A little quick experiment showed me that it was no problem for me to record a little bit of myself with Voice Recorder on my Zaurus, export that .wav file to the iBook and then import it into Audacity. Cool cool cool! That means that I have the potential to do mobile audioblogging. If I run into some celebrity on the street, I can do a quick interview with them or whatever. This would have been great back in the radio show days, particularly at the SF conventions I was covering as a journalist/radio personality.
I might even do some routine posts just out and about, getting a little local color in the audio. I am mindful that here, in this little southern coastal town, I am different than most of the people here. I look different, act different, talk different, have a different sort of career. Thus, I might want to be a little careful about becoming “the crazy guy who wanders the streets talking to himself.” Maybe if I am out and about recording stuff into the Zaurus, I should hold up my cell phone as a decoy.
The worst thing about recording the audio with both the iBook and Zaurus is that both have internal mics and neither has a line in or mic jack. I’m a radio guy, I miss having the mike staring me in the face. It was really weird recording today’s audio entry, just sort of talking towards the upper right hand of my iBook’s screen. I should research if there is some USB audio input gizwhickey for Macs. A little USB microphone would be nice, or even some gadget that connects to USB or Firewire and accepts mic-level or line in level inputs with mini-stereo plugs. Then we’d really be cooking with gas.
You can tell, if I am this interested in the toolset, that I’ll be continuing with the audio stuff. That’s always how you can tell when someone is passionate about a hobby or a total duffer. When the tools and the mundane, boring parts of a pastime still excite you, are are totally hooked.
Yes, Audacity is multiplatform. I’ve got it on my Linux box and a Windows box, and it works great. What little I’ve used it, I’ve found it to be very handy, tho’ there are a few quirks. Protools is the thing that nearly every “modern” recording studio has, but Audacity is free and works.
After I made that post, I saw that it was also for Linux. I’m doing audioblog #2 on the Zaurus (at least for the sheer recording part of it) and I’ll do #3 straight to the Linux box and even edit it over there. On the Linux box, I can try plugging in the headset with mike to the inputs, so at last I’ll have the missing microphone!
You want an iMic, a USB device with audio in/out for Macs without such niceities…