Voxopop – recorded conversation

I recently posted about Nurphy, a way of having a public ‘conversation’ that is saved, kind of like a recorded email discussion that others can access and even join in with. Now I’ve found something that parallels Nurphy, except it’s about a voice conversation; a sort of way of saving an asynchronous phone conversation that multiple people can participate in.

The service is called Voxopop.

You can make your discussions private, open or restricted and you can create talkgroups specifically so that others can join to discuss within a particular topic of interest, similar to a discussion in a forum topic.

The talkgroups are categorized so that you can find one you might want to join in with, or you can use the search facility. Also you can list the most recently active, the newest, or the ones with most members.

You can follow the discussions using the RSS feed or you can squirt the feed out into iTunes and follow it as a podcast using the useful iTunes link.

Asynchronous discussions can have some benefits, for example they provide you with time to think before you add in your opinion.

I can imagine using Voxopop instead of trying to record a Skype conversation, or for easier interviewing of multiple participants in geographically separated locations and/or in different time zones. Also, this will allow questions to be put to large communities for responses and discussions. I can see me making some use of this service professionally.#

I haven’t tested this yet, but it has just occurred to me that you should be able to participate using a mobile device, an iPod Touch with a mic fitted for example.

Infographics via Spectives

I’ve been looking at infographics; graphic representations of statistical information. I recently came across one of the tools on Smashing Magazine titled Data Visualization and Infographics Resources. Here there’s a list of links to some great infographics sites.

Then today I found Spectives.

What Spectives does is create visual galleries aggregated from other websites of your deciding. Once registered it is relatively simple to create a ‘collection’, adding additional feeds. Note: to add the feed you simply paste in the required site URL and Spectives identifies the feed. If there are multiple available feeds on a page then you are offer the alternatives and just click on the one you want to use; I tend to choose the RSS 2.0 and that always seem to work fine.

I like the way Spectives works, and the way it displays the information. Hover over an image and if there is associated text it is displayed. Clicking on the image loads up the appropriate page. It’s an interesting way of finding information. It’s a nice way for those who tap into visual cues, (I know that isn’t for everyone). Then you can squirt out the feed of your aggregated collection using the RSS link on the right of your page.

Infographics are by definition very visual. What a perfect subject for a Spectives collection. So I thought I’d combine the two and use some of the links from the Data Visualization and Infographics Resources list and put them into the Spectives feeds to create an ‘infographics images’ collection.

Diigo link: My infographic bookmarks