Say'N'Post

I just downloaded SayandPost.com's tiny application to review. As I said it is TINY. Just 192k uncompresses. What IS SayAndPost? It's a pretty nifty little application that sits in your system tray, lets you record voice messages and upload them to sayandpost.com. Being able to leave voice comments online and then link to them is a pretty cool idea.

The setup program uses the nullsoft installer, which is one of the reasons it is such a small download. Not much overhead at all.

The screenshot above is the installer. Quick and easy and doesn't make any kind of major changes to the system which would require a reboot. I did find that it automatically uses whatever input that you have set as default in Windows. In my case I have a Soundblaster Audigy Platinum as well as a USB Mic. I use the USB Mic for recording but apparently forgot to tell Windows Vista that I want it to be used all the time. Normally I just configure that in whatever app I am using instead. Once I figured out why it wouldn't record I made the quick change and it worked fine. Here's a shot of the app itself.

It's pretty self-explanatory. The red button is to record your short voice message, then you play it back by hitting the play button. If it is acceptable you click on Action, and then Send. If it successfully uploads the mp3 file it gives you a pop-up box that tells you hat it's ok to copy the link, which it will display for you in the text box as text, html, or BBCode.

I recorded a couple of message to test it out. Certainly not Shakespeare but it works for the purposes if this review.

The First One

The Second One

You can also play all of them by clicking the link here.

When you minimize OR exit the app it goes down to the system tray as shown below, where you can activate by left-clicking or get the little pop-up menu by right-clicking.

Say 'N' Post IS free, which is very cool. With their free plan you get 10MB of web space, 100MB of bandwidth per month, and that's pretty much it. Pretty nifty being able to post voice mails. They also offer a paid plan for just $11.95 per YEAR which includes 50MB of space and 500MB of bandwidth per month. Either way the application is free.

Overall I thought this was a pretty good idea for a service. I have used a couple of different voice products that will read aloud my posts, but just for small voice messages, they are a bit much. This fits a needed niche very nicely and I will most likely keep it installed on my PC. I would like to have the option to exit the application on close eventually but that may be something that just needs to be requested. I just don't like stuff hanging around my system tray forever. One point to make about that is that if I see it I will use it, whereas if the application closes after use I might forget that I have it installed.

You do have the option to have it run at windows startup or not, I like that they put that in as a lot of programs don't give you the option AND the uninstall link is right there in the program menu should you decide not to use it.