Posted: Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 7:16 pm. Filed in Mobile, New Features, Posting.
Tags: Audio, Mobile, Voice
Phone Your Blog
A broken telephone I saw while wandering around Bangkok
It’s happened to all of us. The night starts off innocently enough with a little gin and tonic, maybe a mojito, then next thing you know you’re doing tequila shots with the bartender and the girl from Brazil and you find yourself thinking it would be a treMENdous idea to call up your ex and see how they’re doing and perhaps impress them with your newfound wit.
We’ve got the cure. Now, instead of drunk dialing random friends, lovers, and acquaintances one at a time, what if you could dial your blog and talk to the whole world at once? It’d be like something out of Star Trek.
The future is now, folks. You can now go to your My Blogs tab, enable Post by Voice, and get a special number and code to call your blog. After you’re done, the audio file from your phone call will be posted to your blog for all to listen to and enjoy. (And added to your RSS feed for podcast support.)
So now you can post to your WordPress via the web, email, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, desktop clients, and now any telephone in the world. Of course when you post it can be pushed to Facebook, Twitter, and more using the Publicize feature. What more could you want?
Right now this is completely free, but we’ll charge you money to take down posts. Just kidding! We’re making it free and allowing recording lengths up to sixty minutes, but that limit may go down without a paid upgrade in the future. Mostly we’re just curious to see how people use this.
I have a few ideas myself, but to find out you’ll have to listen to this voice post:
July 2nd, 2010 at 6:13 am
I’d phone in a blog entry if I liked the sound of my own voice. I’ve heard it’s pleasant but I don’t really like listening to my own voice that much.
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:04 am
That’s seriously the craziest idea I’ve ever heard of. By far. Isn’t writing the point of having a blog? I don’t know why I’d use this feature, but you guys get amazing points for such creativity!
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:06 am
Awesome.. Just hope that it has the capability to password protect the post from one’s ex’s spouse
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:13 am
As if it’s not enough to make a total fool of yourself to one or two people. Now you can share your stupidity with the world.
Should be mandatory that you have to pass a breathalyser test before you can “post”
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:26 am
I’m not gonna lie… that is one of the biggest problems I have for the Saturday posts… genius idea!
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:52 am
THANK YOU, WordPress, you are GENIUSES!!! And your timing is IMPECCABLE. We’ll be at Soccer City, Johannesburg, tonight, for one of the most potentially historic games in African football. So I’ll hop right on my iPhone and share some of the action, LIVE!! Thanks again!
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:21 am
Wow! Is it possible in Italy too?
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:53 pm
You can call from anywhere but the phone number is only a US number right now.
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:26 am
Yeah, agree with you. Phone is becoming more and more import in our life.
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:40 am
It’s amazing. That is support any language?
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:05 am
This is magic! How awesome:)
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:09 am
Calling the blog? o_O Sick. WordPress is wicked sick. LOL.
I kinda hope for local Indonesian number tho, calling US number even once just makes me broke, hahaha… Perhaps WordPress can try to have agreements with providers from Indonesia as Telkomsel, 3, Indosat, etc. Good luck.
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:01 pm
This is so great…but why can’t we have numbers for different countries…not ALL bloggers on WordPress are from the USA…i live in Wales and there is no way i am phoning a USA number on my mobile…such a shame we get left out ;{
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:00 pm
This is REALLY neat! I guess the next step would be to convert the audio into text??
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Very funny. I understood about 5 or 6 words, plus the first three. And do you really mean 60 minutes?
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Loving this. I can send the excitement of a little league game, the sounds of the shore, the boredom of a board meeting.
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:33 pm
So instead of drunkenly ranting at one specific person, do it for the whole world to hear! I don’t see this one going wrong…
July 2nd, 2010 at 3:20 pm
by the way… does it work anywhere in the world, or only in US?
July 2nd, 2010 at 4:55 pm
The only number right now is a US number but you can call it from anywhere.
