I recently found myself doing an interview on short notice for a client, so I decided to do it from home for convenience. The day of the interview, I came across two problems:

• My phone adapter for recording does not fit anywhere on my cordless home phone, and the iPhone doesn’t record calls.
• I was calling a UK mobile, which would cost about €20/hour on my landline rates.

Erp. I wasn’t used to this. I had a paid office phone to use until now. The solution, I decided, was simply the too-little-used wonder that is Skype. No problem! Headset in, number prepped. Now, where was the record call option? Oh. It doesn’t exist. What now?

Well, there are a myriad of different options available to fix this gaping hole in Skype’s functionality, but for those in the same boat as I, needing a very quick fix, check out the wonderful Pamela for Skype. A program that runs alongside Skype, it automatically (or manually, if you prefer) records both sides of the conversation flawlessly in MP3 format. You can append notes etc, and, best of all, the free trial doesn’t have the silly recording limitations of 2 or 15 minutes that its other counterparts have on their trial versions (crucially, you must have the 30-day trial of the Professional version for this to be the case).

Cracking application which saved my skin. I now have a better-than-phone quality recording of my hour long interview, it cost about half of what I would have paid with regular landlines, and I may well use part of the paycheque from this job to buy the €20 license for this piece of kit.

-END-

Posted by Dave Molloy in •Journalism •Resources •Tech

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