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Review: VITO Audio Notes - software for automatic phone call recording and audio notes taking November 26, 2007 [General] | By Edward J. R.   Direct encoding to MP3? No problem! With VITO Audio Notes program however you can not only record audio notes, but also, more importantly, it can record phone calls! Interestingly the phone call recording is possible also in background, also when Audio Notes program is not running. If you have reasonably big memory card, and if you set menu position "Menu / Recording / Calls autorecord" to "checked", then you can have all your incoming and outgoing phone calls recorded automatically! After you start this application for the first time, you must decide whether you want to continue 14-day trial or maybe you want to activate this application (because you purchased it): 
After activation user is not being prompted anymore: 
Activation takes place over Internet and some information is being sent to the server of the software vendor. Initially we were concerned due to security reasons - theoretically any information from the phone could be sent in this way, but the software vendor (i.e. VITO Technology) has answered in the following way: Regarding activation. We receive only tech info for later support for this specific device. You can see what kind of data we receive while activation if you press off-line activation and view the file sendtosupport.txt (that you need to send to us and we'll manually issue an activation key in stead of our server - an alternative way of activating). We request this info only once, upon activation. If you want to ensure that we receive exactly the same info about your device while online activation - you can install any traffic sniffer and see the same file with the same info as when you do offline activation. You know, frankly, we had a good laugh here in the office and the developers advised to answer you like "The Matrix has you...". Anyway, be sure that your privacy is not violated in any way while registering AudioNotes or any other VITO products online, and you can check it. In other words: one can check what is being sent - if there is any security concern. Finally an off-line active is also possible as outlined above. Fortunately the purchse of this program is possible not only with use of popular online software stores and credit cards but also with direct sales with use of Google Checkout and PayPal. Here is how the main screen of VITO Audio Notes looks like: 
... where you can see "Record" soft-button for immediate recording of notes and "Menu" button for further options. In the main area of the window the list of recordings is presented. Since these recording are being recorded in MP3 you can listen to them without use of VITO Audio Notes! ... just by opening given folder and launching respective MP3 files ... with standard Windows Media Player Mobile or with any other audio player of your choice. Amazingly it is possible to append new recording to already existing one! While it is not full-featured voice editing (no cutting, no insertion at the beginning), this feature allows for comfortable, incremental, recordings: for example instead of pausing you can stop recording and exit application or even switch the phone off and then come back and continue recording to the same file! The recording and playback screen looks like this: 
... but one must remember that when "Calls autorecord" is used then there is no user interface at all and phone call recording runs in background - also when VITO Audio Notes is not running. In the menu it is possible to switch the language of user interface. The supported languages are: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Japanese and Russian. It is worth mentioning that it is absolutely necessary to test whether phone recording with VITO Audio Notes works with your specific phone model - by using trial version. Testing of both directions - incoming and outgoing calls - is necessary because we know of some phones that can record incoming calls but are not recording outgoing calls. The reason why this program is not working for phone call recording with all phones are not limited programming skills of VITO but rather a lack of consistent API for phone call recording inside of Windows Mobile! In case of other programs, like for example Skype, there is specific API defined for phone call recording and thus all programs are guaranteed to work fine. However here users really need to test well before purchasing. It would be worthwhile if VITO could publish a list of phones that 100% for sure are working fine in the area of phone call recording with Audio Notes. Now however, since there is no such list yet, users absolutely need to test both incoming and outgoing calls before deciding to buy this program. Conclusion: with VITO Audio Notes and memory card with reasonable size (1GB and more) you can get automatic recording of all phone calls that you make or take with your Windows Mobile phone! There is no limit on the size of recording (double-confirmed with VITO!) and only the size of your memory card is the limit... however since these cards are nowadays very cheap, there are no limits in reality. Quality of the phone call recordings is also very high and practically no loss of quality could be observed. The ability to record also external audio notes is a nice icing on the cake, particularly because it is direct encoding to MP3, but the real power of this program lies in phone call recording. VITO Audio Notes is a program that you should have! Whether you are making prank calls or you are talking a lot professionally, with this program all your calls can be easily archived. To download trial version (remember: don't buy without trying with your specific phone whether phone call recording works both for incoming and outgoing calls!), click HERE.  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 3 Comments ]
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