July 2nd, 2010 at 4:02 pm
cool feature…. but looks strange to me….
July 2nd, 2010 at 4:22 pm
You‘re doing a great job, this update rocks. But there‘s one thing you could do still:
Comments in Stats. So you can see when you got comments, and when you got spammed. All optional, of course.
July 2nd, 2010 at 4:23 pm
This is magical! I seriously thought we had just about reached the limit on new social technology, but you guys broke through!
July 2nd, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Can somebody please try this and link to it here? I want to see what the final post looks like.
July 2nd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Brother, you folks are so frickin awesome! How super cool is this and I can’t wait to try it! Woo hoo!!! for WordPress… Time for a reblog too.
July 2nd, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I don’t know if I’m intrigued or terrified!
July 2nd, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Lol now this is going to be funny… Theres gonna be a load of drunken posts over the next few weeks!!
July 2nd, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Hey this is great — BUT — it would be nice to have some control over the title of the post and the whether it is public or private. I’d like to be able to keep it private until I get to a computer where I can add pictures and words to the post and change the post title before making it public. Perhaps a default setting or prompts on the phone?
July 2nd, 2010 at 7:14 pm
This is pretttty interesting… We are living in the future…. I am going to have to try this out.. recording concerts incognito.. oh wordpress.. you think of everything!! xoxo
July 2nd, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Okay, this is totally super special awesome. I guarantee I will be doing this in the future.
July 2nd, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Now, if we could only translate audio messages into text, then we’ll be back in full circle.
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:25 pm
This is old hat people – ipadio have been doing this over a year. Only wish they’d produced a WP plug in
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:36 pm
i can only imagine how many blogs fill with foolish sounds and crazy thoughts…lol…how many times the log would be edited and the post deleted because the wrong thing was blurted out….
but sounds interesting for those of us who hate typing… i think i will wait till all the tweaks and quirks are worked out first….
hope
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Any chance of adding the capability to choose whether or not an audio post is immediately published or put into limbo in a draft status? I can think of many situations where I might want to record my “on the spot” thoughts via voice, and then polish the post with a few pic’s or text.
If I had the option of pressing “1 to publish” or “2 to save as a draft” that would kick serious a$$.
This is a great first step WP!
July 2nd, 2010 at 10:50 pm
This is an awesome addition. Thanks.
Could be great for poetry that makes less sense when not read by the author.
July 2nd, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Well isn’t that nifty. Now I have something to do on my 45minute commute!
I’ll take your phone blog and raise you one comment.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Very interstingggg… Must give this a try!
July 3rd, 2010 at 12:55 am
Ya’ll, I already have drunk dialing problems. I can’t even imagine what this will result in. Guess I should start drinking.
July 3rd, 2010 at 3:53 am
This is a great addition, not only for when one is away from the blog, but for certain messages that would carry better via voice than via print.
Thanks so much for working this out.
~Lorna
_____________________________
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:13 am
Hope there’ll be something like this in the Philippines for a cheaper cost!
July 3rd, 2010 at 6:03 am
This is absolutely awesome. Will definitely have to give this a try. I continue to be impressed by your ingenuity at WordPress.
July 3rd, 2010 at 7:17 am
This is a great posting platform for radio show hosts, broke bloggers (meaning you couldn’t pay your internet bill), and anyone else who could get use out of it…like myself. I can easily see a few commercial applications utilizing this posting platform. I’ll be trying this one out. Thanks!
July 3rd, 2010 at 8:01 am
Superb idea & service. though no luck thru landline and could call only thru my cell for which i had to shell out more money.
July 3rd, 2010 at 10:45 am
You should have specified that it currently only involves a US number… got me all excited for nothing >( so not going to call the US for a blog post LOL
July 3rd, 2010 at 11:00 am
Brand new and another way to get your voice out on your blog! Sign me up for the test-run!
July 3rd, 2010 at 11:14 am
Matt!!!
I think I love you now.
