On Nov 21, 2005, at 1:49 PM, Michael H. Georg wrote: > Methinks an audio wiki would be an oxy-moron. Since in nearly all > cases wikis are used to convey information or technical > descriptions, what would be the point of an audio version.
First, let me clarify what I mean by audio-wiki: a web-based means for people to collaborate on an audio recording. The audio-wiki provides a convenient way to store, distribute, and edit audio files. One way to envision an audio-wiki is as an add-on to existing text- based wiki's. Speech software would be one way to accomplish this. Another way would be for people to record an audio version of the wiki text and then add the link next to the text, much like people currently add images to a wiki page. Another way to envision an audio-wiki is as an adaptation or alternate version of existing wiki-text. In a previous post I made the analogy to adapting a book to a play or movie. But perhaps a closer analogy would be the foreign language version of wiki pages. For example, the English version of the wiki page on Angela Merkel is similar but different from the German version. And both of those are quite different from the Esperanto version. The topic (Angela Merkel) is the same, but the content is quite different. If we stretch the analogy to consider speech as a language different from written, then we'd have an audio-wiki. If we stretch the previous vision a bit further then we end up with an audio-wiki that is something completely separate and virtually unrelated to a regular text-based wiki. Think of this version as the wiki-mashup. In this version it's not just voice but anything audio. It's multi-track and re-mixed and edited and sound-effects and commentary and all the neat stuff that happens with mash-ups. In this case the wiki is acting as a repository for the different versions and serving as a gathering place where people can mix and mash differing version of audio. Again, just exploring the space. Video seems to be the obvious next step. BTW, I've created some voice recordings using Audacity and attached them to the wiki on POSS: http://www.cwelug.org/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?ProducingOSS Feel free to modify what I've recorded. So far it's been a learning experience. For example, I've discovered that reading text out loud is not easy. I ended up taking the existing text and reformatting it so that it is easier to read out loud. See the script next to the acknowledgment section. Regards, - Robert http://www.cwelug.org/downloads Help others get OpenSource software. Distribute FLOSS for Windows, Linux, *BSD, and MacOS X with BitTorrent _______________________________________________ CWE-LUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.cwelug.org/ http://www.cwelug.org/archives/ http://www.cwelug.org/mailinglist/
