Heartwarming "Voices to the playa" (Voice mails 4

[bradtem]

Some of you may remember that last year, our camp created a working free phone booth on the playa and people had great experiences.

The booth also had a number, which many people called and some answered. Many calls went to voice mail, and with all the other technical problems there was not time to set up a special way to listen to them. (Some may have called the VM from the phone, which did work, but most wanted to call others.)

Anyway, I recently came upon the collection of saved voice mails and played them. It's an amazing experience to hear all these messages of love and warmth (and a few jokes.) People wishing they were there, as you do now. A little emotional taste of the playa.

So I put them up on the web. You can listen to Voices to the Playa here.

The files are available as uLaw WAV or Ogg vorbis, or as Speex in a zip archive. Most of the messages have rough transcriptions. While I believe most MS Win systems can play uLaw WAV (a form of WAV for phone calls) you may have to grab additional codecs, or install Vorbis or Speex. I had bad luck with the Windows Media Toolbar, but Windows Media Player should be OK.

[hohltb]

I loved reading about the phone booth on the playa. What is the phone number for 2005 or do you know yet ?

Barbara

[bradtem]

It will be the same, I will do an announce when all the new testing is done and it's cleared with the outgoing telco.

This year we will have a web app on the playa where people with laptops can hear the voice mails and try to deliver them for folks.