July 3rd, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Great feature! Even greater if it becomes available for self-hosted blogs of course. I’d gladly pay a fair fee for it.
I want people to be able to download the sound files I create on my blog. After all they are just me talking, no copyright issues. Is there any way to enable that?
July 3rd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
heehee, I love this. Now all can listen to my accent, which I don’t really believe I have any longer.
Fantastic stuff guys. Thank you!
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:06 pm
This sounds really useful for when you’ve got a great blog post idea and can’t get to a computer!
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Wow! That’s really different and creative! I don’t think I’ll be using it much since I don’t love hearing my own voice, lol, but it is a great option! Thanks for coming up with all these great ideas!
July 3rd, 2010 at 8:07 pm
HAHHAHA! YOU CREATED A MONSTER, and I LOVE YOU FOR IT!
July 3rd, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Oh man, if only I found out about this two days earlier!! I ended up drunk dialing my ex-girlfriend, and when she didn’t pick up, I called a bunch of her friends just to talk. Much to my chagrin, I also (wish I was kidding) called her parents house phone, and they live 3 provinces over! When my ex found out, she was thoroughly unimpressed. I have to lay off the Smirnoff.
July 4th, 2010 at 1:49 am
This is really exciting! I am taking students to Jamaica and was planning on recording interviews on my iPhone to post when I returned. Now I will be able simply call and interview them on the phone. The only suggestion I could add would be the ability use a recording app and by means of a smart phone, add it to the blog.
July 4th, 2010 at 5:29 am
Wow! This sounds wonderfully fun!
July 4th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Haha, I think it’s cool doing so!!
July 4th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Tried it last night at a concert. My phone’s recording capability is less than optimal but the service itself worked great. Haven’t figured out how to save the called in file to my computer yet.
July 4th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
the sad part is this just makes me want to drunk dial the internet.
July 4th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Just promise me that I can’t drunk dial my blog and break up with it….
July 4th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
This is a fantastic idea and I can envision audio posts for my blog in the near future. What a deal! Thanks…
July 4th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
I don’t know… it could be good if you don’t use it when you are drunk!
July 4th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Tumblr has something like this. I don’t remember if tumblr users have to upgrade for more media space, even though tumblr don’t have an upgrade system yet.
July 4th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Have tried it.
Goes smooth. And appears on your blog as Audio Post instantly.
But for better results – should speak loudly.
July 4th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Great! Question. Is it capped at 60 min per call or 60 min for all the calls combined?
July 12th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
60 minutes per call.
July 5th, 2010 at 7:12 am
This is simply great. Now no need to sit in front of my laptop and type the whole post.
July 5th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Any way to change default “audio post” title having to change it for each individual post?
July 12th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Not at this time.
July 5th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
I don’t know if I will be calling my Blog after doing the tequila shots, but it would probably be hilarious to hear! I will use this application and am excited to try it!
July 5th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Since life and death are held in the power of our words….this is an incredible opportunity or a horrific tragedy for some. Think of the legalities that one could be held to? Lawyers will have a heyday……
July 5th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
when i first seem this in our dashboard originally it seemed like a joke, but its an actual feature…cool especially for writers and those who are more verbal than written (like me) at getting their point across and articles out there. Now I want to know can use any US number to place the call to your blog like 1-800′s, mobile, all types of carriers…ect?
August 4th, 2010 at 12:53 am
You should be able to call from any phone line.
July 5th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
I love you guys! This was why I was clinging to livejournal… Now I can do all my blogging HERE!!
July 5th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
So, if you make a post with a phone call…how do you title it? Add it to a category? Add tags? Write something in the post as well?
Or is there some sort of automatic format or something?
July 12th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
You would need to edit the post after it is published.
July 6th, 2010 at 12:30 am
Very cool, and useful for real-time reporting. Can you add a voice file to an existing post?
