Cartwright Reed

the iofy platform: the future of spoken audio

In 2005 we were working on the next generation of the iofy spoken audio platform. The company had been successfully selling our first digital spoken audio on websites like PimsleurDirect for a year or so, but we had a lot of work to do, and there were some pretty dispiriting things going on - like the Sony Rootkit scandal.

About that time, I came upon Fred Wilson's post on the future of media:

1 - Microchunk it - Reduce the content to its simplest form. Thanks Umair.
2 - Free it - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it. Thanks Stewart.
3 - Syndicate it - Let anyone take it and run with it.  Thanks Dave.
4 - Monetize it - Put the monetization and tracking systems into the microchunk. Thanks Feedburner.

Fred's vision of how media should be was clean and refreshing, and it was what we wanted to do. We wanted to make spoken audio content an intelligently chunked, non-proprietary, syndicatable, monetizable citizen of the net.

Three years later, we are finally completing a solid platform; where we can enable people to enjoy spoken audio in a way that goes with the grain of the Internet (courtesy Paul Graham). We've gotten validation from publishers, resellers and distributors: now we need to show consumers a good time.

I'm looking forward to talking to people about this at the PLA in two weeks. See you soon!

iPhones, Apple, audiobooks and ebooks

I switched from a BlackBerry 8830 (great phone!) about six months ago to try out Apple's iPhone. In spite of some problems with ATT service, I'd agree with those who say that Apple has made the first convergent device.

The iPhone is the first device I've used that did a "good enough" job as a phone, email reader, browser (the best mobile web browsing I've used -- in spite of the limited EDGE connectivity from ATT) that I don't take more than one device on the road. Although the pseudo GPS capability is quite poor, I find myself tolerating this and leaving my nuvi 650 at home rather than take two devices.

As you can imagine, I've pushed hard to make sure that iofy audiobooks are compatible with the iPhone and Apple iTouch as well as the standard iPods. People were pretty happy when we rolled out software to support the iPhone and iTouch a few weeks ago.

As iofy is a digital media platform developer as well as a device designer, I'm keenly interested in Apple's plans.  Today's NYT has an intriguing article by John Markoff where he opines on the future direction of Apple media devices:

On Wednesday, at a financial conference, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook, confirmed that the iTouch was a platform, not a single product. That would indicate that there is something like a Safari Pad in the offing — a Wi-Fi connected device that would be a scaled-up digital media reader.

I think Markoff is right, but that the focus will be on an iTunes Pad, not a Safari Pad. Apple's story on the video side is just gearing up; a six or seven inch iTouch would drive sales of movies and tv shows -- and maybe tell an ebook story as well.

In which a post is inconveniently delayed....

...and of course I waited too long to do a new post and now there is too much to talk about.

I'll start with an update on our iofy player. Its selling well and we've gotten great feedback from customers that used our first generation players in 2005. We have a new gallery of iofy player pictures here. Here's a sample:

I've also got new news on our download software. We've got a new version posted that I'll blog about more tomorrow. Please try it out by downloading a sample audiobook title that we've put up on the iofy website. Here it is:

(It's got Sherlock Holmes, it's got vampires, it's got Sussex, Sussex, Sussex!)

Picture of the county of Sussex courtesy Wikipedia.

Look for more updates tomorrow on DRM, Rock Band and Twitter!

iofy player screencast

Here's a little screencast I did of the iofy player. There's a bit of the eDrawing software, couldn't fix the aspect ratio on the capture.

Announcing our new Player at CES

We will be announcing our new iofy player at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on January 7, 2008. We've been working on this player for a long time and I'm very proud of it - we've responded to just about every request for new features from our previous player, including USB, MP3 support, better navigation, better audio quality - the list goes on and on. Of course, it does a great job playing audiobooks on SD cards, but now you'll be able to make your own chips, upgrade firmware and search in audio using tag clouds like this. Stay tuned for more!

We'll be announcing the new player with our hardware partner, GeneralPlus, a division of Sunplus, the manufacturer whose processors power many low cost consumer electronics and smart toys. (Remember the Furby? That's them.)

The CES is a great show - reminds me of my favorite quote from William Gibson: "The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed." There are always new companies showing devices that feel like visitors from a place a little further down the road.