embarrassing your drunk and/or famous friends on the internet

Catherine needs some help getting her Kristen Bell voicemail off her phone and onto the internet. As it happens, I have some experience in this area. It's pretty simple to do, but it still seems worthwhile to write it up in order to better preserve future generations' novel and/or hilarious voicemails.

So:

  1. Download Skype and buy some SkypeOut credit so that you can make calls to non-Skype phone numbers — in this case, your voicemail system.
  2. Use some software to record Skype's output. On the PC, Audacity should work, although you may need to fiddle with your Windows sound settings to make sure it's recording from the right sound source. On the Mac you'll want to use Audio Hijack, the free trial of which should work great for this purpose (provided that your VM is less than ten minutes long).

    Audio Hijack is pretty simple to use: first, make sure Skype is closed. Then launch AH. Click the new button, name the entry "Skype" (or whatever else you'd like to call it) and point it toward the copy of Skype in your Applications folder. Close the dialog, highlight the new "Skype" entry, click Hijack. A copy of Skype will launch — but this version will pipe all of its sound through Audio Hijack. You can start and stop recording of this sound with the "Record" button that sits to the right of the "Hijack" button.
  3. Dial your own phone number and let it go to voicemail. While your voicemail greeting plays, hit the star button on Skype's virtual keypad (this is how it works for T-Mobile — if your carrier's voicemail system works differently, get in touch with them to see how to check messages from phones other than your mobile). Then enter your PIN. You should now be in your voicemail menu, able to navigate using Skype's virtual keypad. Start recording in Audio Hijack or Audacity (don't do it while you're still entering touchtone commands, lest some weirdo steal your voicemail info). Get the voicemail to play and end the call. Stop recording in Audacity or Audio Hijack.
  4. Edit the file that was just recorded (Audacity is a good choice for this on the Mac, too — whether you're on Mac or PC, make sure to install this software so you can save from Audacity to MP3 format). If you're using Audacity, the audio will already be in the editor, ready for pruning and saving. Audio Hijack places its recordings in a subdirectory of your Music folder by default. Once you've got the file properly edited, save to MP3, post to the internet and revel in its awesomeness.
  5. Oh, and to make it really easy for people to listen to this or any other MP3 on your website, create a hyperlink to the MP3, then include this line of code somewhere in the entry (or in your page's template):

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://del.icio.us/js/playtagger"></script>

That's it! I may have failed at making it sound easy, but trust me: once you figure it out the first time, it's all pretty intuitive.

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