Better blogging by adding audio – Audioboo

For a couple of years I used to do podcasting regularly I had a podcast in which I talk to Mac users about how they use their computer. Instead of going down the route of many of the Mac podcasts where they talk rubbish rumours or are sometimes talking about the Apple news, I decided that I wanted to talk to Mac users about what they actually used the computers and find out exactly what they did and how they did it. I did around about 200 podcasts over a couple of years and thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I would have had around about 3000 downloads of the podcast per month which wasn’t bad going really. Then there was something that happened in the family that meant I didn’t do any podcasting for a couple of weeks and instead of going back to it I just left it by the wayside. It is something that I should have kept going, but one of my big problems is that I constantly get waylaid following something different, a more interesting looking rabbit hole to go down. I think at the time I decided that I was going to do more making of videos for YouTube and really when it comes down to it, there are only so many hours in the day. There are so many different things that I would like to do but the constraints of time, confound me. During the last six months or so I have partly gone back into making audio podcasts by using a service called Audioboo.

Mini podcasting with Audioboo

When I first started using this Audioboo service there was a maximum limit on free accounts of three minutes. It was possible to extend that by gaining more minutes by recommending the service to other people. I had managed to bring up my recording minutes to 10 minutes per Wizardgold Audioboo podcast. For the most part I have been finding that 10 minutes has been a just right and spot-on for what was I wanted to say. When I got into doing this particular session of Audioboo podcasting I gave myself the task of making an Audioboo in which I talked about three new things that I had learned that day. The aim was to try and do this on a daily basis and it was based upon a scenario from a book. The book is ‘The Game of Thrones’ and one of my favourite characters called Arya is given the task of going out during the daytime with no specific things to do, but with the overall job of relating three new things learned that day. It is quite interesting in that by doing this you give yourself a very good reason to be looking at many more things around you as possible things that are new to you. A task like this gives you a heightened awareness because you are looking for something that you can talk about later. I quite enjoyed the process and I kept it up for quite some time.

Making an Audioboo

When I first started making these Audioboo podcasts I was using my iPhone and the Audioboo application. It works pretty well and was easy to use, so that I was able to record the audio without any problems. I did have to type in the title and description which was slightly annoying because I wanted to dictate that text in and with the iPhone version I was using was unable to do that. I couldn’t afford to get the iPhone 5 that would allow me to use Siri to dictate and so this was one of the reasons that I decided to give Android phones a try. I made the switch from iOS to Android. Unfortunately the Audioboo application on Android wasn’t very good, it was completely unintuitive and often I found that during recorded boos I lost whatever was recorded due to an application crash. I was able to do a workaround with this by recording into my Android device using an audio recorder, Audio Evolution Pro. It was a little bit more complicated in that I had to take the output file from this and convert it to an MP3 so that it was of a reasonable size for uploading. Following that, it was then often easier to do the uploading from my computer in my office rather than doing the whole job from the Android phone. Then I found that it was possible for me to send the Audioboo into the service by email and that gave me the chance to go completely mobile again with making an Audioboo. It went fairly well and I didn’t mind having to use a couple of workarounds to get the job done.

Switching back to iOS

I have recently decided that I am going to switch to iOS using it rather than using Android, at least as far as the tablet use is concerned. I do have two stick with Android for another year with the telephone, but that is not going to make much difference as I’m going to get the iPad mini with retina display and also with 4G cellular connection. In some respects this will be like having an iPhone except bigger and I think it is going to be quite easy to carry around as the device is quite light. It will be a little bit too big to fit into my pocket, at least it will be able to go into my bag with ease. When I have completed this transition back to iOS then I will probably be using the iOS Audioboo application once again to make my Audioboo recordings.

Spreading the word with Audioboo

I have it set up so that there is an automatic action takes place when I post an Audioboo. The Audioboo is sent to my personal blog, this one. That is why you can see a number of Audioboo posts that I have made in the past. Sometimes following the publication of the Audioboo I will open up the blog post in my blogging application of choice on my iMac which is MarsEdit. I will then add some extra text to do some explaining to add to the audio file that can be heard on the web site. This is a good idea because it makes the blog post more searchable in terms of people wanting to find things that I am talking about. It is an SEO thing and it needs to be done for the googlers.

Why not set yourself up with an Audioboo account and create some Audioboo’s. It is very easy to do and if you send me an email to show me your Audioboo account then I will click to follow it. I would be very interested to hear what other people are talking about in an Audioboo so why not give it a go and let me know how you get on.