There are lots of ways to get audio online from an iPhone today. You can use Evernote, you can send audio notes via Field Recording to Soundcloud, then there’s Tweetmic, Facemic (sends recordings to Facebook) Twitsay and Twitterfone. The list goes on. But one that’s getting a lot of traction for its ease of use and for the fact it has its own social network is AudioBoo out of the UK. And today it takes a step further with integration with the Spinvox API, the voice-to-text company which has been taken on by a number of global mobile networks.
AudioBoo is an iPhone app which has gradually been making bigger and bigger waves and is about to get a whole lot more interesting. The essential point is that you can record and upload audio from the iPhone straight to the Web, and also Tweet out the link to the audio. In fact it bills itself as Twitter for audio. A player appears on your Audioboo profile straight away and is embeddable in a blog. Admittedly that sounds less exciting than live streaming video from something like Qik, but since only a privileged handful have this app, which remains unapproved by the App store, Audioboo is the next best thing if you want to do an interview or record audio fast. The attached social network also has a ‘follow’ model, much like Twitter.
Speech-based Audioboos can now be automatically converted to text across Audioboo’s applications – including iPhone podcasting and Tweets.
In other words it’s about to become a huge blogger and journalist tool, because who doesn’t want to be able to get some kind of transcript from their interviews without the pain of actually having to type it out?
Recording will be limited to five minute chunks, which is long enough for a quick interview. Spinvox will also be added to Audioboo’s API so that third party applications can make use of it. Transcriptions will be paid-for and added on to the Pro version that BBC, ITV etc have already used.
These Audioboo Pro accounts will have a variety of web-based tools – such as moderation- to help companies manage content.