I have been doing some audio interviews recently for blogs and podcasts and thought I would share some of the tools I have found that really help. My first problem was recording the interview. I didn’t want to run to Radio Shack and buy some klunky device to attach to my land line. This is 2009 right? So I was looking for something to allow me to place a call, record the conversation and provide me with an MP3 at the end.

My first thought was to use my iPhone. I figured that there had to be an easy way to do it. After much searching, I came across the Recorder app by Retronyms. I bought it and tested it out and the quality seemed good. Unfortunately, when it came time to do the interview, the quality was so poor that my interviewee couldn’t understand me and I had to do the interview the old fashion way, just taking notes. I’m not sure if it was a bad connection through the Recorder app or the iPhone, but my suspicion was that it was the app because the call before and after on my iPhone was fine.

Following that experience I looked further and came across what I am using today RecordiaPro. This is an application that allows you to place a call from any phone, including a land line, and it gives you a dial tone to place a now recorded call. The quality is excellent and the output is available in an MP3 immediately. Simply connect to the site download the MP3 and get to editing the output. I have used this three times now with great success.

For the resulting MP3 file I am currently using iTunes as a rudimentary tool for cropping and exporting the output. When you select the resulting file in iTunes you can use “Get info” to set the beginning and end times for the file to eliminate the call setup conversation and limit it to the interview itself. Once you have done this, you can go to the Advanced menu to “Create an AAC” version that is cropped as you specified. Of course you can also use more sophisticated audio editing tools, but this worked fine for me.

My next problem was transcription. The first interview I did was about 15 minutes long, but it took me over an hour and a half to transcribe it with my modest typing skills. I did some searching and came across an excellent post on audio transcriptions using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Andy Baio does a fantastic job of walking you through a step by step posting of an audio transcription job. I used iTunes again for splitting the MP3 into 5 minute blocks using the start time and end time technique I mentioned above. I have used this twice now and I am hooked. I was able to transcribe a 12 minute interview for less than $10 total and got the results in less than two hours.

Interviews are great content additions to your website or blog and using the right tools makes it even easier.