A while ago, I was asking about audio recording recommendations from people. I got a couple, but wound up doing a little digging, myself, to see what I could do with the tools I had at hand.

 Well, I had an iPhone, and it had a microphone. And it had all sorts of whizzy voice recorders for various prices, so I figured I'd have a look, and see if any suited my needs. And if none did, I could always write my own (which is what I did when a needed a true distraction-free app for writing, and just writing forward, given the short spans of time I usually have for writing, these days). Obviously, time spent tinkering around with code and geeky stuff is time I should probably be writing, so I was really hoping I'd find something worth my while (and not, I swear, secretly hoping I'd have to write my own).

I've tried some which have looked nice, some which have been the ultimate in simplicity, and some which haven't actually recorded a single thing at all.

My favorite, so far, is the QuickVoice (R) Recorder. It's, by no means, the most attractive, and I wish the interface was a little less awkward sometimes, but it has worked pretty well for voice note recording (and it's free, at the moment, anyway). It has a handy little desktop app (which works on PCs as well as Macs, but I've not actually had to sync the notes on a PC) to sync the recordings to your desktop. Basically it does what it says on the tin... I can unlock the phone, fire up the app, hit a button for a new recording, and hit another one to start actually recording. It's not ideal, but when I'm in the car and an idea pops up it's not too long between me pulling over into the breakdown lane, if necessary and getting the idea into the memory of a machine, anyway. It's not quite perfect, but it's close enough for my needs.

It's even worked well when D----, in the middle of a bedtime story session, starts off and away with a story of his own, suitable for a children's story he seems intent on writing/telling. And he loves hearing his voice back when we're all done with the capture.

So there you go. I've got my voice recorder for on-the-go idea capturing, and have been able to salvage some of those moments of inspiration which would otherwise be swallowed completely by the call of daily life with a couple of small kids and everything else that goes on.