Is this, or something like it, possible?

greggh · Post by **greggh** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 9:13 pm

I've been thinking about starting my own podcast recently. I was thinking that it would be really cool if a listener could have a browser window open and could view certain webpages at certain times during the podcast (or even live stream). Is there any way to insert and embed urls into a stream or podcast encoded as ogg or mp3, that could then be passed while listening to an open browser window to load different webpages being discussed in the podcast at appropriate times. Or is there anything similar to this that exists? I think this would add a whole new dimension to listening to a live stream or podcast.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 9:48 pm

Well, Leo Laporte uses Ustream during his Tech Guy radio shows on weekends. It basically allows you to broadcast video live on the web at no cost. Leo typically has a camera centered on his head for the radio show, as well as a desktop view so you can see what he's doing. It's pretty neat. Maybe something you could look into. Perhaps TLLTS could do something with Ustream?

http://ustream.tv/

greggh · Post by **greggh** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:03 pm

I'm not interested in ustream like video streaming. It requires too much bandwidth for too small and too crappy an image. I thought that being able to push webpages to a listener's open browser window would be great for so many podcasts. It would require so little extra bandwidth to insert a url in the stream every so often. I searched to see if anything like this exists, but I just don't think it does. You could achieve a similar result by announcing at the beginning of the stream or podcast "goto to this link" which would have a list of numbered links on the page and then throughout the show say "goto link1" "goto link2" "go back to link 1", etc...

But it would be so much cooler if the pages that were being talked about during the show were dynamically pushed into your browser.

Post by **dann** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:00 pm

I looked into this a little over a year ago. While it is theoretically possible, there are no tools to do this yet, that I am aware of, for ogg:

http://www.vorbis.com/faq/#container

I suspect, if I recall correctly, that Apple has this technology in AAC and is it garage band that permits embedding notes, images and such in the file. I am not sure whether mp3 supports this, though so you may be limited to AAC.

Finally, you would need a player that supports this, and AFAIK, there are no players yet, for ogg at least.

greggh · Post by **greggh** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:08 pm

Thanks Dann. I pretty much figured this doesn't exist... YET. It will be commonplace someday though. I mean, it just makes so much sense to have this ability, that it just has to be included at some point.

allix · Post by **allix** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:41 am

dann wrote:
I suspect, if I recall correctly, that Apple has this technology in AAC and is it garage band that permits embedding notes, images and such in the file. I am not sure whether mp3 supports this, though so you may be limited to AAC.

Apple are true innovators