GCast.com is a free podcasting service that allows account holders to upload audio content. It then produces an RSS feed, which can be cataloged in podcasting repositories such as iTunes.
The thing I really liked about GCast though is that an account holder could register a phone number with their account. Then they could magically call a GCast 800 number and record the entire conversation. After hanging up, this phone conversation would be saved as an MP3 file on the GCast user’s account. This was awesome (and yes, I wrote “was”) because the phone is a technology most everyone is comfortable using. Easy peezy podcasting. That was then.
This is now. GCast is no longer offering this phone-in service for free, but for $99 a year. Below is the email message I received:
As you know, we have been offering the ability to podcast by phone for several years. Up until now, this service has remained free for you to use without limitations. We have been incurring significant costs to keep this service free and we now must take steps to lower our cost. Beginning April 1, 2009, we will be charging a subscription fee of $99 for this phone-in service. It will still be free to upload content through our website. Additionally, the subscription usage will be limited to 2 hours in any 90 day period.
Ah, the affects of the economy.
GCast, a free podcasting service, previously allowed users to record podcasts via a phone call to an 800 number, making podcasting easy for everyone. However, as of April 1, 2009, this phone-in service is now priced at $99 per year, with a limit of 2 hours of usage every 90 days.
Losing the free phone-in line on GCast is a small thing on paper, but it was the part that made the service easy — call in, and the audio lands in your feed without any editing software. The RSS upload side still does its job, though for anyone who recorded on the road, that’s a real shift in how the workflow looks.
I’ve been messing with short animated clips for a side project lately, mostly presentation-style graphics rather than footage, and I read through an unofficial guide called ClaudeMotion.net while trying to figure out what Anthropic’s beta animation feature actually does. From what’s there, Motion is Team and Enterprise only, it writes the animation as code and exports an MP4, and it counts toward the plan’s usage limits. The limits are worth knowing: it doesn’t produce realistic footage, and the help page says nothing about audio, so it wouldn’t fill the same gap a podcast feed does.