In the 24-hour-long Spreenkler Talent Labs Hackaton held in May 2011, Matt Stockton and I took home first place for our project Blurbs.

The idea was simple: could we wrap any URL on the web (e.g. http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/) with a personal audio conversation? A driving inspiration was what Disqus does for comments on the web.

Example use cases:

• I’m looking at a pair of shoes on Zappos that could be a neat gift for a family friend, and want to send the link to my wife, but also describe what I like about the shoes.
• I’m a researcher who needs to annotate a financial report and send it to some constituents.
• I’m a manager and need to critique something and send back to my team.

After sign up, the user is prompted to install a bookmarklet and do a one-time enabling of Flash microphone settings.

Let’s say I’m visiting this web page AnnArbor.com webpage. I would click the bookmarklet that inserts a bar at the top of the page. From there I can click the record button to record myself.

When I’m done recording, I can add an optional note and save.

Blurbs will give me a short link that I can share with others. Privacy is available: just need to enter a password. Otherwise the link can be accessed publicly.

When someone visits my shared link, they will see a player and my notes.

Back on my dashboard I can see all my past blurbs and manage them from there.

This was a fun event. Matt and I really killed it. It was done with Java and published on Google App Engine, but is no longer available for public use.