And why would you want to do that?
Some of my best thoughts come from conversation. A phone conversation, a chat, conversations with myself when I am driving down the road. I think I’m a pretty smart girl. Quite often, some of my conversations get quite deep. The answer to something I’ve been looking for is in the conversation. But an hour later when the conversation is done; so is that thought. Even if I could write that one thought down, it is dependent on the conversation that came before and the conversation that came after.
While the brain (another thing I’ve always been interested in) is a far better ‘computer’ with far more capability and I’m sure that it captures everything .. we’ve got our lives so cluttered with crap that recollection is hard to come by.
So these are the tools I use …
On my phone, an Android, I use a program called Tape Machine to record the thoughts I have throughout the day. I use Google Voice to record voice messages. I haven’t found a good telephone conversation recorder, I had one once on the DROID but since Verizon’s last operating system update it doesn’t work anymore. But … I just purchased a virtual PBX that may allow me to do that on any phone that I use with that system. (I’ll let you know how that works)
For my browser, I use Firefox. Firefox has an add-on called “Facebook Chat History Manager” which lets you save every word of a facebook chat.
My kid Charles got me Dragon Naturally Speaking for Christmas. It lets me talk and it types what I talk while I am saying it. It works with headphones best but also works with the bluetooth headset. It also lets me transcribe all those voice messages into text. I frequently have to edit .. but that’s okay for me.
None of this technology is great ..but for now it works and for the most part, it’s not difficult to use. It’s probably going to break the next time “They” do a system update. It still takes too much time to capture and transcribe but it makes it easier to capture those conversations that might sometimes get away.
Of course you have the paranoia when you ask someone to record them .. and they are not as free and easy if they know they are being recorded .. and it’s illegal! if you don’t tell them about it.