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Trunk Spotlight: Quicktate for Transcribing Your Audio Notes and Making Them Searchable in Evernote

Partners | By Kasey Fleisher Hickey
 
 
  • App: Quicktate
  • Platform: Any
  • Price: Monthly and Pay As You Go Plans available
  • Type: Transcription


For those of you who use Evernote’s audio feature to record notes, you’ll find today’s Trunk Spotlight to be very exciting. Quicktate can actually turn lengthy voice notes into text that you can easily search for and access anywhere you have Evernote installed.

An introduction to Quicktate

Unlike some transcription services, Quicktate does not use voice recognition technology but rather, employs its own team of pre-screened professionals that transcribe voice recordings. Because your audio notes are transcribed by a real human being, the accuracy of the transcription is remarkably high, and the turnaround is surprisingly quick.

Quicktate transcribes both long and short voice notes. A 60 minute voice note recorded in Evernote can be transcribed in about 4-6 hours. This means that if you attended a meeting in the morning and recorded it using the audio feature in Evernote, you’d get the transcription before the end of the day. A 30 second voice note can be transcribed in minutes.

How it works

To start using Quicktate, first create an account. As part of setting up your account, you’ll be asked to authorize Quicktate to access your Evernote account. After you’ve linked your accounts, anytime you create an audio recording in Evernote, the recording will be sent to Quicktate for transcription, and the transcribed text will go straight back into the original note in your Evernote account.

You can record an audio note in every version of Evernote. But if you’re on the go, you can also call (888) 222-NOTE and dictate your recording to Quicktate. They’ll transcribe your recording and create a new note in your Evernote account containing the results).

Why would I want to transcribe long-form audio?

There are plenty of reasons why you’d want to record and then transcribe a long audio note. Here are a few ideas:

  • To capture and search everything discussed at a business meeting. There’s no better way to know what each person said at a meeting than to record and transcribe the entire meeting.
  • To capture speeches and lectures. Whether you’re attending a class, or a conference, you can record a speaker and forget about having to feverishly take notes.
  • To write your book. Ok, you might not be an author, but if you are writing a book, blog post, or article, you might want to speak some (or all) parts of it to capture nuanced dialogue and emotion.
  • To record an important event. Whether you need to capture the scene of a car accident, or a business deal, dictating the events happening around you might be the easiest way to capture them. Transcribing these notes might be the easiest way to find and remember them later.

How would you use Quicktate and Evernote together? Tell us in the comments.

The Evernote API

Quicktate was able to do all this thanks to the open, free Evernote API. You can also create amazing Evernote-integrated apps and products. Take a look at our developer site for more information.

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  • Janine Reed

    I have been typing up notes from the audio that my boss emails me. My hand is getting very sore from stopping and starting the audio with the mouse all the time as I can’t keep up with his normal speech. Can you please advise if there is a foot pedal that I can use with my lap top so that it makes the stopping and starting, replaying etc. easier. Or are there keyboard shortcuts so that I don’t have to use the mouse as much? I would love your help. Janine Reed.

    • http://quicktate.com/evernote Quicktate

      Janine,

      You might want to check out Express Scribe.

      However, from a time-efficiency standpoint, if your boss had a Quicktate account, you wouldn’t have to type any of these audio notes :) and you wouldn’t have a sore hand or risk a carpal tunnel injury.

      Any he’d get back his transcribed notes pretty quickly 24×7, even at 2 in the morning. A 3-minute audio note is generally finished in 5-10 minutes.

  • Tom Rooney

    I am very interested in this but I am curious about the pricing, can you give me some indication as to what the costs.

    Thank You.

  • skinnycat

    Ah, they use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to transcribe for pennies, then charge you a fee.

    Just create your own Mechanical Turk account and do the same if you need transcription often. It will save you lots of money.

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