The London Biker

…. I never thought I’d say those words again, after one brief stint (18 months) a couple of years ago, I found I missed the rather amazing atmosphere and creative people.

There’s lots that can get on your nerves about the BBC (generally it’s finance), but none of that stops it being one of the most amazing places to work in the world, it’s easily the best place to work in the UK - and therein is the problem.

There was frankly no-one in the UK that could have got me out of the beeb, not with buckets of cash and technology that would have made me cry… but then along came Lonely Planet and devised a role that I simply had to go for, and thankfully have got!

So from the start of October I’ll be the new Innovation Ecosystem Manager for Lonely Planet based out of Melbourne in Australia - it’s all rather cool

Sound simple doesn’t it. Just find a way of leaving a message on something like skype, then get it to encode your audio, upload it to the server and generate the XML. 

However, the whole skype thing is a bit of a red herring - I’ve been trying to make this work on and off for a few months, and as soon as I realised Skype wasn’t the way to go, it took me two days. In this post I’m hoping to demonstrate how you can podcast straight to your blog and iTunes from anywhere in the world using your mobile phone. Just like this - http://journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast

There are a couple of services that I’ve found that can make this work - unfortunately whilst both of them offer a free service to get the best you’ll need to pay a little cash.

The first is called Evoka - http://www.evoca.com/ - it’s a simple service that is essentially a bit like YouTube for audio. When you create an account you get a home page evoca.com/username and helpfully an RSS feed. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a way to edit the MP3 tags, or to pull the content and RSS easily to your own domain - there’s certainly no way to edit what gets posted in the RSS feed.

The second service, and the one I’ve finally decided to use (and pay for) is called PhoneBlogz - http://www.phoneblogz.com/ - it offers a simple way to edit your MP3 tags, you can even (using the wordpress plugin) totally customise the posts that hit your blog, as well as pretty much everything in-between.

What I like most about PhoneBlogz though is that you can pretty much build everything using the free service then only pay if you want to create more than one, two minute audio recording each day. There are various levels of service - I’ve gone for the four, 15 minute messages each day package - costing a princely sum of $12.99 per month, the great thing of course is that for Russia we only need to pay this one and then drop to the free package again.

How to set up PhoneBlogz

It can be a little confusing, there’s no guide on the site and hopefully this will help. Whilst PhoneBlogz supports Drupal, Wordpress, Serendipity, Blogger,Livejournal, Typepad as well as FTP uploads, this guide concentrates on Wordpress.

Before you start on the below steps go to PhoneBlogz and register for a free account.

1. Download the plugins

You’ll need both the PhoneBlogz  and the Audio-Player plugins.

2. Upload and install the plugins

Upload to your plugins directory - normally found at www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins

3. Set up the plugins in your wordpress admin backend.

Click ‘Plugins’ and activate both of them.

Note… you’ll note find the PhoneBlogz plugin options in the normal ’setting’s section - it lives in the ‘plugins’ tab after you’ve activated it.

• PhoneBlogz settings - insert your access code and your WEBSITE password (not your account pin).
• Tick the ‘use Audio-Player’ box if you want the flash player to appear in your posts.
• Edit the posting text - this is the text that appears on your site every-time you send a recording.

I left the Audio-Player settings alone.

4. Edit the settings for posting on the PhoneBlogz configuration pages.

• Set the options for plugin posting
• Set the Audio Options - this is where you can dictate the MP3 tags etc
• Upload intro and out jingles - love this feature!

5. Set the category you want the audio to be posted to.

You’re supposed to be able to set this in the plugin - however it doesn’t work. There’s an easy way around this.

• Click on ’settings’ in your wordpress backend
• Click on ‘writing’
• Scroll down to ‘Post via email’
• Set the Default Mail Category to your choice.

I’ve discovered that the plugin uses this setting - if all works well you’ll have all your audio recordings posted in this category

For example

http://www.journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast/

this then of course provides you with an RSS feed of all your audio recordings

http://www.journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast/feed

You can find out how to work out your RSS settings / feeds over at Wordpress Codex.
That’s pretty much it. All I have to do now is create a new wordpress template page that will allow me to create a simple page at /podcast and includes all the posts in the category ‘Podcast’ beneath the text that currently appears there. Not being the biggest PHP head, I’m struggling with this bit at the moment - any helpful tips most appreciated!

