Phone recording software?

[Jeff]

I'm just recently in a unique (brokerage) situation wherein only real time voice phone will work to do business; not answering machine, not voicemail, not email, not fax. I would really like a computer record of those landline conversations. Any recommendations for help with that?

- Jeff

[ktinkel]

I'm just recently in a unique (brokerage) situation wherein only real time voice phone will work to do business; not answering machine, not voicemail, not email, not fax. I would really like a computer record of those landline conversations. Any recommendations for help with that?This will no doubt seem quaint, but I used to do a lot of phone interviewing, and used a small Sony cassette recorder. It picked up both sides of the conversation, with no beeps or other intrusions.

That was in the 1980s and 90s. Nowadays I suspect you would do something digital, but I don’t have any experience of that. My cable company wants to sell me telephone service, and one of the selling points is that it is easy to record voice on the computer (in iTunes, I guess, like a webcast).

[sidney]

I'm just recently in a unique (brokerage) situation wherein only real time voice phone will work to do business; not answering machine, not voicemail, not email, not fax. I would really like a computer record of those landline conversations. Any recommendations for help with that?

With the restrictions that you would have to use a new phone number (but not have to give up your current one, just a new one for this purpose) and recording for now is only for incoming calls, Google Voice does have the capability to record calls, with the additional advantage that they automatically use voice-to-text technology to make the recordings searchable See here (http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115037).

Hmm, I wonder if you could make a conference call to your Google Voice number and the person you are talking to in order to get a recording of outgoing calls.

[Jeff]

With the restrictions that you would have to use a new phone number (but not have to give up your current one, just a new one for this purpose) and recording for now is only for incoming calls, Google Voice does have the capability to record calls, with the additional advantage that they automatically use voice-to-text technology to make the recordings searchable See here (http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115037).

Hmm, I wonder if you could make a conference call to your Google Voice number and the person you are talking to in order to get a recording of outgoing calls.

Interesting Sidney, thanks. Voice to text is real tempting, but it would need to record both sides of the conversation, not just the caller.

- Jeff

[sidney]

but it would need to record both sides of the conversation, not just the caller

I'm pretty sure that they record both sides of the conversation, the restriction being that you can only hit the record button when someone has called you, not when you initiate the call. That's why I speculated that you might be able to deal with it by placing a conference call first to your Google phone number, hitting record, then conferencing in the other person.

My guess is that they will eventually handle outgoing calls too, since Google bought the system from a company called Grand Central who did support recording outgoing calls. I can see how they might have to cut back some functions while adding some other new ones like the searchable voice to text and links to Gmail, but expect that they would want to get back to having the priduct do what it used to be able to.