Evoca - El Comercio Translation

Already a Member? Login

Evoca, the power of voice
By Juan Carlos Lujan

Evoca converts your PC into a digital recorder

Photo caption: Human side: the Evoca audio service offers a great potential for improving the environment for disabled online users.

Revolutionary service allows you to make radio shows from home using the Internet. Amongst the developers, we highlight the involvement of a Peruvian currently living in Chile.

The convergence of Internet technologies has generated, in the last months the development of a series of new tools. One of the most unique in the so-called Web 2.0 (phase that identifies the creation of website that foment the integration through social networks) is Evoca, a free service that allows great versatility in the creation of voice recordings.

The potential for this software connected to Internet which converts your computer in a digital recorder, is amazing. Evoca creates audio files that can be organized, shared and searched through social networks. It allows the creation of Podcasts (digital audio files that can be downloaded from the internet and carried in an MP3 player) and the diffusion of all types of content where the voice plays a critical role. It is there where its users have created interview programs, monologues, oral narrations and even music fanatics are using it as a platform to present themselves.

Evoca has few Spanish-speaking users. The great majority of users are from the USA. The author of this article experimented with the advantages of Evoca (www.evoca.com/jlujan) a few weeks after the service was launched. Its use is easy and can be enriched with interviews, conferences or academic dialogue, and even children's school stories.

Evoca allows any internet user the capability to create a digital recording from his or her computer or cell phone and distribute it online by using HTML code, tags, RSS (new format that allows you to be notified each time there is a change to a web site), interest groups and Podcasts.

The creators
The creators of this program are the Colombian Diego Orjuela and the US-born Murem Sharpe. Both spoke with El Comercio from their offices in Savannah. The conversation between the COO and CEO was not held over a traditional phone line. Orjuela and Sharpe preferred to use Skype, a program that allows the communication between computers by using your voice over the Internet.

The idea behind Evoca, and the name too, has its origins in Barcelona, where Orjuela and Sharpe met while working for Checkpoint Systems. Orjuela, born in Bogotá, said they sought to develop a technology that would integrate the computer, telephone and digital recorder. "That is why we developed an application that lets you make a recording through your browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer)".

"We use several technologies like Macromedia Flash, Skype and technology standards used in Podcasting such as MP3 and RSS. What we did was integrate all these technologies and make it easy to make a recording and distribute it as a Podcast" he said.

Sharpe revealed that behind this project is the work for fifteen people, engineers and developers from the US, Philippines, France, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and Peru. Regarding the latter, they did not reveal his identity, but indicated that he resides in Chile and was a key in the development of the application.

Orjuela and Sharpe explained that although Evoca is free in its basic version, there is a paid-for version (under five dollars per month) which allows you to make recordings using Skype.

Press

English | Español