All right then, I was just thinking it was about time for another really fun Internet tool to come along. Nothing really huge since twitter, with the possibility of the elusive Google Wave. Well my dear readers, I think that time has come.
The folks over at BlogTalk Radio debuted a new service called Cinch last Friday. It’s a lovely little social platform that allows you to post audio, text, ad pictures or any combination of them you wish. Here is an example, a test of it I just ran:
[EDIT: Which brings up an issue with the embed code Cinch generates. There does not seem to be a way to disable the autoplay function. As a result I have removed the example cast from this post. No one want's audio to automatically start when a page loads, it's just ot a good practice. I'll be inquiring with them and wil blog about the results. -Loki]
High Points:
- iPhone App- clean and easy to use. Also allows you to tune in BlogTalk Radio shows.
- Facebook integration- allows you to post your “Cinchs” to Facebook either automatically or on a case by case basis.
- Twitter integration- same as the Facebook integration above.
- Phone- you can set up any cell phone to post a Cinch, if you have an iPhone the app is a blast.
- Sharing is easy and versatile, excellent potential to share widely. Easily accessible embed code, bookmarking, etc on all output.
Low Points:
- Unlike many other social apps Cinch does not allow you to import and invite friends directly from your email or webmail account.
- Adding and finding friends is a clumsy process.
- Unlike many other audiocasting services you cannot download the sound files you create.
- The Facebook posts take up a lot more page real estate than they need to and could easily be condensed a bit without having to remove anything.
Even so, I have to give this one pretty solid high marks. For a brand new, just launched platform it shines brightly. I predict this being extremely useful for citizen journalists, lifestreaming, or good old fashioned podcasting. I have not tried out the length of audio possible and don’t see anything to about it on the website, but I will be testing it out by trying to do some full length podcasts in the near future.
Give it a try, it’s a cinch! (I can’t resist a bad pun, sorry)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi! Thanks for the Cinchcast review. Always appreciate the honesty and great feedback. A few things to note about Cinch that I thought you’d like to hear:
* Unlike many other social apps Cinch does not allow you to import and invite friends directly from your email or webmail account. SK- great suggestion, I will add this to the list of features!
* Adding and finding friends is a clumsy process. SK – We’ll add the “Follow” button on the public page so you can easily add interesting people to follow. That’s one less clicks for you!
* Unlike many other audiocasting services you cannot download the sound files you create. SK – You actually can. There’s a purple box with a white arrow next to the reply link for all Cinches that have audio. That icon let’s you download the file.
* The Facebook posts take up a lot more page real estate than they need to and could easily be condensed a bit without having to remove anything. SK – We’ve got a fix in QA right now that should be rolling out soon which fixes this problem.
Thanks again for using Cinch.
Savan
Hey Savan, thanks for the inside scoop. Out of curiosity, what is the maximum recording time on the audio?
Like I said above, great little service you guys have going there. I intend to put it through its paces. I have a radio background and really got started as a blogger doing audiocasts during Hurricane Katrina (used the old Audioblogger service, now I use hipcast a lot). Going back to that has a great deal of appeal.
Thanks for weighing in, I do appreciate it!