Review: VoiceMinder from WebIS

Posted by: PatrickJ on Sep 04 2007

VoiceMinder is a very simple program that will help you out in basic but crucial ways. It’ll keep that one truly great idea from fading away into the murky recesses of your mind in the daily madness of life. Or … just help you remember to get your car serviced this week.

Not a lot of people know this but . .. a few years back I had the idea to create a radical and elegant new portable media player device, before the iPod ever hit the shelves. It hit me while I was out and about and I never wrote it down or captured it properly - so the rest is just (negative) bank balance history for me and a win for Apple I guess.

Actually, that’s completely false (like you hadn’t guessed that). My great random ideas are generally more along the lines of ‘Remember to record Jekyll on BBC America tomorrow’.

Doesn’t matter though - the thing is on any given day there are a good number of random thoughts and ideas that really want to be captured quickly and easily, so that you can act on them properly later on.

Read on to see how VoiceMinder is a great tool for just that purpose …

Installation:

Like Brandon, I don’t believe that this area is even worth a mention most of the time, as the vast majority of Windows Mobile publishers have got this routine down pretty well by now. So just a quick ‘nice touch’ sort of feature to mention here:

The setup screen (when setup is run from a desktop) helps out less experienced users with the choice of whether you need the Pocket PC or Smartphone edition, by prompting you regarding whether or not your device has a touchscreen.

Apart from that, nothing much to report here. Setup can be done via a .cab directly on your device or an .exe run from a PC, and either way it’s easy and quick.

Configuring VoiceMinder:

The first thing you need to configure in VoiceMinder is your email setup - i.e. an email account to send from and an address to send to. This may take you 10 minutes - *if* you are not so sure about some of your email account settings or need to look them up. If you’re pretty familiar with all your mail settings, then this will be super quick.

You can also configure your Connection Settings - choosing to use ‘Work’ or ‘Internet’, or letting it know that you’ll take care of connecting prior to launching the app (by far the easiest if you’re on an always-connected phone device). Once you’ve got your mail account setup done, and selected your mode of connection, VoiceMinder will run a quick test for you. If something is amiss, the tests are pretty good at providing useful information as to what portion of things is causing an issue - lack of connection, authentication failing, server doesn’t allow secure connection etc., not just telling you it failed. This is obviously very helpful in resolving any issues more quickly and getting on with using VoiceMinder.

After getting email setup, there are only a few other preferences type settings to configure (or happily leave at the default). You can alter the default subject line of the mail you’ll receive from VoiceMinder - I’m quite happy with the standard [Voice Notes] plus date and time stamp. You can also toggle whether it sends immediately (after you finish recording), saves to ActiveSync, and whether or not it plays a sound alert to let you know when it’s done / sent.

The last - but very important setting you’ll choose for VoiceMinder is the assignment of a hardware button. You can choose none of course, but the nature of this program is that you want to be able to call it up rapidly, so it is highly recommended to choose a button to assign it to.

Using VoiceMinder:

Ok, so setup sounded pretty easy right? Well using VoiceMinder is even simpler, and that’s really the beauty of it.

When you get that sudden burst of pure inspiration on your car ride home - a hot name for your new startup business so you can quit the day job, a solution to a problem that was stumping you at work all day, or the perfect gift for a loved one’s upcoming birthday - you just hit that assigned hardware button and VoiceMinder fires up and starts recording a voice note. Hit the button one more time and it stops and sends an email with the voice note file (as a .wav attachment) to the address you setup for it.

That’s it - two presses of a button and you’ve effectively stuck a giant, bright Post-It note on your own forehead, helping to remember and act on something important. Or hey - I suppose you could configure the recipient account to be your boss or spouse or similar, and hit them up with your requests to tape important programs this weekend - but I’ve stuck to just mailing myself so far.

My view is that VoiceMinder is intended to be for short, sharp bursts of thought, not so much a medium for trying out your 30-minute talk at a speaking engagement sort of thing. One reason for saying this is that your file sizes would rapidly become unmanageable (I believe). Typically, file sizes for me on the attached .wav files are between 75-500k - and to get up to around that 500k mark, I’ve blabbered at it for around 30 seconds.

Any Complaints Though?

My only slightly negative thing to say about it is that its name does not do it justice. VoiceMinder (for me) does not convey how simple yet powerful this application really is. It wants to be called something striking - Idea Capturer Thingie, or something with some impact like that. I feel sure Alec and Jason will get right on that.

Conclusion:

I’ve always been a fan of VoiceMinder. I think it’s a great idea (the concept was originated by Jason Dunn of ThoughtsMedia and Pocket PC Thoughts) and since its launch little niceties of setup, configuration and appearance have been tacked on to improve it. Nothing has encroached on its supreme ease of use though, which is a large part of what makes it such a great program.

This is a must-have app for me on any Windows Mobile device. I may not have had that one genuinely great idea just yet - but boy if I do, VoiceMinder will make sure I act on it before it slips away from me.

VoiceMinder is available from WebIS directly, and of course at the JAMM Store - and is excellent value at under $10. Since it is a JAMM Essentials application, you can always get a 15% discount on it at the JAMM Store - just quote the coupon code JAMM-Essentials at checkout.

Technorati Tags: VoiceMinder, WebIS, Windows Mobile voice notes application, voice notes, just another mobilemonday

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