More than just text comments . . .

MyChingo is a very popular audio comment systems many bloggers are using. I met MyChingo mastermind Mike Bailey at Podcamp last year and had a great time talking to him and listening to his ideas. Here's what he has to say about the nextgen, MobaTalk.

How did you come up with the idea for MobaTalk?

MobaTalk is the second generation of another service which I launched in April, 2006 called the MyChingo Audio Comment System.  MyChingo currently has grown to almost 6,000 members. MobaTalk extends the audio comment system to include video, images, and text, which can easily be submitted from a variety of devices having an Internet connection, like PDAs and cell phones, or even the old-fashioned telephone.

What tools and platforms did you use?

Overall, the MobaTalk system is coded using HTML, Java, JavaScript, VBScript, Flash, ActionScript, VisualBasic, ASP, PHP, with dependencies on MY-SQL and SQL server. The back end system runs on Windows servers and workstations and the deployed code is mostly PHP and Flash.

Tell us about your development team.

Well, the team is pretty small. It is just me. I've been programming since 1981. If there is something that I need to learn in order to accomplish something, then I just go out and purchase a book or two. I read through the books in a few days and typically become proficient enough to solve the task at hand, or I have learned that my direction wasn't the way to go.

Did you hit any stumbling blocks? How about pleasant surprises?

There were a few stumbles along the road, and I am sure that there will be a few more. One of them has been that the audio recorder is a Java Applet.
The applet approach was chosen because the recorded quality is much higher than that of a flash based solution. However, the downside is that Java is still gaining a widespread adoption.
In time, I believe that it will become a non-issue, as Java and Flash will both be ubiquitous.

Several pleasant surprises have been observed from users of MyChingo.
The education industry is continuously finding very innovative ways to use it, either to extend the classroom on to the Internet, or to evaluate students for English as a Second Language (ESL) courses. We've also had some MySpace users who are composing love songs and reciting original poems.

Where do you go from here?
MobaTalk is about to enter into a private beta as a plug-in for WordPress.

Based on the user feedback and correction of whatever bugs might arise, it will then be released to the public. Shortly after that, the top blogging platforms such as TypePad and Blogger will be targeted. In the end, I hope to have it available for whatever blogging platform or CMS system people want to use it on.

Thanks Mike!

Mobasoft, LLC is a Missouri Based company which was officially founded in February of 2002, and specializes in the creation of Internet Applications. They are currently focused on eMedia and the development of audience engagement services.