As I begin the move to decentralised services where possible, I think it's important that I take responsibility for my own data.

The API docs for AudioBoo are very clear, so here's a quick guide on how to download all you Boos and (most of) their data.

Get All Your Boos

The AudioBoo API - unlike some - doesn't require any authentication. It also doesn't restrict you to only downloading your own data. So, if you want to swim in Stephen Fry's vocal delights, go right ahead!

The API call is very simple:

http://api.audioboo.fm/audio_clips?
   username=edent&
   page[items]=150&
   page[number]=1

You can grab up to 150 items at a time. To move the the next page of items, change the "page[number]=" to 2 - and so on.

Examining The Data

Each page of data starts with something similar to:

{"window":60,
"version":200,
"timestamp":1365710614,
"body":{
    "totals":{
        "count":64,
        "offset":0
    },
    "audio_clips":[....]

This tells us how many Boos there are (in my case, 64) and - if we're no longer on page 1 - which number Boo to start with.

The Boo's Data

Boos are presented in reverse chronological order - the most recent first.

Here is what an individual Boo's JSON looks like - it's fairly simple and self explanatory.

{
"id":363171,
"title":"QR Codes at OpenTech",
"user":{
    "id":2861,
    "username":"edent",
    "counts":{
        "audio_clips":64,
        "followers":20,
        "followings":8
    },
    "urls":{
        "profile":"http://audioboo.fm/edent",
        "image":"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a4c65091cd258c86e6187eaaed4ef939?default=http%3A%2F%2Fd15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net%2Fassets%2Favatar_green-a51f577eaf0b191acb694b5ec3c733dc.gif"
    }
},
"duration":1173.53,
"mp3_filesize":9388160,
"uploaded_at":"2011-05-21T21:23:09Z",
"recorded_at":"2011-05-21T21:23:09Z",
"location":{
    "description":"City of London, Camden Town, United Kingdom",
    "longitude":-0.131275,
    "latitude":51.5226,
    "accuracy":29.6755
},
"counts":{
    "comments":1,
    "plays":133
},
"urls":{
    "detail":"http://audioboo.fm/boos/363171-qr-codes-at-opentech",
    "high_mp3":"http://audioboo.fm/boos/363171-qr-codes-at-opentech.mp3",
    "image":"http://audioboo.fm/files/images/0120/4984/Twitter_Search.png"
},
"tags":[
    {
        "display_tag":"edent",
        "normalised_tag":"edent",
        "url":"http://audioboo.fm/tag/edent"
    },
    {
        "display_tag":"open data",
        "normalised_tag":"opendata",
        "url":"http://audioboo.fm/tag/opendata"
    }
    ]
}

The two fields which we're probably most interested in are "high_mp3" which gives you the URL to a high quality MP3 recording, and "image" which contains the picture you associated with the Boo. As you can see - the data is fairly comprehensive. Perhaps the only thing it is missing are the comments. You get told the number of comments left, but not their content.

Parsing The Data

Once you've called the API and got a response, it's trivial to extract your data for use.

$json = json_decode($string,true);
$audio = $json["body"]["audio_clips"];

foreach ($audio as $key)
{
    $mp3 = $key["urls"]["high_mp3"];
    $image = $key["urls"]["image"];
    // Do Something...
}

Personally, I wrote the URLs to a file, then used wget to download all the mp3s and images. You could also write the data to CSV or something similar and then import it into WordPress (or your blogging platform of choice).

Limitations

Perhaps the only minor downside is that the files are MP3s. I thought that AudioBoo stored them as FLAC. That said, MP3s are more than adequate for voice recordings. They also have fully comprehensive ID3 tags. The lack of comments is a little sad - but my Boos never quite garnered enough interest to attract much attention.

There are no download limiations that I ran into. I quite happily scoffed down 5GB of data as fast as they could send it to me.

So, there you have it! A simple way to download all your AudioBoo data. Here's a quick PHP file which should download your first 150 Boos - good luck!

