With the rise of services such as AudioBoo, voice memos and voice notes are increasingly becoming a useful mobile productivity and publishing tool (see Aliza’s post, “How to Use Audio Microblogging for Your Work” for a roundup), and are beginning to outpace Apple’s in-house app in usefulness and features.

The latest to join this space is YiqYaq’s Soundbiter for iPhone, a free “rolling recorder” that’s constantly capturing your sonic environment, enabling users to “bite” the last minute of recorded audio for editing or publication. Indeed, Soundbiter actually seems ideally pitched at roving journalists wishing to capture soundbites for later publication.

As well as the continuous recording mode, other features include:

• A sound editor with waveform cropping and previewing.
• Uploading to the Yiqyaq’s companion RadioWeave “personal radio” publishing service.
• Tools to add metadata, such as tags, images and location data
• Automatic sharing of a clip with a user’s Twitter followers.

The relationship with RadioWeave is an curious one; though pitched at “bloggers, bird-watchers, concert-goers, life-streamers and journalists,” the company is blending user-submitted clips with professional audio content as a kind of personalized radio stream.

Constantly Recording Your Context

Regardless of the RadioWeave integration, the constant recording concept is interesting in of itself, and suggests a useful precedent for any number of mobile applications. Rather than having to load task-specific applications, what if your device was constantly recording its location, camera data, audio environment and applications simply dipped into that pool of data to edit, share or annotate? A little like the conceptual “blind camera” that records context rather than images.

In any case, Soundbiter is a richer and more useful alternative to the iPhone’s voice recording app. iPod touch users will need to use an external microphone — a perfect excuse to get hook up that pro XLR microphone!

Download Soundbiter for free at the iTunes App Store.

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A quick rundown of the ones we haven’t mentioned before on WWD:

AudioBoo – Using an iPhone app, you can easily record a message or podcast. The sound quality is good. Ease of use, check. Upload time — not too bad, but keep in mind this is eating your data plan, so make sure you have a good one. Listen to a sample recording.

Chirbit – You can upload an MP3 or record straight from your computer, just like Utterli. Sound quality is not so great, so if that’s a concern, you want to try a USB mic. Without an iPhone app or number to call into, this app lacks true portability, unless you have your laptop with you wherever you go. Listen to a sample recording. You can also record a Text 2 Speech Chirbit. I’ve always thought Text 2 Speech sounds very creepy. You be the judge.

Trottr – Like Utterli, Trottr has a call-in number. Unlike Utterli, Trottr is much more international with multiple access numbers. Call in using any phone (you can register multiple phone numbers), speak into your phone, hang up. A cinch. Sound quality is fuzzy, so the quality of the phone connection definitely affects the end product. Listen to a sample recording.

Using an Audio Microblog

As I’ve been playing around with these sites, here are some ideas I’ve had about how we can use audio microblogging for our work.

1. Memos – The obvious use of private audio microblogs are audio memos to yourself or memos to people to whom you give access. I used to have a tiny digital recording device for this and frankly never used it. The few times I’ve tried to get in the habit of leaving myself audio reminders, I’ve forgotten to listen to them! But some swear by audio notes and memos.

2. Notes – While recording someone else’s speech or a meeting could be infringing on privacy or copyrights, using this for your own noncommercial and private purposes could certainly come in handy. Most audio microblogs do have a time limit, so they’re probably not ideal for trying to record an entire meeting or workshop, however, you could take notes or record snippets to share publicly (if appropriate) or use privately. I could see using it to recap meetings and phone conversations and sharing it with the people involved as a way to make sure we’re all on the same page.

3. Internal Tutorials – One of the hardest things to do when training new people is to get consistent instructions down in writing and then get new hires or team members to actually read them and follow them. I’ve started experimenting with audio podcasts of instructions for how we like to do things at our company. Using an outline is helpful so you don’t ramble. Shorter audio tutorials are also more effective than longer ones, so focus in on a single task per tutorial.

4. External Tutorials - In the same way audio recordings can be good teaching tools, you could extend this teaching outside of your team or organization and publish quick tips and how-to’s. While people tend to expect good production value from podcasts, I think they’re more forgiving about audio microblogs because they are more “in the moment” and conversational. Still, if you are going to go public with your audio lessons, a script is probably in order to keep the recordings concise and on track.

5. Audio Diary - If you are traveling, attending an event or are somewhere that others would like to be, you can send “audio postcards” or audio diary entries from the road. I can see how an audio recap of a workshop or lecture could be much easier to produce than writing out a summary and posting to a blog. If you are pressed for time or on the move, you could record your update in transit (as long as you have the right app, device and connectivity).

6. Conversation - Many of us use Twitter daily as a watercooler. An audio microblog could be the next step in these impromptu conversations. I do think, however, that the adoption of audio conversations will be slower going, as they’ve been on video microblogging sites. There are a core of avid users conversing with one another, but there is still something a little unfamiliar and odd about holding a conversation with audio or video that is not real time. We seem OK with this time lapse in text but less so in multimedia. Non-synchronous conversation is certainly handy when communicating between time zones. As people continue to adopt audio microblogging as another means of communication and publishing, I think that back and forth conversation among several or many will begin to come into its own.

What ways are you using or thinking about using audio microblogs?

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