Record Cell Phone Calls with Drop.io Service (free)

This was a pretty cool find, that was merely an accident. I joined the Drop.io service due to trying to find a decent, free AJAX upload script, since I didn’t have the time to write something basic myself. I never actually found one, however, I decided that Drop.io was the closest thing to a solution. Basically, I needed to upload a few files, quickly, so that I could download them on a remote system (without using rsync or scp). If you have a chance to check out Drop.io, please do, then have so many services within the actual Drop.io service, one of them being a voicemail box.

The Concept

Basically, Drop.io gives each “drop” a voicemail box that you can call into, that has an assigned extension. So, you call the Drop.io number, enter your extension number in, and leave a message.

About Drop.io

Before I go on, let me explain to you how Drop.io works and a few terms you might be unfamiliar with. First off, get on over to the Drop.io website. You can create an account for free. Each free account comes with 100MB of usable space. An account on Drop.io is called a drop. You can order more space, all the way up to 25GB of space. Also, the Drop.io service currently uses Amazon S3 technology, so downloads should be pretty quick from just about anywhere, and data safety (notice I didn’t say security) should be pretty good.

Creating and Setting Up Your First Drop

Go ahead, create an account; you should already be at Drop.io’s website. Make sure that if you are wanting this drop for less thatn one year, you need to be sure that you specify that in the Settings section, when creating an account. For security reasons (if you want to), where it says Others Can, make sure you change the selection to View Only. Once you create an account, you will be prompted by the following dialog, asking you to create an admin password:

Please note that you must create an admin password in order to use the voicemail feature. If you do not create a password, then you will not be able to use the voicemail feature (along with quite alot of other features) until you create an admin password.

Retrieving Your Voicemail Number

Now that you have an admin password (right?), navigate over to the Drop Details and select Phone; this should be on the right site of the page:

This should expand the phone section of the Drop.io Details section. You should now see a section that says Voicemail. Write down that number for future reference, including the extension.

Recording The Phone Call

Now for the fun part. I originally did this on the iPhone, however, it should still work on other phones. The iPhone really makes it easy to swap/merge phone calls, so this would be my choice of phone to use, however, this should work on any phone that can make a conference call, or 3-way calling. So here are the steps we are going to take to actually record the phone call:

• Call the Drop.io Voicemail number, and enter your extension (starts recording)
• 3-Way (conference) call the person you are wanting to record the conversation with, and make sure you merge the call (so that Drop.io can actually record the conversation).
• Once done, hang up on both calls, which should be a typical hang up (ends recording)

Once this is done, depending on the duration time of the phone call, will be encoded and available for download from the Drop.io Files section; it should be under Audio. You can then download this for later use/listening at your convenience. If the recording is over 100MB (free accounts only), I’m not sure if it just cuts off the time that is over 100MB, or if it doesn’t post at all; this I haven’t tested. If anyone has any information pertaining this, let me know. Just to give you an idea of how much recording time you can do, you will be quite surprised: a 45-minute phone call used up 10MB!

Wrapping Things Up

While this might not be the best solution, I’ve found it to get the job done. I’ve never actually used this for anything other than to write up this article, since I realized it could be done, however, knowing that I could use it in the future is something worth while to keep handy.