Bringing Your Voice to the Web

In my last post I wrote about a web-based app for working with video, One True Media. Today I stumbled across a sweetheart of an application designed to do the same thing with audio—make it easy for people everywhere to make their voices heard.

For those of you in the audio-know, think of Evoca as a stripped down version of GarageBand or Audacity, but totally web-based. For the uninitiated: You will be recording audio and saving it to the web, then if you like, sharing it via an RSS feed or embedding it in your application—in under 10 minutes. In essence you'll be podcasting without even giving it a second thought.

Here's a quickie I recorded.

After registering at the free site, you can record audio by speaking into a microphone (EvocaMic) or by dialing a number and recording right from a phone line (EvocaTell). You can even, for an additional fee, record a Skype call. After you've recorded the sound, you can add a tag to make the voice recording searchable, add a thumbnail image, and place it in a shared or private file on the Evoca web site where others can come and enjoy. The site pretty well automates the process of adding an RSS element so you can broadcast as a podcast or you can simply cut and paste the HTML code into your own site. Your audio clip appears to those who visit you along with the Evoca player. Or just send an audio email; it's just one click, too.

Sure, you'll find yourself tripping a bit when it comes to posting your audio but Evoca makes this less daunting than anything I've seen yet. And if you're looking to get into the podcasting business without much tech know-how, Evoca will allow you to charge for your content and then cut you a check each month. That, along with services like its translation service, mean these folks are really thinking about the kinds of things people want to do with audio.

The free service provides 60 minutes of audio file storage (two-minute chunks). From there it's $4.99 for 200 more minutes. The big limitation? There's no audio editing capability. This is purely "record and post." If you're not a "one-take" person you'll need to use another program like Audacity to edit. But for recording family memories, sending a quick voice email, and adding a little voice to your web site or blog, it's the bomb.