As you will hear in the soon-to-be-released show #41, listener "natas" has now made it possible for you to dial a phone number and listen to any of the Blue Box "main" shows over your phone (special edition shows coming at some point soon). Simply dial:
+1-712-432-5355
and you will be prompted to enter in the number of the show you would like to listen to. You can press the "#" key to fast-forward, the "*" key to rewind, the "0" key to pause/resume and the "1" key to exit the episode and return to the main menu to listen to another episode. Obviously, when you are done you can just hang up.
Given that this is an experiment, any comments people have on the usefulness (or not) of this service would be appreciated. You can leave them here or send them in via email or audio. If you do find the service useful, I would be curious as to why... where are you or what situation are you in where calling in to listen is easier than downloading the MP3 directly and listening? I'd really like to know. (natas indicates he is doing this for some other podcasts and is having people call in.)
Many thanks to natas for setting this up and I look forward to any feedback listeners have.
P.S. For those interested, natas has a phone connection coming from a VoIP service provider into his Asterisk server where he as the IVR set up. He has uploaded (with our permission) the show MP3s onto his Asterisk server and whichever one is requested is then played for the caller.
This is a fun technology demonstration, but not very useful, I think. It reminds me of the Dial-a-disc service in the 60's/70's in the UK, where you could dial up and listen to a chart pop tune over the phone.
Posted by: Martyn Davies | October 09, 2006 at 12:51 PM