A new audio message has been left: CLICK HERE

(testing a way of creating a podcast via my mobile phone on the way to Russia)

Thing is, I can’t help spending money in camping shops. It’s a problem, and it leads me to buy things I think I really need.

In this case I’m certain I need this. It’s a bivi bag, or you could call it a waterproof sleeping bag cover. Whatever your syntax of choice - it’s lovely and warm, and importantly waterproof. No good for full on storms, or even a light shower - but combined with the Basha - it may well mean I get the swag off the bike less than I initially planned.

The people who wrote in to the BBC Trust to complain about Top Gear showing an image of a frost bitten willy, and showing Jeremy Clarkson and James May enjoying a glass of rather nice booze as they drove to the North Pole (get that - they were driving to the North Pole - in a car - showing how comfortable it was to do so and that you didn’t in fact need to do it with a dog sled - which is hard) should be banned from watching TV.

We should be able to revoke peoples Sky Subscriptions, remove their freeview boxes and ask politely for the return of their TV License.

Seriously folks. It was funny, it wasn’t dangerous, and it was editorially justified. Get over yourselves.

Without a doubt my favourite hack (and music for that point) was Team Bob

BBC Dylan - News 24 Revisited (Full Version) from James Adam on Vimeo.

So cool. So clever.

There’s just over 100 people here at Mashed, about evenly split between those awake and doing stuff (mainly werewolf and Rock Band at this moment in time) and those grabbing a few precious moments of sleep.

Stace came up with a good idea early on, a night manager, someone to take over from a sensible time late on Saturday to give the core organisation team a good break. This year I’ve split the main on-site organisation into four roles - the Senior Producer and three Production Assistants - it’s worked really well and meant we’ve kept everything very well in hand - but for some reason the shift pattern for overnight isn’t resulting in as much sleep as I could do with!

Ian Forrester is in his element, this is the middle of the day for him! Next year he can run the night shift I think.

Thoughts on the event so far:

• Having dedicated staff rather than volunteers has made things much easier and smoother.
• I wonder if the smooth running has some-how taken the ‘edge’ off the event a little?
• We have about 100 more people here at most times than we did last year.
• The screen is amazing, we can’t get a smaller one next year.
• I’m very excited about tomorrow’s (today’s) presentations.
• Kingswood Warren guys are awesome, I wish I had more time to give them.
• Hotel in Muswell Hill has been dreadful, the concept of a 10 room block booking seems quite alien to them.
• Very happy to read the virtually totally positive twitter and blog posts coming out.

I’m really on my knee right now, I can’t see how I can see the day out, and there’s still so much to do - I had the horrible two hour stretch in the middle of the night so I’ve not managed to get more than two hours sleep. I need some tips on keeping focused and awake. I think I may find a quiet corner and try some simple meditation.

Well this is it, the last time before mashed when I’ll be able to sit at a desk and type properly - not balancing my eee PC on my knee hoping the wi-fi is still up.

It’s quite scary - 600 people have signed up now - there’s some more tickets available, but I just feel I’ve forgotten something.

The PR has started in earnest - I was on the Guardian Tech weekly podcast, and Pods and Blogs this week - it’s quite fun hearing myself on radio again - reminds me how much I miss it.

Right, bean bags need to be organised, and I need to deal with the hundreds of entries for Monster Mashed (read as ZERO entries to Monster Mashed).

Get your entries in now

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2008/06/monster_mashed.html

This is sooo damn cool - I can’t announce it officially yet because I have to put it in proper BBC legal language - and that takes time… but get this… we’re going to run a competition for Mashed in a couple of weeks to build a BBC Sci-Fi Monster.

Not just any monster mind you, but a full size, fully functional, kick-ass monster.

Basically between now and next Thursday you email me with your ideas, and I select the best two - we’ll then fund you to the tune of up to £500 to build the monster (you’ll get the cash after Mashed not before). Then at Mashed itself you actually build the things over 24 hours and show them off on the Sunday with the other presentations - the audience votes on a winner - we give you some lame gift as a prize (the prize is actually the £500 to build the thing in the first place) and you get to keep the monster… how cool!

Anyway - more news on the official backstage blog when I’ve sorted out the legal stuff… also so AMAZINGLY COOl…. NASA are coming… I so damn excited right now.

Fucking ROCKETS!