I've got a lot to be grateful for, including nearly 400 subscribers to this Blog. You are all amazing, thank you. I really should push for 400! Anyways, blog milestones aside, I want to talk about Voice Notes Suck today. Jay and myself have launched a new podcast. We have some specific goals, very few expectations and the intention to have a lot of fun.

Series (Season) 1 is recorded and scheduled for release. Episode 1 is already out. You can currently find us on Audible and Spotify.

So what is Voice Notes Suck? Other than a podcast, it's an idea that Jay and I had in mid April. We regularly communicate by voice notes as colleagues and friends. They offer a different way of communicating verbally, and we feel that they can offer value as a podcast. We want to explore different topics and share our insights and thoughts regarding those topics.

Why Voice Notes suck? We know not everyone enjoys voice notes, some people are really against them. I was a long time ago, they used to annoy me a lot. I know they still annoy my dad. Enough for him to ask me to stop sending them! There are a few reasons for the name, but the main one is for fun. This name stuck during one of our many voice note conversations.

We could not have got this far, this quick without AI. We have used it to help us in a lot of ways, and I will dive into that a little, however we have not used it for any of our recorded voice notes. From an idea in mid April to 8 episodes recorded and scheduled in less than 5 weeks. We recorded our first voice note on 23rd April 2024, our 1st episode was released on 04th June 2024, and scheduled in May.

AI has been instrumental in our journey, assisting with art, documentation, promotional material, episode descriptions, and audio enhancement. While AI helps streamline these tasks, we’ve personalised and refined the content to ensure quality. Jay dealt with all of the art side of prompting and used mainly DALLE-3 via Chat GPT. I Used Chat GPT to help me with the documentation. From a launch checklist to a brand style document and more.

Using AI to help generate promotional material has saved a huge amount of time. I spent time refining my prompt for this on Chat GPT. And this needs to be done to get the response, or content, that you are looking for. You need to be clear with what you want. The type of posts you are trying to create, the emoji's you want to include, the hashtags wanted, the tone you would like and any other specific requirements. And then you need to make sure it's following your rules by double checking the content it's creating.

Jay has created stunning artwork using DALLE-3 via Chat GPT. He shares tips on his Patreon, such as how to fine-tune AI-generated images for versatile use on social media. He doesn't just leave the imagery to AI, he adapts it and makes sure that it can be used in different places with ease. This will be important as we build out the social media accounts and maybe one day a website too.

There is no way we could have gone from idea to full launch in 6 weeks without the assistance available from various AI tools and we both feel it is important to recognise this.

We both want this podcast to reflect the genuine nature of our day to day voice notes and we have implemented a few rules to help with that. We discuss them, along with some other things in Episode 1 - An Intro, to set the scene for our first series about The Digital Community. We hope this gives anyone new to us, a reasonable introduction into our podcast, if not ourselves.

The first rule, and arguably the most important rule is that we are not allowed to re-record voice notes. Once a voice note is sent, that's it. This has made recording them interesting, it means we have to be considered in our responses, aware of the time (because we want to keep our episode lengths to 20-25 mins) and to be concise due to arguably our second most important rule.

Our voice notes cannot be longer than 90 seconds, or that's the maximum talk time we are allowed in one go. Jay wanted this to be shorter! I think 90 seconds is a good compromise. It allows time for a response with an explanation and to keep the conversation moving without it turning into a monologue. There are a couple of other small rules, but those are the main ones, and the ones worth mentioning.

I hope you enjoy listening to Voice Notes Suck as much as we've enjoyed making it. You can listen to the first episode below. Don't forget to subscribe and share your thoughts with us.

Episode 1 - An Intro - Series 1 by Voice Notes Suck

Episode 1: An Intro - Series 1 In the inaugural episode of "Voice Notes Suck," hosts Jay and Dave introduce listeners to their podcast, offering a glimpse into their unique approach to discussing topics relevant to the creator community.

https://podcasters.spotify.com

I've played with Revel and I liked it. I really did. I still do, to a point. I don't like some of the recent changes and that has made me look at other platforms for me to share my photography on. Revel allows people to play and experiment. To meet new people and to gamify releases. There is an opportunity to drive some revenue to your brand as well. That was never my goal, my goal was to explore a new platform and share my photos.

I would recommend having a look, if nothing else - here's my referral link. I've made some new friends on Revel and reconnected with some old friends too. I expect Revel will make more changes to their ecosystem. When they do, I will be back again to try it out. There is a lot of potential and I think everyone needs a little patience. They have shown they have an economy, now they need to make it function.

One of the platforms I have found is Uncut. It takes a moment to create a profile and there is a simple and easy to follow tutorial to help you understand the platform. You get rewarded in the platforms currency (ArtX) when you return daily, and for completing tasks. This allows you to buy art, or create collections & collectibles, as well as voting for art of the day. My first photo was sold out, or fully collected.

Uncut don't have a referral program yet but here is the link to my page. I am sure they will work out a referral link at some point, and I am definitely going to suggest it to them soon if I don't see it. I have a couple of photo's that I have minted so far, and there will be more. I was able to reward my first 5 collectors with an airdrop from my second mint, which you can see above.

I am going to continue airdropping photo's moving forward, but there will only be 5 airdropped collectibles from every new release. These airdrops will be chosen at random from my previous collectors on Uncut. I think this is a nice way to incentivise and reward my collectors on this platform and I hope my collectors agree.

I have far more happening than I realise. In the last week I have been busy helping with the final plans for our 2024 FCancer event, to be hosted in the first week of September. Chris and I have been working on CryptoGoonz, the story, some other unfinished bits and how we can be more active for our holders. We have plans, but we are in no hurry to get there. CrypotGoonz is a passion project that has already delivered far more than was ever promised.

This weeks collectible image is the photo above and is part of the cover image too. It is on Base. You can collect it for whatever the platform fee is, and there are only 10 copies available.

I wonder how many typo's there are today, I always edit my blog's, read them at least twice, often run them through Chat GPT for feedback and still make too many mistakes! Thank you for reading my latest issue, I appreciate your time greatly.