it lets you transfer big audio files from your phone to your computer very quickly over a Wi-Fi network. But with iTalk or any other iPhone recording app (there are many), you still have to handle all the actual publishing and distribution steps yourself: getting the file online, letting people know about it, and providing a listening interface.
AudioBoo, which came out this spring, takes care of all that, which is why some people are calling it “Twitter with voice.” I guess you could also say that it’s one “k” short of audiobook—which gets at the amateur aspect of the project nicely. It’s the creation of BestBefore Media, a small group of technologists and designers in London, and was built with financial support from 4iP (4 Innovation for the Public), a venture fund created by Britain’s Channel 4 to support digital media innovation.
AudioBoo isn’t a professional audio platform by any means—it doesn’t come with any editing features, even a simple trimming feature like the one in Apple’s Voice Memo. But what it’s really good at is sharing. The app lets you record for up to 5 minutes. When you’re done, you can give your recording a title and, if you want, attach a photograph. (If you give the app permission, it will also geotag the recording with your latitude and longitude.) Then the app automatically uploads your recording and your photo to the AudioBoo website, which functions as a sort of community audio blog.
Each recording, or “boo,” has its own Web page where other people can listen, see the associated photo, and view the location where you recorded the boo on a map. You can grab the HTML code that lets you embed boos in other Web page.
The iPhone app also lets you browse and hear recent boos. Right now, this list isn’t good for much beyond dipping at random into the vast “boostream”—one thing the app lacks is a way to locate specific users and their boos. But I’m sure the AudioBoo app will be upgraded over time to include features like search, bookmarking, subscriptions, and profile views that we’re used to seeing in other group-publishing apps such as the Tweetdeck app for Twitter, the Mobile Fotos app for Flickr, and Apple’s own YouTube app.
And there are two other big redeeming features to the AudioBoo platform.
1) You can link your AudioBoo account to your Twitter or Facebook account, so that whenever you upload a new boo, AudioBoo will send an automatic notice to your Twitter followers and post a status update on your Facebook profile. Both of these include a link that leads your followers and your friends back to your recording’s AudioBoo web page.
2) You can sign up to follow your favorite AudioBoo users, just the way you would on Twitter, except that “follow” has a slightly different meaning: AudioBoo assembles boos from everyone you’re following into a custom podcast, to which you can subscribe using iTunes. That means every time you sync your iPhone, there will be a new podcast waiting for you with the latest AudioBoo updates from everyone you follow.
These two features—which take care of the distribution problem—are what turn AudioBoo from a mere audio recording tool into a real audio publishing tool. Of course, at the moment, much of the stuff being published on AudioBoo is
