For a long time I used to be a user of a service called Audioblogger, which did this remarkable little thing and did it well -- it provided a phone number you could call and leave up to a five-minute message, which it would then convert into an MP3 and post to your Blogspot page a mere minute or so after hanging up. In effect it turned anyone with a cellphone into a potential podcaster, without having to know anything more technical than how to dial a number and then talk; I used to use it for all kinds of fun things back in the day, including discussions with drunk friends at late-night parties, on-the-fly interviews with interesting people I would unexpectedly meet, and a lot more.

I was sad when Audioblogger eventually closed its doors for lack of interest, but am now happy that another group has now added the same capability -- it is in fact existing media-management company Drop.io, which for awhile now has been letting people store all kinds of different files and documents through the ultra-simple process of "dropping" it into their account. There's been a number of ways for awhile now to actually drop information into your account, including via email, SMS, website interface and standalone widget; and now they've added a voice option, which just like Audioblogger lets you simply call an American phone number and talk, converting whatever you said into an MP3 mere seconds after you hang up. And even better, there's no artificial time constraints to the calls, either; finished audio files can be as large as you want, as long as they don't go over the 100 mg limit of all Drop.io accounts, meaning that if your account is empty you can theoretically record a six-hour phone call if you want, and hence easily record such shorter events as a music concert or college lecture.

Anyway, I went ahead and made a test recording of the service, found immediately above, so you can see what podcast episodes recorded on a cellphone exactly sound like; note that Drop.io does not provide code for streaming said audio to a blog, but does let you download the file so that you can upload it later to a service which does (like Vudyo.com, for example, which I'm using today). It's a cool service and absolutely free; I have a feeling that people will be able to find lots and lots of different interesting things to do with it.