Going digital

A while back, I wrote about doing a phone interview on Skype, using a program called Audio Hijack Pro to record the conversation. It worked beautifully; the sound quality was much better than I've ever gotten with a cassette recorder, and very easy to transcribe. Before, I transcribed my cassette tapes using one of those foot-operated transcribers, and I'm telling you it was no fun at all. Audio Hijack makes it easy to set up your computer to record and then, later, to transcribe. So when I was preparing for Naples, I wanted to avoid that dreaded tape recorder (and transcriber) if at all possible. So I broke down and bought an XtremeMac MicroMemo so that I could use my iPod to record the interview.

On the plus side: the recording quality was great. The surprise was that, starting with a nearly fully charge, I found that I was running on a very slim red line of power after only about 1.5 hours. I hadn't anticipated that recording an interview would suck so much power. Fortunately, we were just finishing up, so I didn't miss anything.

After the interview, all I had to do was download the voice memo to iTunes. From there, it will be easy to transcribe using my headphones. So long, cassette tapes and transcriber!