Tuesday Tech Tools: 91 Audio tools for podcasts, recording, editing, etc.

Below are 33 standout tools. See all 91 here.

Anchor*
An app for recording and editing. Originally intended to be a platform for short-form audio snippets ("Snapchat" for audio) with content disappearing after 24 hours. But the podcasts published from your phone to Apple, Spotify, or Google will remain available. Record up to four guests on a single call, trim and edit tracks, and add music, all within the app. Owned by Spotify. Free.

Audacity*
Audio editing software. Free and open source.

Audio Hijack*
Record video conferences on your Mac with this long-time favorite. It can record from designated applications, or simply record any system sound coming through your computer. Total Recorder does the same thing for Windows.

AudioNote*
Searching for a section of audio corresponding to a note is easy to find.  The recording time is insertedat the beginning of each line oftext. $9.99.

Adobe Audition*
Audio editing program.  Formerly Cool Edit Pro.  $349 but it can be purchased as part of Creative Suite.

Avid Pro Tools*
An industry-standard, studio-grade audio editing tool. $699 for the base version.

Cogi*
Mobile app to record meetings, interviews. Records and sincs audio (from news conferences, for instance) with typing so you can find quotes easier. Allows for tags and annotations. Always recording so picks up the 15 secs before you turn on recording.  Enables recording calls, highlighting key parts of the conversation, and transcription.  Free. $5 for more features.

Evernote*
Access notes on any computer, tablet or phone. Search function lets you find a note in either text or audio format. Free for iOS and Android. For more options there is Evernote Plus $2.99 a month, while Premium is $5.80 per month.

Google Docs Voice Typing*
This free Google Docs tool under the drop-down menu for 'tools', (the 'voice typing’ icon) will transcribe your dictation or the audio you are playing in real time.

Hindenburg Journalist*
A multitrack audio editor designed for podcasters, audio producers and radio journalists. The design and features are tailored spoken-word productions. Set markers and add notes as you record interviews with uncompressed sound to give you the best audio quality. Drag any audio file into Hindenburg and start editing. There are some great features. However, there are also some limitations (read more here) which makes other options more attractive. Overpriced at $95 and $375 for the pro version.

iRig Handheld Mic*
A handheld microphone with a built-in headphone socket allowing users to monitor audio and control levels when paired with the iRig Recorder app. $69.99.

iRig Mic Studio*
Professional studio mic that comes with many adaptors including a lightning port plug so it will work with the iPhone 7 (which is it smaller than). Includes gain control, level indicator, and headphone output (with its own level control).  Tripod stand included. $129.99.

iRig Pre*
A preamp which allows you to plug your quality mic into an your iOS device. It takes an XLR input and turns it into a 3.5mm jack. A built in headphone socket allowing users to monitor audio when paired with the iRig Recorder app, which also gives audio control levels. Very simple to use. Uses 9-volt battery. $39.99. If you want better sound quality, and control, try the iRig Pro or even better theiRig Pro Duo.

iRig Pro Duo*
User can plug two XLR microphones into an iPhone through the lightning port. You and the person you are interviewing can be mic’ed with separate gains. A headphone port allows you to monitor the audio. Uses two AA batteries so it does not draw power from your iPhone. $199.95.

Libsyn*
Podcast Hosting Services. Starting at $5 a month.

Mixlr*
Live internet audio app. Share in social media, text with listeners, embed player on your website. Free.

Otto.ai*
Automated transcription app. A favorite among journalists. Turns a couple hours of audio into a reasonable written transcript often in a matter of minutes. Free..

Rev Voice Recorder*
Quality voice recorder and editor for both iPhone and Android. Includes Dropbox and Evernote integration. Free but voice-to-text human transcriptions in 12-hours for $1 a minute.

Rode i-XLR*
A broadcast quality XLR adaptor that lets you connect it to the lightning port of the iPhone. The cable is about 10 feet long in order to reach an interview subject. You can adjust the headphone volume but there is no preamp or gain control. $149.

Shotgun Mic*
Popular RodeVMGO Video Mic GO Lightweight On-Camera Microphone SuperCardiod. Lightweight directional microphone. Adaptor and extension cord needed as well for it to work with a iPhone 7.  $99.

Send Anywhere*
A free file transfer app (iOS and Android) for images, video, audio and text. Share up to 10GB per transfer, Your recipient uses an URL to access and download the files from the cloud.

SlideShare*
Popular resentation tool owned by LinkedIn. Use documents, PDFs and video to create webinars, audio presentations, for online lectures etc. Solid analytics for free. Watch a slide show about SlideShare here.

SoundCloud*
Post your audio here and then link to it from your blog or embed it into your blog. Limited space free, more for a fee.

Steller*
Create photo and video stories on an iPhone with an emphasis on mobile design. Create collections and share on social networks. Free. Sample.

Shure Mic for iOS*
Shure MV88 Digital Stereo Condenser Microphone for iOS. Stereo and mono options. Small and portable, it plugs directly into the iPhone’s Lightning Port. A 90-degree hinge allows you to adjust it to different angles to capture the best sound. Comes with an app that controls the gain, EQ, and stereo width. $129.

TapeACall*
Record cell phone calls and export the audio for editing, to email or upload to Google Drive or Dropbox. IoS and Android. Dial the TapeACall line, then dial the person you want to talk to, and merge the two calls into a conference. The recording is saved on the app. $24.99 a year. Watch a video here.

