Introduction to AudioEnable

Software as a Service is one of the fastest growing areas of the IT industry.

The percentage of consumers using SaaS doubled in 2008 from the previous year.

Which is good news for us, really.

Nomos Media was approached by Radio in Schools in 2007 to design and develop a Website and underlying platform to enable students and teachers to record, edit and distribute podcasts using simple, software-free tools.

The Radio in Schools project already had the backing of the Heart Radio group, and engagement from a number of Schools in the Bristol area had shown a real need for something like Radio in Schools. There was really only 1 other competitor in that space, and their pricing model, and technical solution put them in a completely different bracket to what we wanted to achieve.

It was an exciting project, and Nomos worked full-time on it for almost a year. We're very excited by the end product: and early feedback seems to suggest the project will be a long-term success.

The Flash studio - which is really the heart of the product - has been especially well received. Its a very intuitive, simple UI with a bit of a garage band feel going on. Its where you do the audio recording, editing and publishing of the podcasts. Teachers loved it, kids really loved it, and we've been getting great feedback from outside of the education sector too.

It was a short leap to the conclusion that we had actually created something that - if decoupled from Radio in Schools - could be offered in a Software-as-a-Service environment to a much wider audience.

So we came up with the idea of Audio Enable. Basically - Audio Enable will take the platform built for Radio in Schools and make it available to anyone who wants to capture, edit and distribute audio through their own channels, without having to buy software or have access to technical expertise.

Taking it a step further - we'd already considered the idea that our audience would want to engage with the service from a variety of different platforms. It made sense to pursue the idea of mobile platform support to the next level.

Getting the Media Sandbox grant has enabled us to start work on a windows mobile version of the software that will interface with the Audio Enable platform. Radio in Schools have (thankfully!) agreed to test the resultant software for us in a real-world environment.

So where are we at right now?

Um…

Well, at the moment we've divided up into two camps. The UI camp (me) and the tech camp (Mark).

Mark has a long history as a techie, but he'd been off the boil doing management type things for a while. So he's dusting off his *developing windows mobile applications for dummies* book while I start coming up with some innovative and attractive designs that he'll most likely ignore when it comes to building the product.

We hope to have some mock-ups of the UI done in a week or so…

Watch this space.