This is Technology Bytes, episode 55 for March 24th, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I’m talking about wavelength, and I’ll explain what that is momentarily, but sometimes we use technology every day that we don’t even think about, and sometimes it may not be every day, it may be once a week, as in the case of what I will be discussing today.
At the end of my episode last week, I did basically a public service announcement talking about how the app that I used to record my microcast had been updated first time in actually two years, I think, but it broke a function that I use, which is to add my theme music to the microcast right after my introduction, and then at the very end, kind of an outro music as well.
And then I realized that I had never spoken about wavelength and how I record my microcast.
I’ll try not to make this story too long, but I need some background before I get into what I use to record my microcast.
And the background is that some number of years ago, I think it might be five or six, maybe more, I was pretty much done with social media.
I didn’t really enjoy any of it.
I didn’t like being on Facebook.
I didn’t really like to participate, and so I was looking for some outlet, some social media, something maybe that I could do to feed that itch, although that itch isn’t all that strong for me either.
And I was listening to one of the mini-podcasts that I listened to, and they interviewed a guy named Manton Rees, and he was talking about a social network that he was trying to start, fully curated.
They could kick you out.
They have to accept you in.
The posts are somewhat curated by humans just to make sure things are not offensive, and obviously that can mean different things.
But listening to the interview, it sounded like something that I might enjoy.
It seemed a little bit maybe on the techie side at the outset, but I decided that I would sign up.
It was free, and so I signed up and posted a little.
I’m not much of a poster anyway, and it was fine.
I didn’t mind it at all.
I didn’t really form any kind of friendship through it or anything like that.
There was limitations of how you can follow people and how you reply to people’s posts, and some of that’s changed over time.
But I really haven’t been in it all that much for the social aspect of it.
So why did I stay?
Well, sometime in the early days of signing up, or I don’t know, maybe it had been almost a year before it happened, but they added Manton and his team, which is I think just one other person and then one curator, but he added to his app the ability to record a short podcast, and he called it a microcast.
He called his service micro.blog for just short posts of whatever it is that you had to say that you felt was of interest.
And really it’s just a blog to record you, what you’re doing, and then some interact with those who might choose to follow you or those kind of things.
But I always wanted to do a podcast and never really knew how to start.
And so with this advent of this microcast that Manton started, I thought that’s what I want to do.
So now I’m paying for the ability to do that.
Ah, so now that reminds me.
The social network you actually do have to pay for.
It’s not free.
I was paying $5 a month to do nothing, and then that bumped up to $10 a month so I could do a microcast.
And here I am recording my 54th on this channel, and I have another microcast called I’m Talking where this week I recorded my 304th.
All that to say the app I use to do my recording is called Wavelength.
It’s a very simple app.
It has one button that says record, and then you stop when you’re done.
I record mine in little segments.
Very little editing.
In fact, there’s really only cutting, and I’ve used that some where I really liked what I said, and then I messed up, so I just go to the end and cut that part out and start that thought over again.
And rearranging of the recording, so if there’s something in the middle I need to go back and say I can and then move and put it there.
But very simple edits, very simple recording app.
And then the cool thing is through my micro.blog account, it ties me to the podcast world and really sets me up through what is Apple’s podcast environment.
And micro.blog handled all of that, and then Wavelength lets me record and ties into that.
And so my presence at micro.blog just naturally flowed into my presence as a podcaster.
And the other thing that it allowed me to do was to add audio.
So my son created theme music for both of my microcasts that I do, and so I’ll say my introduction, I’ll play a little music, I’ll record the microcast, and then at the end I’ll play a little music after I have signed off.
And unfortunately, this update has broken that function, but I reached out to Manton, he reached back and said, yep, I’ll get that fixed, sorry about that.
And so hopefully when I record my microcast next week, it will be fixed.
So again, Wavelength, simple app, a very effective app to record microcasts that you do through micro.blog.
Again, it only costs me $10 a month.
It’s one of the least expensive ways that I have found to do this, and I really like it.
And the Wavelength app makes it very simple.
And for the cost, I think I enjoy it.
I have done now numbers of years of microcasts.
I don’t really have very many listeners.
But that’s not necessarily why I do it.
It lets me put thoughts in sound files, and those are saved and those are on the web and tied at micro.blog and my account name.
And so it works really well.
I’m very happy with it and plan to continue for as long as I can.
That is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, questions, you can send them to technologybytesatmarriedfamily.com.
That’s B-Y-T-E-S.
Kind of a little play on words there.
Thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
