Audioblogger, RIP

The Audioblogger service, which lets you "call your blog" and leave audio messages that become audio blog-posts, will cease on November 1.

If you've already created MP3 posts that way, they'll still work, but you can't create new audio posts with the service. Odeo runs the service, and a message to users said that resource limitations led to its closure. Other services offer similar tools, though. Snip:

Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone. Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features. Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording.

All of the phone posting services listed above are compatible with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can be imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo can be posted on a blog by copying and pasting some embed code.

I used Audioblogger a lot for a while, right around the time when the service was first released. One of the projects I used it for was a warblog in which the blogger phoned in messages from a satphone, while traveling through war zones. I experimented with it from more comfortable locations, too, including some geek events in LA. It was a neat idea, and I can imagine ways that such a service could still be used to create really interesting stuff online. Maybe I'll try some of the suggested successors.