The iPhone lends it’s self equally well to typing a text note as well as audio notes. The system has a notepad application to take quick notes (see another post we did on how to get notes off of your iPhone and Touch to the desktop) and a microphone/speaker for audio, but no built in audio recorder.

Audio recording applications continue to be at the top of the list of most popular Business and Productivity applications available.

I will cover two of the many options here as an introduction of what you might do with audio: QuickVoice and Note2Self.

QuickVoice is exactly what you would expect out of a handheld audio recording device. Upon launch, you have large ‘Record’ and ‘Play’ buttons. As well, as recordings are made a list of those recordings is created and can be chosen from the opening screen. You can record a quick ToDo, a reminder or even a full lecture. 

Tapping the ‘Record’ button starts the recorder. The buttons change to ‘Stop’ and ‘Pause’. These carry the usual operation of stopping the recording or pausing the recording if you will want to resume the same recording after a break. While recording, a audio levels bar appears so you can see if the iPhone / Touch is actually ‘hearing’ anything.

After you stop a recording, the files becomes a line item on the list of recordings. It will have the name (a default originally), the length of the recording, the date it was recorded and the size of the recording file. A blue dot is to the left of the recording you can currently listen to or change the name of (tap to select which recording you wish to work with). Editing the name of a recording is done via the button on the lower left corner of the screen.

The developer does offer a desktop software solution to get the recordings off of your iPhone called QuickVoice PC. While the iPhone app is free, the desktop is $24.95 (on sale right now for $15).

Now the GREAT news. You do not need to connect your iPhone via WiFi or through a Web site to move your recordings. The desktop application pulls your recordings right out of your normal iTunes backup. When you sync your iPhone to your desktop the audio recordings are stored on your computer for QuickVoice desktop to pick up. The Mac and PC software has many tuning options.

    

This went a little longer than planned… check my next post for the Note2Self audio app walk through.