Q: I am hearing some rumors flying around about Blogger Audio. It is suppose to be about recording audio for your blogger account. it’s free just call a number. I’ve been waiting to see something come out from your blog on this. Could you address it please!

Q: 1) How long can I record a message?
2) I’m in the direct selling business so I wanted to use this tool for my teams website. Unfortunately, blogger doesn’t have password protected area so if I were to move this to my server and authenticate, would audio still work?

A: That would be Audio Blogger. They aren’t an entity of Blogger or Google (last I heard) but it works only for blogger. It is free, and signup is very easy, just three steps.

There are a few things you should note when using Audio Blogger. You need to enter a primary phone number and a PIN. In order to record to your blog, you’ll need to have both the phone number and the PIN. This is not ideal if you plan to have a number of people calling in unless you trust them not to make irrelevant or questionable recordings. Recordings are also limited to 5 minutes.

If you plan to use it as testimonial line or simply do not like the idea of other people having free access to record to your blog, consider using Audio Acrobat instead. Audio Acrobat is a more robust service with lots of additional tools like Podcast feature and their listener line call in number is definitely a plus. Also, I believe you can record a much longer audio and it has video features. You can use it not only for blogs but websites too.

There’s also a new comer to the scene, PhoneBlogz. They are pretty neat. You can purchase a dedicated call in number that’s yours only. This is very handy if you have a lot of local people on your team or if you live abroad. You can purchase numbers from a great number of different countries. They do have multiple caller accounts that start at $3.95 for 5 callers.

I personally use Hipcast (formerly AudioBlog) which is a cheaper solution starting at a very affordable $4.95 a month but like AudioBlogger, it doesn’t have a listener line call in number and anyone having access to your PIN will have access to all your blogs. Since I have no need for listener lines or allowing other people to call into my blog, this has worked very nicely for me. It also does video blog and podcasts like Audio Acrobat. Definitely much more complete tool than AudioBlog if you need more features that is.

In all cases above, yes, even though the blog is password protected, the audio should still work. The services works with Blogger & Wordpress’s backend - all done neatly and quickly without your intervention & techie nitty gritty out of the way. The only thing you’ll need to do is supply the services with the login to your blog.