The founder of the Adobe-centric streaming Internet radio application Codebass, stopped by the Philadelphia Cold Fusion User Group’s April meeting this past Thursday to showcase her newest project, MediaSlurp, which she said could serve as a tool to help build the city’s burgeoning technology community.
Conceived and built by Vicky Ryder, along with fellow programmers Ben Farrell and TJ Downs, in just three weeks, MediaSlurp is a streaming audio and video content client that focuses on developer issues in the Adobe-based programming community, along with other general technology-related trends.
“It was a neat exercise because it was the first time I experienced an enterprise level workflow in such a small team,” said Ryder, who is originally from Maryland. “We’d like to monetize it by the end of the year.”
Highly community focused, MediaSlurp follows the current trend of user-generated content through utilizing listener-created podcasts and videos. Beyond airing listener-made content, MediaSlurp also plans future updates around frequently submitted suggestions from users.
For Ryder, that feedback, along with the specialized nature of the content that MediaSlurp generates, is the ultimate evidence of the program’s community-building capabilities.
“You really know that you have a large community that is sympathetic to your cause,” she said.
With around 400 downloads since its debut this past December, Ryder said that MediaSlurp’s niche-based content system is applicable to other sectors and professions such as the medical community, corporate real estate news and other highly specialized areas. That flexibility, said Ryder, makes the program easily applicable to Philadelphia.
“Philadelphia could build a community around MediaSlurp,” she said. “It can bring the developer community together.”
Despite the program’s potential capability to serve as a community-building tool, getting the project funded has been a challenge, Ryder said.
“We’ve made a whopping 26 cents so far,” she said. “We’re planning on reinvesting it.”
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