The e-mail dropped late this afternoon. Fireside is now on the App Store! it said. Most of you probably don’t know what Fireside is, but if you’re an audio content creator like me, you may have heard it’s the latest entry in the social audio arms race that rival platforms like Clubhouse kicked off last year during the pandemic. Soon after, other companies like Twitter, Spotify, and Facebook got into the game. I’ve tried most of them, and usually it’s the same rollout: a “beta” product that’s not fully-baked (with bugs), a limited feature-set, and an initial group of “influencers” to help seed the platform with content and kick things off. There’s usually a honeymoon period where people like me stream in to kick the tires and take the new app for a virtual ride. After that, things tend to drop off, and it becomes a chicken and egg problem of getting both good content and a growing audience to come through.
Anyway, my particular challenge right now is that I’m two weeks away from heading out on a long road trip out west with family in tow. On these trips, I tend to have a habit of launching a new mixed-media travel art project. We’re going to have to travel light as our vehicle will be packed to the gills with camping equipment for the road (my spouse isn’t the Four Seasons glamping type). The other major challenge is lack of high-speed (or any) internet access along much of the route. I’ve got some portable batteries and a solar charger if things really go awry. Much of the American West right now is an inferno. Wildfires and 100+ degree heat is baking many of the parks and sites we’re hoping to visit across Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Heat, smoke, and electronics probably aren’t a good combination. Oh well.
I plan to have with me two smartphones and a lightweight laptop for all this. I think I have a good handle on how to capture photos, audio, and video-based content. The problem I’m still considering is how to tie together all three of those plus text in a very minimalistic fashion. Wordpress just doesn’t feel right for mixed media. Twitter is a good all-purpose platform, but is too temporally ephemeral. I’ve actually been toying with some unusual platform choices to bring it all together.
Tumblr
Trello
Dropbox
Notion
These are not your typical blogger/podcaster platforms. Tumblr is surprisingly still alive and kicking. It can handle all kinds of content and formats them in a clean fashion. But it’s still too linear. Dropbox is great for storage, and now has a Google Docs-like authoring feature, but to my dismay, requires the viewer to create a Dropbox account to view the content. Trello is typically used for lightweight project management, but has a new mapping feature that adds a cool, locative element to my updates. Finally, Notion is a great Swiss-army knife type of platform, and unlike Dropbox doesn’t require an account to view content.
For creatives like myself, I long to have a service that helps pull together disparate streams of content in easy yet aesthetically pleasing formats. Imagine Squarespace, but powered by a backend AI that ingests all your media and automagically creates a template for you, then publishes it to the world. Maybe something like that already exists. Let me know if you know of something like that. I’ll be the first to sign up for that beta.