Updated: 10/2/06; 4:21:54 PM.
Gary Mintchell's Feed Forward
Manufacturing and Leadership.
        

Thursday, September 7, 2006

Getting things to work together
I've been trying to find a way to conduct interviews, do digital recordings both for articles I write and for podcasts. Our "new media" guru Dave Newcorn found a way (sort of a kludge) to record from Skype using Soundflower then editing and finishing in Audacity. Trouble is set up is a pain. Then I had trouble with my Logitech headset. Couldn't figure out if it was a Mac problem or a Logitech one. Still don't know, but a trip to the Apple support site showed that I wasn't the only one with problems using the Logitech product with a Mac. Should have looked at that first, before I bought then had trouble during interviews. (One reason for my comments yesterday about eMvoy. I like what it is doing in theory, but user comments are very helpful.)

So based on recommendations there and from Bill Machrone of PC Magazine, I bought a Plantronics head set and went looking for a new recorder. Oops, the one Machrone recommended works only on Windows. After more than a half-hour on the Skype Web page I discovered that all voice recorders only work on Windows. We poor Mac users are just left swinging in the wind.

Dave also discovered the "cell tap" from JK audio for connecting headsets and cell phones to a digital recorder (like my little iRiver mp3 player I use to record podcasts right now). Trouble with that is the output volume on a cell phone is so low that it doesn't come out on the recording. I can use it with my home phone, but since I travel so much I was hoping for something mobile.

What it boils down to is that even though Macs are supposed to be good for visual and audio applications, there's no good way to do voice recording on them yet.

Then, in addition to these problems, I've been wasting time trying to get my Treo 700p synchronizing with my Mac. Missing Sync from MarkSpace doesn't seem to like a lot of my settings and customizing. I used to like playing around with electronics and getting things to work. These days, I seem to have lots of other work to do, and I'd just like this stuff to work like they say. Probably like you and your automation applications?

2:40:54 PM    comment []

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