Audioblogger Changes Phone Number, and Textual Thoughts on Mobcasting

New Audioblogger number: +1 415 856 0205

These websites didn't get the word either; they still list old 661 area code number as of 6/10 7:45 am:

• Radical Georgia Moderate


• Zingers


• Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth


• Apricot Pie (which explains how to use Audioblogger as an answering machine - THAT sounds dangerous)


• Google Blogoscoped


• Lucipo


• Open Source

Several of these entries mention a technique called mobcasting. Here's how Andy Carvin describes it:

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Think of the role played by people using mobile phones and SMS during the ousters of Slobodan Milosevic and Joseph Estrada respectively. Now empower them with video phones, 3G mobile telephony, and a Flickr-like tool for uploading audio and video to RSS-enabled websites. We're no longer talking about mobile blogging or podcasting now - we're talking about a social revolution. We're talking about mobcasting.

What do I mean by mobcasting? Well, it's really a double entrendre, if you will: a play on both mobile podcasting and Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold's notion of viral-like social coordination enabled by information and communications technologies. Smart mobs got a lot of hype last year in the mainstream media, usually in the form of surrealistic group performance art initiated over the Internet. But smart mobs are much more powerful than just a group of college kids showing up in an art gallery at 12:15pm, standing on one foot and yelling "Tevye, get off the roof!" before dispersing without further comment. Like the case of SMS use during the anti-Estrada demonstrations in the Philippines, smart mobs can be any form of group social action enabled by ICTs.

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