>Recording London

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Recording what Russell Davies calls ambient speech was by far the most interesting and challenging aspect of creating The present sounds of London for The Morning News. Since I was only using my iPhone (for reasons of forgettingness), I had to try and get right up close to the people I was recording.

In cities it’s not hard to get close to people, because there’s often a big crowd to mingle with. But it is hard to get close to the people who are saying something interesting, or saying something dull but in an interesting way, and point a phone in their face without them noticing.

So what I did was put on my most innocent lost-tourist face, and stood as close as I could get to the talky people while looking left, right, and down at my phone, over and over again.

I hoped I gave the impression of being someone who was consulting his phone’s mapping software.

I also hoped that none of the people I was recording would notice me and offer directions.

And that I wouldn’t get mugged for my phone, which I was stupidly waving round on busy London streets, Tube stations and passageways.

Consequently, the recordings that ended up in the finished article are a fraction of the total. I recorded quite a few that didn’t work – mostly because I just didn’t get close enough, or didn’t point the phone in the right direction, or because something else happened to ruin the recording.

In Waterloo station, for example, there was a drunk woman singing her heart out. I moved in closer (still doing the innocent lost puppy face), but two police officers reached her first. She stopping singing and the conversation was then shielded by the police officers’ bodies, so that didn’t work.

It was also impossible to record conversations while moving. I spent time walking up and down some busy streets, listening in to couples or small groups walking and chatting. I could hear them, but couldn’t find a way of pushing my phone in front of them and getting away with it. I had to wait for them to stop walking – which is how I managed to get the two Americans talking about how far away from the Barbican they were. They’d been talking all the way down the street, and suddenly stopped at a pedestrian crossing. During a pause in the roaring traffic, I grabbed that snippet of speech.

Armed with some more professional equipment – a proper digital recorder, a fluffy microphone on a stick – I’d have got much higher quality recordings, but people would have, you know, noticed. It was great fun, in a sort of Famous Five sense of the word, to be sneaking around and recording in secret.

Quite addictive, in fact.

>Some ideas for iPhone apps

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SUPERMARKET SPOTLIGHT – like Spotlight on your Mac, but for supermarkets in meatspace. You tell it that you’re in Tesco in Trowbridge, then start typing in the product you’re after. It tells you: “Aisle 12, section 2, top shelf, on the right if you’ve got your back to the cash tills.” Either that, or it simply does the augmented reality thing and takes you there, beeping louder as you get closer, like a geiger counter.

GARDENER’S DELIGHT – gardening is part science, part art, and part memory test. Every garden is different, so a gardener needs to keep records of various things – what happens when during the year, and what needs to happen next. This app would behave like a free-form database, into which you can put all the information about your garden. You control reminders about events, and you can add notes and photos too. It might also include a reference book element too, full of advice about particular plants.

KEYNOTE FLOW – only useful during Apple keynotes and special events, this Apple-made app gives you the highlights from the keynote in the form of slides and an audio soundtrack, live and as it happens. It will take some of the pressure away from Twitter.

RADIO TIMES – I don’t care about telly programmes, but I do want to know when stuff is on the radio. Yes, even in these days of iPlayer and Listen Again, sometimes I still listen to live radio. I want a thing that will tell me when stuff is on the UK radio stations of my choice; it must be searchable and allow me to bookmark or tag the shows that I want to listen to, and view that list independently of the listings. And be able to send tagged shows to my calendar and/or todo list.