Using Google Voice for Podcast Interviews

UPDATE: A much better way to record the podcast interview is to have your interviewee call your Google Voice number then hit  the #4 key on your phone and this will record the two sided conversation. At the conclusion of the interview, again hit #4 to end the recording and download the saved MP3 into your favorite sound editor.  I will usually clean up the recording and re-record my questions in post to make it sound cleaner.

For the recent WiredCU podcast featuring Roger Conant of CUTweetTrack, I utilized Google Voice to record Roger’s portion of the interview.

While there are many ways to “patch” in a telephone caller and record a live interview, many of the techniques require either really complicated and expensive equipment (way out of my budget) or really crude cheap workarounds resulting in really marginal audio quality (Skype).

Enter Google Voice.

Recently I received an invitation to use Google Voice (formerly Grand Central) and while “geeking” around with it, I realized that I could use this service as a mechanism to conduct podcast interviews.

Here is how I was able to capture acceptable audio using this free service:

Google Voice lets you establish a “Google Phone Number” which you can port to multiple telephone numbers and configure to ring the telephone lines of your choosing.  When you set the service up you also get a web account that functions almost exactly like an email account.

Here is the cool part.

You can setup individual voice greetings for any of your contacts – when that contact calls your Google Number and the service goes to voicemail, they hear a customized voicemail greeting.

Once the voicemail is recorded, Google Voice does something really cool – it transcribes the voicemail message and sends an SMS message to your attached cellphone with a transcribed message (you need to set this up in the settings configuration and while not 100 percent accurate it is pretty amazing).

It will also store the recorded message as a downloadable MP3 file and has other options like allowing you to embed the voice recording into various other sites via an embed code.

I originally thought about using the iPhone’s Voice Memo function to have Roger record answers to a few questions and record them and then email them to me using the iPhone.

Unfortunately Roger did not have an iPhone, so when I got my Google Voice account – I was in business!

I emailed Roger my questions for our scheduled interview, setup a personalized voice message for him and instructed him to answer the questions as if we were talking live.

Roger recorded his responses and the moment he finished recording his message, I received instant notification of the transcribed responses via SMS text messages on my cellphone.

I used my regular podcasting equipment to compose the normal higher quality recording with my side of the conversation.

If you also would like to be a featured interview guest on a future WiredCU podcast, just give me a shout.

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