$AudioBooAPIresponse = file_get_contents("http://api.audioboo.fm/audio_clips?username=YOUR-USERNAME&page[items]=150&page[number]=1");
$json = json_decode($AudioBooAPIresponse,true);
$AudioClips = $json["body"]["audio_clips"];

foreach ($AudioClips as $key)
{
    $id           = $key["id"];
    $title        = $key["title"];
    $description  = $key["description"];
    $recorded_at  = $key["recorded_at"];
    $location     = $key["location"]["description"];
    $longitude    = $key["location"]["longitude"];
    $latitude     = $key["location"]["latitude"];
    $accuracy     = $key["location"]["accuracy"];
    $original     = $key["urls"]["detail"];
    $mp3          = $key["urls"]["high_mp3"];
    $image        = $key["urls"]["image"];
    $duration     = $key["duration"];
    $mp3_filesize = $key["mp3_filesize"];

    //  Save The Files
    $mp3_file = file_get_contents($mp3);
    file_put_contents($id . ".mp3", $mp3_file);

    $image_file = file_get_contents($image);
    file_put_contents($id . ".jpg", $image_file);
}

Here is my reply, appropriately enough, in audio format.

You may be interested in my other posts on the subject - Preparing for the Collapse of Digital Civilization and I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Fucking Ecosystem

(So, yes, still trying to find a decent WordPress plugin which will take multiple files and display only one player. Also need to find a less manual way of uploading and converting. Hey, it's not bad for 10 minutes work, ok!)

I know it's churlish to complain when people pay you, but I've literally in my life, in 31 years of living on planet earth, I have never even seen a Luncheon Voucher. I thought they died out in the 80s, but I'm here with £14 worth of 50p luncheon vouchers. I don't know if I have to use them individually or all at once, but it's just weird.

Why if you were going to pay someone and offer them a voucher, wouldn't you say have an Amazon voucher? You know, they don't cost any extra to send out and they can be emailed, used everywhere, or at least offer a choice. You know, would you like PayPal or a high street voucher at play.com, but just to send out Luncheon Vouchers?

It's a bit weird isn't it?

I'm a big fan of AudioBoo - for those who don't know it,  AudioBoo allows you to record some audio on your phone and then publish it to the web.  It's like instant podcasting.  Originally only for the iPhone, AudioBoo now works on Android and there's an S60 version comeing out "soon".

I'm very proud to announce that as of r260 - Dabr now support AudioBoo!

It all started with a tweet from David Carrington (creator of Dabr) asking how one would go about linking directly to a tweeted 'boo.

So - how do I turn a tweeted 'boo like http://boo.fm/b73803 to the associated MP3 of http://audioboo.fm/boos/73803-rockbandboo.mp3?

Bring Me The API!

An API is a way for two computers to talk to each other.  The client (dabr) asks the server (AudioBoo) a question.  The server replies with some data and the client then does something with it.

AudioBoo's API is a "work in progress" - that's the polite term for "not quite finished". There are various APIs to get information about a 'boo. However, it's not particularly intuitive. For example, if I use /audio_clips/ http://api.audioboo.fm/audio_clips/b73803.mp3 I get an error. I have to drop the b to get http://api.audioboo.fm/audio_clips/73803.mp3

I asked on the AudioBoo forums if there was a better way but I didn't get a quick response - so I turned to twitter. One of the top AudioBoo bods, Mark Rock, is an active twitterer (seriously - isn't there a better word than that?)

Mark Rock

@markrock

Replying to @davidcarrington@davidcarrington @edent just updated server so this works - http://boo.fm/b1234.mp3

---

So, now I can link http://boo.fm/b73803 to http://boo.fm/b73803.mp3 - simple. Here's what it looks like in the browser.

AudioBoo

Phreadz

Phreadz is a service which allows you to post VITAL - Video Images Text Audio Links - it's a fantastic service, so when Kosso (its founder) asked me to integrate it into Dabr, I was keen to take on the challenge.

The code was quite simple and can be seen in r261. But there was one small complication - image sizes.

The thumbnail images from Phreadz aren't always suitable for mobiles. If images are too large, it will slow download speeds and potentially cost people money.

So, I used tinysrc.mobi. Tinysrc is a very simple API which will resize any image to a mobile friendly format. It detects the phone's user-agent string and creates a suitable sized image.

Here's what it looks like.

Phreadz

Conclusions

I've used 4 separate APIs here - twitter, AudioBoo, Phreadz, tinysrc - the joy of Web 2.0 is that all those disparate services can combine to create something new and magical.

API designers often need to think about how their products will be used "in the wild". It's very easy to create something that works very well for your requirements - but much harder to think about what others will need.