recursion

We're talking about doing interviews for the New Patriot which naturally leads me to think of transcription. (Why not just post the recordings? Check out the Audioblogging Manifesto.)

I did some transcription for TV ads last year and it was just awful. I'd have to listen to the damn thing over and over again (made worse because most streaming video players won't let you pause and back up with any precision). That that's just for a 30 second ad. Transcribing an interview would be hellish.

Software can make it easier.

Listen&Type is the Boing Boing recommended program for transcription.

Mark Frauenfelder also uses Audio Recorder to change the audio from line in to MP3.

Mike Whybark has a home-brew solution using AppleScript and iTunes.

Through the magic of globalization, you can also pay poor people to transcribe the audio for you.

P.S.: The spelling difference between "transcribe" and "transcription" is playing games with my brain.

Flickr is really popular, but I've always wondered how they planned to make money. Thanks to O'Reilly, here's their business model:

[O'Reilly editor Richard] Koman: So, what's the business model?

[Flickr CEO Stewart] Butterfield: There are two halves to it. The first is that things that are driven by individual users, so subscription fees for premium services. Actually, we're doing fantastically with that so far; we're really happy with the results. There are other things like printing, CD and DVD backups, and gifts--so if you take a bunch of photos at a wedding, you can pull them with friends and families photos and give them to the bride and groom. Those are probably secondary to subscription fees.

The other side is monetizing the whole collection of photos, essentially advertising. If you look at photos that are tagged with "Italy," you'll probably see ads for hotels in Italy, tours of Piedmont and whatever. There's a lot of contextual advertising you can do against big collections. And in addition, a bunch of different marketplace activities, allowing people to sell prints of their photos, letting people sell images to news media, and stuff like that. And probably all of those are secondary to advertising.