Shortcut App

Shortcut is Now Available for Any Podcast to Use

~ jen

As you may recall, This American Life, from WBEZ, created Shortcut. It was designed to allow people to share a short clip of a This American Life episode with their friends. Now, Shortcut is available for all podcast creators to use.

Stephanie Foo, a This American Life producer, explained more about Shortcut in a blog post. She points out that Shortcut was made to allow This American Life listeners to turn their favorite podcast moments into videos that can be shared online. It’s like making a GIF, but for audio.

Thanks to funding from The Knight Foundation and the developers at Feel Train, Shortcut is now open sourced. What that means: If you’re a podcast creator, you can set Shortcut up to let your own listeners share their favorite moments of your show.

Feel Train has put together a blog post with a log of helpful information for podcasters who want to allow their listeners to use Shortcut. There is a wiki for podcasters who want to get their bearings. Another link is for developers who want to jump right in with implementation. Those who try this out, and have support questions, can reach Feel Train on Gitter.

This American Life wants podcasters who use Shortcut for their shows to let them know about it, so they can spread the word. You can do that by tweeting @ThisAmerLife.

Shortcut App Makes it Easy to Share Podcast Clips

~ jen

shortcut-logoHave you ever listened to a podcast, and wished you could easily share one, short, clip from it with someone? This American Life from WBEZ has created a solution. It is called Shortcut.

Shortcut is a new app that you can use to turn your favorite podcast moments into videos that you can post onto social media. It’s kind of like making a .gif, but for audio. You can access the app on your desktop or on your phone.

Shortcut is currently in beta. Shortcut will work on any This American Life episode. Use Shortcut to quickly and easily turn your favorite podcast moments into personalized, animated, and transcribed videos that can be easily shared to social media with just one click.

The Shortcut About Page includes the Shortcut Team’s reason for creating it. They had a desire to make creating and sharing audio content as easy as sharing visual content.

Most people discover video and print online by way of small segments that are easy to share on social media: gifs, reaction images, highlighted and screencapped sections of text. We believe the fact that podcasts can’t easily be snipped and shared online is inhibiting the growth of the podcast industry, and Shortcut is a prototype that explores how we can make that process intuitive, easy, and fun.

Shortcut was conceived at This American Life’s Audio Hackathon 2015. The prototype of Shortcut is based around the archives of This American Life.

The Shortcut Team includes:

  • Stephanie Foo – Project Lead
  • Courtney Stanton – Project Manager
  • Darius Kazemi – Developer
  • Jason Sigal – Developer
  • Jane Friedhoff – UX Designer
  • Dalit Shalom – UI Designer
  • Eve Weinberg – Motion Graphics.

The codebase for Shortcut will be open-sourced, meaning that any podcast creator can set it up for their own archives and allow their fans a new avenue to express their fandom.