Ta-dah! The first episode of Spark is ready to roll. This year, we’ve decided to release the podcasts on Tuesdays, so subscribers and our online friends get to hear the show a day before it’s played on the radio. Enjoy!
On this episode of Spark:
- Nora escapes from phone tree hell to host a new season of Spark. Shai Berger makes calling big business easier with Fonolo.com and gives a video demo of the site.
- Richard Rose explains what’s new in speech recognition research.
Pete Nowak gives Nora the 411 on Canadian data plans and consumer discontent. cbc.ca/technology’s special series, Disconnected, will appear online September 8. It looks at consumer dissatisfaction with Canadian telcos.
- Elísabet Gunnarsdóttir is in Dale, Norway and listening to the world via the Telemegaphone project.
- Chemistry teachers Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams send their students home with podcasts, not homework.
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “One Big Holiday” by My Morning Jacket
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “Poem for Karl Gunthe Jansky” by Gurdonark
- “Happy” by Brian Smith
- “Latin Nightbug” by Lee Rosevere
- “Nube” by oldDog
- “Burnt Toast For Breakfast” by Sum-1
- “We Learn About the Telephone I (1965)”
Play audio:
You can download this episode as an MP3, or receive Spark automatically by subscribing to either of our totally free podcast feeds:
- Free weekly podcast (Subscribe in iTunes)
- Free weekly podcast + additional blog-only content (Subscribe in iTunes)
For more information (and instructions) visit cbc.ca/podcasting
Original photo by Milica Sekulic
Hey Spark,
Glad to have you back. Loved hearing about the telemegaphone project – what a fascinating idea! – and the problems of speech recognition technology.
Re: phones, thought you might be interested in a quote from a book called The Human Voice, by Anne Karpf. When phones were first introduced, they were considered uncanny instruments, and one newspaper editorialist even commented “It is difficult to really resist the notion that the powers of darkness are in league with it.”
I think a lot of people would agree there’s something infernal about phone trees, too!
@Barbara,
That’s very funny. I remember seeing an old film in the Prelinger Archives about telephones as devices for ‘far speaking’. In one dramatization, the woman listening to the phone for the first time claimed not to be able to understand the person on the other end. I wonder if that was ‘artistic licence’ or if people actually found that uncanny disembodied voice hard to understand at first.
Really looking forward to this year’s Spark episodes. Recently listened to all of last years episodes while driving to a conference in Moose Jaw from my home in St. François Xavier, MB. I was very impressed.
What prompted me to comment was the use of the photo on the blog. I happened to have used the same photo for a blog post I wrote this morning on Cell Phones for Learning…the Future. (http://nlcommunities.com/communities/joevans/archive/2008/09/05/185522.aspx) You might find some information from either of the two individuals mentioned in the blog post, both highly respected educators, useful for future episodes.
Keep up the great work!
John
Really looking forward to this year’s Spark episodes. Recently listened to all of last years episodes while driving to a conference in Moose Jaw from my home in St. François Xavier, MB. I was very impressed.
What prompted me to comment was the use of the photo on the blog. I happened to have used the same photo for a blog post I wrote this morning on Cell Phones for Learning…the Future. (http://nlcommunities.com/communities/joevans/archive/2008/09/05/185522.aspx) You might find some information from either of the two individuals mentioned in the blog post, both highly respected educators, useful for future episodes.
Keep up the great work!
John
Hey Nora,
Great to have you back! I just downloaded ALL of the Spark podcasts and listened to them over the course of a week. I’m either crazy or you’ve got a great show. Let’s hope it’s the latter.
-Derek
Thanks for the good wishes. We're really happy to be back, and I think we have some really cool guests booked for upcoming shows. Hope you agree!
What I find really annoying and insulting about the voice recognition systems is when the computer speaks as if it’s a real person (e.g. Bell’s “Emily”). Do they really think we’re so stupid as to believe that that’s a real person? If I was a suspicious person, I’d think these companies intentionally make their voice systems so annoying and cumbersome that you won’t want to use them, thus saving them the cost of providing proper technical support.
@James,
I know what you mean. There’s something almost infantilizing about it, like you’re being roped into a charade or performance of pretending you’re having a ‘conversation’.
Fido’s system never understood me first nor last not (even yes or no) on my landline so I got fed up yelling more than 10 times for each word or phrase and dropped the company asap since they didnt offer regular touch tone responses any more
I am NOT an immigrant and haven’t been able to speak with a Newfoundland accent for many years.
@Kelly,
So you and I are in the same boat! I thought it was hilarious when my guest said that in the speech recognition world, they’ve divided us into sheep and goats!
I wish these systems were required (by somebody) to provide the option of using voice recognition or your phone’s touch pad.
Great work on the My Morning Jacket clip! I didn’t realize they were CC-licensed.