Hearing Voices from NPR®:
021 Tony Schwartz— Documenting Life in Sound
Host— Barrett Golding & Kitchen Sisters of Hearing Voices
Airdates— 7/23/2008 - 7/30/2008
Tony Schwartz, media pioneer, audio documentarian, and the most famous radio person you probably never heard of, died June 2008. We hear The Kitchen Sisters’ Lost & Found Sound-portrait, “Tony Schwartz, 30,000 Recordings Later,” and the Tony Schwartz-inspired verite documentary of the town he lived in and loved, “New York City: 24 Hours in Public Places” (thanks to Transom.org).
The Great and Powerful WNYC begins weekly broadcasts today of our Hearing Voices from NPR series, Sun 7am on 820 AM in NYC. Lots of other stations have added us lately; we now air on 80+ AM/FM channels. Just a few of our other recent adds: Iowa Public Radio (on 3 of their networks), KCPW-Salt Lake City (home of Scott Carrier), New Jersey Public Radio, KSKA-Anchorage (still enjoying thier midnight sun), Northern Public Radio (Northern Illinois University network), , KDVS at UC-Davis (great music station), and KANW-Albuquerque.
Back from our bike loop around rural MT (Bozeman> Ennis> Dillon> Elkhorn Hot Springs> Butte> Willow Creek> Bozeman). Love riding thru the national parks; the Madison, Wise, Big Hole, and Jefferson Rivers make great travel companions. Got some tape and a few pix, but first gotta share with you this note magic-markered on the Whitehall MT cement picnic table where we lunched:
NPR is already offering a collection of widgets made by themselves and others (using their new API), including this flash-y Reverbiage spinning-globe story-list:
NPR.org has released their API (application programming interface) allowing access to NPR’s huge stockpiles of stories and sounds from 1995 till now. Anyone can embed NPR story-lists on their own web-pages and blogs, along w/ all NPR’s audio player possibilities: Real, Windows Media, or NPR’s own pop-up player right from your own page — you can “Play Now” a single story or build a playlist. Try it, here’s a recent HV NPR story:
June 27, 2008 | NPR· Amy Jo is a single mother of two toddlers. Each day is a struggle to provide the life she promised her daughter two years ago, but she’s glad their father is out of the picture.
Notice you also get streaming mp3s (.m3u), something not yet even on NPR’s own story pages. And who knows what widget-ry bit-twisters might craft from NPR’s new embrace of open-source-ness (see next post).
Techies: the API outputs as either an HTML or JavaScript widget, or in several XML formats, including RSS, ATOM, and NPR’s own custom NPRML. For details on constructing API calls and getting an API key, start at the Inside NPR.org blog. And you’re gonna love their Query Generator.
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
020 The Old Country— The Homeland
Host— Neenah Ellis of If I Live to Be 100
Airdates— 7/16/2008 - 7/23/2008
Three hearts searching for home: Going back to Vietnam makes Nguyen Qui Duc realize “Home is Always Somewhere Else,” from Crossing East; host Neenah Ellis goes looking for her family in Croatia, where “The Old Country is Gone.” And Andrei Codrescu returns to his Romanian home town and stares into the “Eyes of Sibiu.”
Heading into the hills of rural Montana for a week-long bicycle trip, w/ little to no net-connectivity along the way. So this blog may lay dormant for a few days: See ya next weekend.
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
Tony Schwartz, media pioneer, audio documentarian, and the most famous radio person you probably never heard of, died June 2008. We hear The Kitchen Sisters’ Lost & Found Sound-portrait, “Tony Schwartz, 30,000 Recordings Later,” and the Tony Schwartz-inspired verite documentary of the town he lived in and loved, “New York City: 24 Hours in Public Places” (thanks to Transom.org).
The Great and Powerful 
Three hearts searching for home: Going back to Vietnam makes 
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