We think you’re going to like this, for a lot of special reasons.
SSI has had a Soundcloud Channel for years. We don’t over-use it (quality beats quantity) but there is some great library audio that we’ve put there and we hope that you have seen it. If you haven’t, you can click right here to take a quick look.
While the channel is a good value-add, a couple of not great things have come up over time; First, Soundcloud occasionally alters their website to “prompt” people to create an account… which not everyone wants just to hear a few things, no matter how special they are. And second, there are a percentage of people who prefer not to listen to things, no matter how great, and instead prefer to read them.
Ok, there’s a third thing too: Life is always trying to get you into something else, so sometimes a listen is started but never finished. If an amazingly important thing is near the end of some audio… it doesn’t always get heard.
In and among the stacks of work your SSI volunteer staff has on the plate, there has always been the nagging question. How to fix this?
Last week we took it on and below you will see what we think might be a pretty good option.
You can listen, you can read, you can follow the magic highlight, you can check the full contents by chapters (those are a pain to make, it is a manual process, but well worth it), you can search by text, you can go full screen, click to get the current location right into a direct url, and more. It seems to run well on phones but you’ve gotta try it full screen on a real computer or big tablet too because we think it looks pretty cool. There are Lots of options… but the most important part is:
The Content.
We have a little story to tell about this – and a very specific place we want you to check in the playback, and we will do that on the other side of you playing a bit on your own… Go ahead, play with it!
Here’s the story:
Making this new custom tool took several days. It was a lot of rewinding and re-playing and hearing subsections over and over and over… and us forgetting that testing audio could be kind of loud. Last Tuesday we were pretty much happy with the minutias and let the whole thing just roll. And we didn’t notice that we’d left the office door open.
At nearly the very end, we looked up and saw a non-SSI worker standing just outside our door.. just listening. We ran over to stop the audio and they said ‘No, don’t stop it. This is great. I’ve never heard anything like this.’
And so we let it play out.
They: ‘This is what you guys do?’
Us: ‘Yeah, that’s the voice of our founder and first president: Professor Gerard K. O’Neill.’
They: ‘That part at the end. That was an excellent explanation of the money flow. Not something you’d think a space place would know.’
That last line was a loaded one. In case you didn’t know, SSI’s office is in a little village called Medina where the joke of the town is that “it’s all because of money.” We are here because it’s where a helpful supporter gave us some helpful support and it has been an interesting place to guide some new people while we learn some new things ourselves.
So what? There’s that certain part of the audio that is near the end so a lot of folks may not have gotten to it on Soundcloud. With this new custom SSI player, you can go right to it.
Just hit the “Chapters” button and click on the line: “29 – Q&A Do you own common stocks?”.
From the Space Studies Institute, founded in 1977 by Gerard and Tasha O’Neill to find, support and find funding for tangibles for the Human Breakout Into Space, we hope the new player tool is helpful and we thank you for listening.