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Record MP3 Audio by Phone with Drop.io

January 15th, 2008 @ 6:10 am

3 Comments

Categories: Travel Tips, Web Tools

Tags: Audio, Phone, MP3, Telecom & Utilities, Digital Music, Digital Media, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics, Rick Broida

drop-io-voice.jpgRemember Drop.io, the online dropbox for files? The service just added a nifty new option: audio recording. Now, when you create a drop, you get a phone number and extension you can dial into to record meetings, podcasts, reminders, or whatever. Here’s how it works:

Dial the number, wait for the prompt, enter your extension and start talking. Whatever you say we will convert to an MP3 and put on your drop in a matter of a few seconds…for you to listen to, download, share, use however you want. 

This varies a bit from my beloved Jott, which is used to transcribe your voice into text. The possibilities here are fairly endless; I could even see using this to record an interview using your cell phone: Dial into Drop.io, then use the phone like a voice recorder. There’s no limitation on recording time, either, though the resulting MP3 can’t exceed the size of your drop (100MB for free ones; $10 for 1GB Premium drops). The voice service itself is provided free of charge. [via TechCrunch]

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  •  
    1

    mark.a.holdrege@...

    01/16/08 | Report as spam

    Legal issues

    Sounds like a useful tool, but you need to be careful to follow federal and state laws about informed consent when recording conversations.

  •  
    2

    Ania Levy

    01/16/08 | Report as spam

    Recording Meetings

    I agree with the post that raises the issue of legality and obtaining consent
    from meeting participants.

    I would also be equally concerned with non-disclosure of confidential
    material and proprietary rights of the parties involved. Who sees/hears or has
    access to see and hear these conversations as they take place and afterwards?
    Are the files purged permanently and completely from the provider's systems?
    Can conversations be kept by the provider of the service without the
    knowledge (and obviously the consent) of the participants?

    Personally, I would never use a service like this and expect the confidentiality
    of my meetings to be maintained.

  •  
    3

    BizHacksRick

    01/16/08 | Report as spam

    Out in the open

    I certainly didn't mean to imply that this should be used for secretive recordings. I just mean that in situations where you want to make a recording and it's viable to do so, you could use this in place of a traditional voice recorder.

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