Pito's Weblog

Pito's Weblog: "Audio doesn't work that way. It tends to be much more sequential - you have to kind of stay with it for a certain period of time (maybe not beginning to end, but starting in the middle often is not workable.) So it doesn't lend itself that well in my opinion to the blog mode of communicating - and especially not the blog mode of 'consuming' (reading/hearing.)
Yes, the hearing the author's voice reacting to thoughtful questions is a major additional dimension to the experience, but using Radio as a radio may not work that well."


This is an interesting observation that not only applies to blogging but anytime one would like to consume content non-serially, what's been referred to as newspaper reading (scan titles, read a piece of an article, jump to the sports page, etc.). Imagine TiVo-like controls on a blog? By giving multiple navigation speeds, in both directions in an easy-to-use manner, this would offer slightly better control. How about a Gotuit-like experience that offers an index allowing the consumer to pick and choose which pieces they wish to consume? How about a multimodal experience that combines all of today's existing capabilities; a hyper-linked index of the media with text or audio/video fingerprints for quick scanning, an audio-to-text conversion allowing a user to quickly scan and switch modes to listen to the most interesting portions? There is tremendous opportunity to expand the blog experience with rich media content without losing the 'newspaper' consumption mode.