August 4th, 2010 at 12:55 am
If you have a space upgrade you can use mp3 files in posts. See http://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/
July 6th, 2010 at 5:24 am
I just got through with an 8 day baseball trip that I blogged daily. One night in particular we got in at 2AM and had to get up early and I really didn’t want to drag out the laptop, download the pics, etc. This would have been an ideal solution – I think! Anxious to see how it’ll work.
July 6th, 2010 at 5:37 am
Glad I don’t drink
July 6th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I think this is dumb – you have given a number with a 5 or 6 digit code to type in whilst connected. How are we supposed to remember that if we’re using a cellphone? We can add the number but not the code to the cell memory..
July 6th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I’m from Australia. I think it has some good options if I use Skype from my phone.
July 6th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Sweet, this is a good idea, now we don’t have to spend hours typing.
July 6th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
This is very cool! I’m curious to hear if and how often people use this new feature. Will there be analytics behind it as well? It would be neat if there was a voice to text feature as well. Also, are there any thoughts of making a voice a comment option?
July 7th, 2010 at 5:09 am
Hope there’s a password verification requirement to prevent wrong numbers from posting to someone else’s blog!
July 7th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Pretty Schweeeeeeet! I’m sure we are going to use this! Who would not?!
July 7th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
This is a great tool to post “reporting live” from events for those who couldn’t make it to the event. Regarding a phone number for non-US residents: did you explore the idea to use Skype or similar?
July 7th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
i had no idea that you could do that could using a computer have no use for posting a blog every thing can be done off a smart phone keep up the good work
July 7th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Hee hee I love it!
Just posted a test, and although I sound a bit geeky, love love loved it, but then im a lazy writererererer.
July 8th, 2010 at 2:20 am
Is there any way to have the audio post to the drafts folder so I can tart it up with pics and some text before it pushes out to subscribers?
Having the audio go live with a generic headline and no text is a little unsophisticated.
August 4th, 2010 at 12:56 am
Maybe in a future update, but not yet.
July 8th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Haha! That would be awesome!! I am tired of calling my-ex “as if I have the guts”, and brag about the good things that happened to me (while I am drunk)! hahah!
Hey, he should have stayed around! LOL!
July 8th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Oh… dear… this could be fun, especially during those nights that never end in Phnom Penh…
July 8th, 2010 at 9:33 am
This could prove fatal…
July 8th, 2010 at 10:45 am
yerrrrrrrrp
July 8th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Very cool, THANK you! I’ve added a welcome voice page to my blog, and received a suggestion for the audio to load automatically on entering the site…
July 8th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Fantastic idea, possibly a safe way to drive & post? At least, safer than texting into a mobile phone. Thanks.
July 8th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Oh this is hot! I have to look into this a little more
July 8th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
What a great feature! Bloody Amazing…
July 8th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Incredible, techology just keeps getting better and better. What’s next? The only drawback is that when you are writing your blog it’s like writing in your journal, with this voice blog you are speaking into it, how will it work, can you back up and delete? So many questions…
July 8th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
This is brilliant!
WIll it be abused? Sadly, yes. You cant stop those who will hang themselves. Or advertise us to death.
Well, then there are the law suits that will follow! “The coffee was too hot and I burnt myself!”
Does it come with a caution sign? LOL
Testing, testing is this mic working?
July 8th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
“Any chance to add support for numbers around the world? I only got a US phone number to call which is slightly expensive from the UK!”
“We may look into this in the future. Numbers outside the US are quite expensive to add to the service.”
I’m sure they are, but US numbers are just as expensive to call. 60p/min if you’re interested.
July 8th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
What a really brilliant and logically simple idea…!
Now I can share my campaign objectives with everyone who is interested, right?
July 8th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Sounds really great. Maybe I should try later.
July 9th, 2010 at 1:46 am
So you’re telling me that since drunk dialling your friends or ex wasnt good enuf, its better to just drunk dial the whole world??!
AWESOME IDEA!! Now everyone can know about that Japanese chick I hooked up with whose name I cannot remember