New technologies and telephones

[Peter C. Haney]

Computers with sound cards are themselves capable of recording from a land
telephone line.  Learning to do this would be a matter of fooling around
with whatever recording and editing software is installed on a given machine.

Many cell phones come with an earphone jack, and I see no reason why a cell
phone could not be connected to a recording device through that jack.  The
quality of the recording might not be great but I suspect it could be done.

As for transcription, there is free software for transcription at the
website of the UCSB linguistics
dept.
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/resources/computing/download/download.htm.
The program I have used is VoiceWalker.  Developed for use in the CSAE
project, it allows the computer to be used as a transcription machine.  I
have found it extremely workable.  There are also programs available for
transcribing video.  For a long time, the program was unavailable at the
website, but I just checked and it's back up again.

I would say don't throw away the transcribing machines, though.


At 04:17 PM 6/19/03 -0400, you wrote:
>I am teaching a course this fall on conversation and realize that my
>expectations regarding data collection and transcription are dated, to put
>it mildly. Students no longer have audio tape recorders, and many use cell
>phones most of the time. SO -
>
>1. Does anyone have suggestions, and ever better yet, experience, collecting
>telephone conversations using technologies other than audiotape recorders?
>
>2. Is there a way to record cell phone conversations?
>
>3. And transcription technologies? (do I throw away those old transcription
>machines?)
>
>Thanks so much -
>
>Bambi B. Schieffelin