Phonecasting Alternative to Drop.io ?

During the summer I finally found what I thought was an ideal solution for instructors to easily record lectures or other audio information AND allow students in their classes to do the same. For details read this post: http://teachlearntechblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/voice-record-lecturecasts.html. Unfortunately drop.io will be discontinued by December 15 as a result of its purchase by Facebook. All free (and paid) accounts and data will be deleted by that date. I am searching for an alternative such as those listed in this post http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/2010/10/sad-newsdropio-removed-voice-recording.html but none seem close to what Drop.io can provide.

Do you have suggestions for a service that provides features reasonably close to what Drop.io provided?

Requirements (or reasonably close)

• Phone record directly to your account space using a unique phone number. Therefore you (and-or your students) could use any phone - landline or mobile to make the call-in.
• Reasonable storage to allow allow a semester's worth of podcasts (100MB provides 400 minutes of recording) and presumably a price model for larger space requirements.
• Administrator control that controls access to the podcast site
• Guest password for students so they can create their own phonecasts
• Option to subscribe to RSS feeds including iTunes
• Pre-recorded lectures in mp3 or aac audio files that can be uploaded separately as part of the podcast
• Mobile app is preferred
• Guarantee that the service will not be purchased and discontinued by a billion dollar bully ;)

Converting PDF's to Audiobooks

Scenario - PDF's to Audiobooks

For many students comprehension of printed text materials depends on reading and listening to the text at the same time. Although it is possible to scan printed materials into electronic format the process is tedious and inaccurate. Some publishers will provide audio materials in a format that requires a special player such as a Victor Reader. Typically these players are cumbersome to use, bulky, and are not integrated within a student's learning environment. There is also the stigma of having to carry around the device. In this scenario publishers provide searchable PDF files usually by chapter.

Attention! Conversion of copyrighted materials can only be used by students who have purchased the textbook and are registered with the office of accessibility services. The PDF’s and converted spoken text cannot be distributed.

Software: PDF to text converter; iSpeak It! for Macintosh or Flame Reader (Windows); iTunes for Macintosh or Windows http://www.apple.com/itunes

Hardware: iPod Touch for reading and listening; portable media for audio only.

Process

• Open the PDF document - typically a chapter file - and convert it to text (Macintosh Preview, Adobe Acrobat, CutePDF for Windows, or http://zamzar.com).
• Copy and paste the text into FlameReader for Windows or iSpeak It! for Macintosh
• Convert text into MP3 or AAC audio format.
• Add the recording to iTunes and then tag the audio recording.
• iSpeak It for Macintosh provides options to facilitate tagging, bookmarking, and categorizing the spoken text as an iTunes audiobook. In addition the text is copied to the Lyrics tab.
• Copy the recorded chapters to the iPod Touch. Students can read and listen at the same time or listen only.

Converting Text-to-Speech for iTunes and Mobile Playback

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