Archive for the ‘podcasting’ Category

Maybe you have experienced some of the same difficulties I have experienced finding a good tool to record phone conversations.  I used to have a great tool that worked on my Palm Treo 600 ages ago, but with the death of that old phone I lost the capability.  Later, when Skype came around podcasters started putting together a few hodge-podge solutions to record interviews.  A few companies even stepped into the mix and created software packages to run with Skype. 

Having tried a few of these solutions, I have not yet found the right tool.  I tried Pamela, which seemed promising.  It offers a free version and a paid version.  Unfortunately, Pamela seemed to take control of my inherent Skype voice mail program, and the Pamela voice mail options did not seem to function or maybe integrate as well. 

A couple days ago, I found a free download tool that seems to have been designed to enable you to record phone conversations with Skype Version 4.

I’m hoping to test this new tool out this week and see if it is up to par.  It definitely had the right price.  $0.00 

Free Skype Call Recorder is irreplaceable program for everybody who is using Skype to make voice calls. Conversations are stored in space efficient, widely used, convenient mp3 format. It is easy to store, easy to share and cast you nothing to record. Skype Call Recorder seats in system tray and starts recording automatically. Be on a safe side, record your calls.

Skype Call Recorder 0.5.2.1 (Windows), from VOIP Call recording – Free Downloads on ZDNet

There are many reasons why people might need or want to record a phone call.

Once upon an age I was a corporate whistleblower and recorded phone calls to capture conversations from people in the board of my company that wanted to have me killed, or at least scare me into being quiet.  Hopefully, most people won’t find themselves working as accountants in need of that type of solution.  There are many more mundane and practical reasons to record phone calls.

It can be an excellent source of backup for customer or partner phone calls, conversations, and phone transactions.  It can also be useful for people that want to analyze their own phone performance, whether they work in customer service, or sales, or some other area.  Its a great way to capture conversation and interviews for reporters, bloggers, and broadcasters.  If you capture your files in an MP3 format, you can even convert the MP3 files from voice to text with Dragon Naturally Speaking, so that you can index and perform text searchs on your phone calls!  (Its not perfect, but can be done if you get your recording file formats set at the right level and your call quality is decent.)

  First off, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Top10Tech.  We would like to to share with you a cool little (free!) program called The Levelator.  It levels the volume levels on sound files.  For example if you are recording a call with multiple callers on skype, you can drag the wav files onto the Levelator, and it will level the volume on the two tracks to the same level.  It can also work if you have recorded a panel session with multiple speakers that may have different volumes because the speakers recording levels were set differently or because the speakers were further away from the microphone.

Its a cool little program and the free download can be found at The Levelator from The Conversations Network.

Later this week I will be traveling to Ontario, California for the 2007 Podcast and New Media Expo.  It used to be called the Podcast and Portable Media Expo btw.

I’m running a new computer and it doesn’t have all of my podcasting gear on it.  I am not going to schlep 2 machines across the country (my buddy used to be into model rocket shows and stuff and would literally have to rent a uhaul to go to the different shows and competitions, so I can’t complain too much), so I am rapidly trying to get my new machine loaded up.  So that means, I am downloading and installing a lot of programs

• iTunes
• Audacity
• All the Audacity plugins (3-4 more programs and their sub parts and libraries)
• My iTune subscriptions of podcast shows so that I can connect faces to voices
• itineraries,
• bookmarks of the sites and shows of the new attendees that are popping up in the forums
• and some of the products and software of the exhibiting companies so that I can hopefully ask intelligent and insightful questions about their latest releases (and find out if they are really worth it this go around.

So I am sure that my computer will almost certainly run like crap by the end of the week, after all it is a PC. .  .