Psonar Blog

The extraordinary spread of swine flu this year, despite the hot (or at least relatively hot by the standards of most English summers) weather, is something we aspire to emulate with Psonar.

How do you get tens, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens and hundreds of thousands to adopt and use a service? Duh! It’s obvious isn’t it – if the service is compelling and really does something useful – solving a point of pain – then people will use it, enthuse about it and tell their friends. From inside the bunker, though, it’s not obvious what’s compelling and easy to use – months of development and evolution give us, the Psonar team, a distorted perspective – well isn’t it obvious that you click an executable file when you’ve downloaded it (the Psonar SongShifter) from the Psonar website:

Well, yes and no – it is obvious but it’s also the action that many viruses and trojans want from you. So how do we convince people that it’s safe to download and click on the SongShifter? The software will have a digital certificate on launch – so that should give comfort to the tech savvy. In reality, the only sure way to convince people that it’s safe is if lots of people whom they know have already downloaded it and are using the service successfully. It’s a bit like being immunised – exposure (familiarity) builds up resistance (confidence).

All of which said, we are looking for more and more people to pre-register for the service so that we can get the optimum launch effect in August – there’s an iPod Touch on offer for the winner of the draw amongst everyone who’s pre-registered.

I was guest on 209 Radio’s Feel Good Friday show yesterday. 209 Radio is the community radio station for Cambridge, UK. Manned entirely by volunteers, it broadcasts a rich diet of local news and music with active dj’ing for 16 or so hours each day.

I really like the fact that the station started as an internet radio station for electronic music. I won’t reveal too much more of my tastes since, as Rich (Psonar’s CTO) would point out, you never know just how many people you’re going to put off!

Matt and Nick the Producer, Feel Good Friday’s hosts, were charming, giving me all the right cues to talk about Psonar’s features: music in the cloud; your music where and when you want it; exploring the rich collection of music in the Psonar Cloud with the opportunity to listen to samples and buy the music if you like it, etc.

Finally, if you’d like to hear me in action please feel free to download the mp3 from the Feel Good Friday page on the 209 website (until 10 July):

Thereafter I’ll upload it into the Psonar Cloud so you can find it by searching for ’209 Radio’.