The SICS Pondcaster, or podcasting
as an interactive experience
Podcasting has taken the
world with storm and is today a mass phenomenon. "Podcast" was
elected "word of the
year 2005" by the editors of the New Oxford
American Dictionary and is now officially defined as "a digital recording
of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet
for
downloading to a personal audio player".
In its current form, podcasting is a way for individuals and radio
stations to
broadcast shows by making them accessible as digital audio (and
now also
video) files over the Internet. Listeners
will decide upon the type of program that they wish to listen to and
automatically have it downloaded and available för later
listening off-line on
portable audio players.
SICS' Pondcaster brings back
social aspects of radio listening
from the very early days of radio
In the Pondcaster scenario, sharing of the podcasting experience is
realised
through interaction around a table-top artifact and through "public"
radio-like devices exploring the preferences of the listeners present.
The
artifact keeps track of the mobile phones present in the room
and users
can chose to associate shows of interest to their mobile
phones. Such
associations will be remembered by the system and at a later time users
are
able to listen to the chosen shows at public radio-like terminals.
Users in the
vicinity of such a set will be recognized and their selections
retrieved and
played using a queue system. The setting encourages socializing and
discussion.
The Pondcaster is based on existing Internet technologies. Because the
system
uses bluetooth tagging, no data is moved to the mobile
devices and
subscriptions and preferences are kept on the Pondcaster and made
available as
needed to radio devices and Web browsers. The artifact forms the
premises of a personalised podcast aggregator.
