We don’t have a way to download audio from the YackPack interface yet, but hopefully these suggestions will be helpful until there is.

Sharing and Embedding Particular Messages
If you want to share a particular message from a pack you can find a link for it which can then be emailed, posted on a blog, or on a webpage. You can also embed a small yack player in any web page by using the embedding code. Here’s how to find both the link and the embedding code for a particular message.

1. Login to your pack and find the message for which you want the link or the code.
2. Click on the desired message to begin playing it back.
3. Above the message list, you’ll see the words, “share this message.”
4. Click the words “share this message” and a screen will pop up with both the link and the embedding code.

Recording Live Voice or Asynchronous Messages as MP3s
To record Live Voice conversations (like an online meeting) or save recorded messages as .wav or .mp3 files without buying expensive software, you can use free download tools such as Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) or MP3myMP3 (http://www.mp3mymp3.com/). You can also use an inexpensive tool such as QuickTime Pro ($29.99 USD. If you use Audacity, you’ll need the LAME encoder to do MP3 files specifically. It’s another free download (and another step). Audacity works with both Mac and PC. MP3myMP3 is PC only. QuickTime Pro is also Mac and PC friendly.

To record Live Voice, you just open whichever audio tool you have, adjust the settings to record audio coming from the microphone, and whatever sound quality you desire. Start recording when the Live Voice conversation begins.

If you are talking and taking part in the live conversation, you’ll need to use your microphone and then make sure the microphone is also near the speakers to pick up the audio coming from others. You can’t use a headset and do this. You need to have speakers. Everything is recorded over the microphone – both your voice and the voices of others. When you’re done, just stop and save the file. With tools like Audacity and QT, you should be able to do some further editing too.

To record the asynchronous messages in a pack, you can also use these same tools. This time, however, you’ll need to select “mono out” as your recording input (on a PC, double click your speaker icon in the taskbar, then click options, then properties, then select the recording radio button, then click OK. You should see the “mono out” option in the columns. Select it (probably need to deselect Mic).

This will record the audio directly over your sound card and the audio quality will be generally better than what you can get recording through your speakers and microphone. You can record all the messages saved in a pack, just by clicking the “play” button in YackPack. It will load one message after the other. Alternatively, you can select message by message and record each as a file. Record the audio using the programs mentioned above – although you may need to adjust the setting to “mono out” on the recording tool as well.