Trying out a new recording system

[rblunden]

I have found it difficult to take good observation notes, partly because my handwriting is pretty illegible - especially in the cold weather we have been having recently, and partly because I find it difficult to record in red light. I recently remembered that I have a small voice recorder (an Olympus WS-100), so tried using that to take notes as I am viewing.

It seems to work pretty well. I can then review the notes and type up a log entry on my computer. I use an Apple Mac and a program called DevonThink, which has a couple of other advantages:

1. I can transfer the sound file from the recorder and insert it into my log note, so that I can listen to it if I wish from within the note;
   
2. I can link entries in my log to information I have elsewhere in DevonThink about the various objects I observe (mainly obtained from Wikipedia)
   

Attached is a small example of what it looks like.

I'd be interested to know if anyone operates a similar system. There are probably Windows applications which would do much the same thing.

obs e.g..tiff

[NickH]

iphone works a treat for this.., also the Z Pen is quite neat if you can write in this cold!!

[Space Bat]

I spent ages voice training my laptop a couple of years back - pretty much could run over 80% of my stuff and would have been handy for observation notes and running applications simultaneous...etc

But some toe rag relieved me of it

May give my new one a go at setting it up - but voice training your PC's etc is about as exciting as watching paint dry...

Here is a free one to download http://www.e-speaking.com/tell_your_computer.htm

But there is a certain self satisfaction of talking to your PC and it doing as you command....if only I could apply that to other areas of my life....

Chris

[yesyes]

if only I could apply that to other areas of my life....

Have you not voice trained The Wife

On a more serious note, I'm looking for something similar on Windows, or ideally web based, where I can record my observation notes and can link that to image galleries, (auto)create an observation list, have a calendar view and other neat features. A bit like a blog but with some observing / imaging specific features...

Is there anything like that around?

[Space Bat]

Not sure how good the one is I linked.

But the one I had was very impressive once you got to grips with it - you could do multi-tasking and multi-functions by assigning functions to words or phrases and train it on that phrase.

So for example you wanted to save a worded script in different places - say in a word file, notepad and excel for example and save it in different places you can set that all up - and apply a phrase

apply a phrase - 'save my places'...and it would save it in the places and formats specified to that phrase.

I can only imagine things have got better in the last 2-3 years on this front with voice command PDA's Iphones...etc

Chris

[yesyes]

Oh, sorry, I don't think I made myself clear. I'm not looking for voice recognition software but rather something like a observing diary. Ideally web based...

[Space Bat]

Perhaps here?

Astronomy Software | 24Hsoftware.com

[Iris]

Have you not voice trained The Wife

On a more serious note, I'm looking for something similar on Windows, or ideally web based, where I can record my observation notes and can link that to image galleries, (auto)create an observation list, have a calendar view and other neat features. A bit like a blog but with some observing / imaging specific features...

Is there anything like that around?

Oh, sorry, I don't think I made myself clear. I'm not looking for voice recognition software but rather something like a observing diary. Ideally web based...

yesyes - if you find something soon then let me know, on the other hand if you don't find an exisitng one do you fancy helping to build one?

It is an idea I have been toying with over the last couple of months, nothing too fancy for now - it would probably be rubbish but who knows...

[yesyes]

... do you fancy helping to build one? ...

Erm, yes, generally. Though I'm not sure how much help I could offer. I do have a "list of features" in my mind. But I know next to nothing about PHP or whichever web language you would use.

I could be beta tester and advisor or something like that though. ;-)

And I have web hosting with PHP and mySQL support, so would have a place to host it.

[Iris]

Exactly - you know what YOU want - so you can help specify... and you can test etc and verify.. and that doesn't preclude you from using anything else you find that meets your needs - but there is no harm in nicking ideas

Don't worry about hosting yet; To begin with I can handle that on my own server to start up and get some ideas moving. External hosting can be worried about when the time comes.

I am not planning on using PHP/MySQL - as well as being a nice little project to play with some ideas and help me organise and track my own observations I intend it as a vehicle for exploring some of the MS technology stack so it will be c# and asp.net based initially, backing onto SQLServer perhaps with one or two other things thrown in for fun along the way.

But I am no creative designer so funtionality will be my watchword to begin with - grey boxes are us!

The only thing right now is that I am not going to be devoting all of my spare time to it (certainly not while there is observing to be done ) so it will only get the odd couple of hours here and there (I'm working on some OU stuff too so that will be getting a fair chunk of my weekly time quota) - so please dont expect anything fabulous, fancy or fast - for now at least!

Now having done all I reasonably can to dampen expectations - still wanna help?