AudioIn
Some Overo expansion boards provide a standard Audio Out and an Audio Line-in. Without a pre-amplifier, plugging a microphone into this Line-In port just won't work.
To use a microphone with the Overo, connect a microphone to the Mic-in lines available on the Overo connectors (and broken out on the pin headers of some boards). In addition, you need to be using a kernel that is more recent that 25 Sept. 2010 (see here for recent pre-built images.
Capture Interface Settings
The audio Line-in uses the 'Analog Right AUXR' and the 'Analog Left AUXL' lines; the Mic-in uses the 'Analog Left Main Mic' and the 'Analog Right Sub Mic' lines. Use amixer or alsamixer to select the correct capture interface for your application.
Currently, Line-in is selected as the default capture interface. You could switch to the Mic-in interface like this:
$ amixer -c 0 sset 'Analog Right AUXR' nocap $ amixer -c 0 sset 'Analog Left AUXL' nocap $ amixer -c 0 sset 'Analog Left Main Mic' cap $ amixer -c 0 sset 'Analog Right Sub Mic' cap