to it in the blog.

We’ve also joined up with British Forces Broadcasting Services (BFBS) and The Sun to allow you to leave a message for members of the forces who are currently serving their country, some of them many miles from home. If you’d like to give them a Boo(st), then record your messages into the special Audioboo channel to let them know that they are in your thoughts.

You can read the full story in The Sun and then visit the Boost for the boys Audioboo channel to record a message for them.