Converting m4a to mp3

Have discovered an easy way to convert m4a to mp3. I already have dwhelper installed on Firefox on the Mac, so after making a voice memo on the iphone, I email it to a blog account that will host it (I used Posterous.com in this case) and used dwhelper to download it as an mp3. Great stuff!
http://liliansoon.posterous.com/lia-singing-in-french-0

BT 1571

I used to find the BT 1571 service handy for recording to my home phone while I was out and about, then picking up the mp3 from the website (kind of like a poor man's Gabcast or Ipadio). However, on checking it recently, they've removed this feature from their website! Boo hiss!
Wonder if anyone out there knows of other phone to web recording services?

My foray into podcasting on the PC

It's not been easy. I've explored it before, but now I've come back to try to show colleagues how easy it is, and it's not.

Let me explain: every free site that I've been to has been plagued with issues.

1. Mypodcast.com won't display my site, although it has a nice little free application that you can download on your PC to record mp3 files. (http://www.mypodcast.com/) REMEMBER TO PRESS SAVE AFTER RECORDING. I lost an interview because I clicked the little x on the top right too quickly instead of clicking SAVE first.
   
2. podomatic.com seems to be as complicated as Facebook in terms of knowing where to go and what to do. If I can't work it out in one minute, then it's no good for converting reticent tutors into using it.
   
3. Never mind, I thought I'd just post my mp3 on my blog to illustrate how easy that was to do. Another error uploading the file. Blogger refuses to play ball. I finally got it to work (see link below). However, Blogger doesn't host audio files so tutors would need to upload them to a public web space first.

I suspect your average tutor doesn't have web spaces, wouldn't normally use ftp and may not already have a blog site to start with.

Gabcast.com, introduced by Di Dawson on the m-champions MoLeNET Moodle, by contrast, was so easy you could blink and miss it. Fantastic and easy. Only problem is with the sound quality. Not sure if learners would enjoy listening to what sounds like a phone conversation week after week.

What really excites me about Gabcast, though, is that unlike the other podcasting solutions, it is truly mobile and allows learners to join in the creation of episodes quite easily. You simply let them have the phone number to dial, the channel number and password, and your class can be recording podcasts just like that!

I'm big on solutions that allow two-way communication, and Gabcast ticks all the right boxes for me so far. I know James is going to run a session on podcasting without Macs. By the end of the night, I may have something useful to add to his repertoire, or I may not! Let's see!

Here's the file I managed to link to this blog:

2008/gabcast.mp3

Overcome mp3 filters

Quick blog: I tried sending an mp3 file to some colleagues in colleges recently and in some instances, the email was blocked due to mp3s being filtered.
So I put the file into Movie Maker, stuck on a picture and saved it as a wmv.
This was received without a hitch. Hmmm...