Unions tend to be fairly conservative, particularly when it comes to technology. They are not known as “early adopters”. And that means that sometimes, while they wait for certain technologies to come down in price, or become easier to use, new technologies appear. One example of this is the use of sound in union websites. Very few union websites make any use of the fact that the vast majority of their members have computers with sound cards and speakers.
It is so rare that British unions make use of sound, that when one General Secretary chose to record and broadcast an audio Christmas greeting through the union’s website, it triggered one member to publicly post their thanks.
Meanwhile, the use of sound on the web moves on. It has been a decade since Progressive Networks, a company founded (oddly enough) to promote social change, launched “streaming audio” on the net with its product, now known as RealPlayer. It’s been more than five years since Live365.com made internet radio broadcasts a possibility for unions (and everyone else). It’s been more than a year since Radio LabourStart was launched — the world’s first global labour radio station, broadcasting 24/7 on the web.
So why mention the very latest developments? Because no one is waiting for unions to catch up while technology races ahead. Today it is possible to create audio broadcasts aimed at the millions of people who own an Apple iPod music player (or similar devices). This new possibility is called “podcasting” and it’s a very simple way to broadcast audio files in the popular MP3 format through the syndication format known as RSS (which stands for really simple syndication). Podcasting may sound hard to do, but it’s not, and to prove the point (once again) Radio LabourStart launched its first podcast in January 2004 with an appeal from a Sri Lankan trade unionist following the earthquake and tsunami disaster.
If this were hard to do, or costly, I’d understand the reluctance of unions to move forward — but it’s neither. You can see a podcast in action, and read more about it by following the links at http://radio.labourstart.org
You can add yet another way of adding to the adding of audio to websites. It is now possible to telephone an audio entry into a blog and it is then RSS fed which allows it to become podcast.
They are at http://www.audioblogger.com/
The telephone number is somewhere in California, but they expect to add other locations as demand warrants.
Although I set up this capability on our blog a couple of days ago we have yet to place one on the site.
Hi Eric,
Even with the usual large pinch of salt, this survey looks encouraging for your podcasting exploits:
http://hardware.silicon.com/storage/0,39024649,39129257,00.htm
cheers, John
PS – given the last comment, you should probably do us an article on blog-spamming for labour too – I’m sure there’s an angle there somewhere! 😉