Temi*
Speech to text transcription in 5 minutes Advanced speech recognition software. 10 cents a minute.

Transom*
All things audio. A performance space, editorial session, an audition stage, a library, and a hangout. How to guides for podcast beginners.

VoiceBase*
Transcribes audio to text.

VideoMic ME*
Compact and lightweight, directional microphone for smartphones. Adaptor and extension cord needed.

Voice Record Pro*
Professional voice recorder that saves high quality WAV files. Available for both iOS and Android but more features in the iOS version including an automatic transcription tool. Record audio from events, voice memos and on-site sounds at unlimited length, add markers, share or upload. While it is not an audio editing app, you can trim the beginning and end of your recordings. Short tutorial here.An explanation for journalists here. Free though the paid version ($6.99) has no ads.

WeTransfer*
A file transfer service, Dropbox has more options for the price. WeTransfer is free for individual users, but $12 for companies needing more.

Zoom iQ7 Mic*
This compact condenser mic is portable. Can be set to record a source from the front with or without the surrounding ambiance from the sides. $99.

More audio tech tools here.

When Loyalty at Work Becomes Harmful

Numerous examples and research show that overly loyal people are more likely to participate in unethical acts to keep their jobs and are also more likely to be exploited by their employer. These could manifest as being asked to work unreasonable hours or on projects or assignments unrelated to your role, or keeping things under wraps because it is in the company’s (read: family) best interest. We’re all in this together, so you have to play your part, right?

Studies show that employees who operate within a “familial culture” often fail to report any wrongdoing when they feel closer ties to the perpetrator. Feelings of fear the damage might cause to the perpetrator keep fellow employees quiet and complicit.

Joshua A. Luna, writing in the Harvard Business Review

Going with your Gut

Your feelings are a very important tool in understanding the world. Your unconscious mind does a lot of mental calculations that are more complex than your conscious mind is able to do. It can handle more information. That’s what comes back to your brain in gut feelings, hunches and intuitions. Those aren’t from nowhere. They're the result of complex calculations your brain did on an unconscious level, in conjunction with emotion. 

Leonard Mlodinow, quoted in GQ

Someone else’s umbrella

Most of us want a dictator—albeit a benevolent one—so we can pass the buck, so we can say, "You made me do that. It’s not my fault." But we can’t spend our lives hanging out under someone else’s umbrella and then complain that we’re getting wet. 

Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger in her book The Choice

The problem with the world

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. -Charles Bukowski

Productivity struggles

E.B. White once wrote: “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” But in my research, I’ve found that productive people don’t agonize about which desire to pursue. They go after both simultaneously, gravitating toward projects that are personally interesting and socially meaningful.

Often our productivity struggles are caused not by a lack of efficiency, but a lack of motivation. Productivity isn’t a virtue. It’s a means to an end. It’s only virtuous if the end is worthy. If productivity is your goal, you have to rely on willpower to push yourself to get a task done. If you pay attention to why you’re excited about the project and who will benefit from it, you’ll be naturally pulled into it by intrinsic motivation.

Adam Grant, writing in the New York Times

Like Smoke

Anger is like smoke. You have to get at what’s feeding the fire. -Gail Cornwall 

Venting reinforces negative emotions

Think of our brain circuitry like hiking trails. The ones that get a lot of traffic get smoother and wider, with brush stomped down and pushed back. The neural pathways that sit fallow grow over, becoming less likely to be used. Kindergarten teachers are thus spot on when they say, “The thoughts you water are the ones that grow.” This is also true for emotions, like resentment, and the ways we respond to them, like venting. The more we vent, the more likely we are to vent in the future. 

Gail Cornwall & Juli Fraga writing in Slate

Success & Value

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. -Albert Einstein (born March 14, 1879)

The process of self-discovery

The process of self-discovery requires an undoing of the self-knowledge that you assume you already have. Becoming is the ongoing process of losing yourself and finding yourself. -John Kaag

Burnout

I know the signs of burnout. It’s not like one morning you wake up, and you’re burnt. You’re noticing more emotional exhaustion. You’re noticing what researchers call depersonalization. You get annoyed with people more quickly. You immediately assume someone’s intentions are bad. You start feeling ineffective. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t noticing those things in myself. I can’t be telling my students, “Oh, take time off if you’re overwhelmed” if I’m ignoring those signals. You can’t just power through and wish things weren’t happening. 

Yale cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, quoted in the New York Times

Lasting Happiness

Researchers have found that the happiness produced by acquiring material things such as cars, jewelry, and gadgets decreases over time. By contrast, the satisfaction associated with experiential purchases— like vacationing with a spouse or attending a sporting event with friends—increases as time moves forward, in part because we seldom do things alone. Elizabeth Dunn, a professor of who studies happiness says, “Going to a concert, taking a trip, any unique experience that is very special can make us feel more connected to people we love.” 

March, 2022, Atlantic Magazine

The Dark Side of Saying Work Is ‘Like a Family’

When I hear something like “we’re like family here”, I silently complete the analogy: We’ll foist obligations upon you, expect your unconditional devotion, disrespect your boundaries, and be bitter if you prioritize something above us. Many families are dysfunctional. Likening them to on-the-job relationships inadvertently reveals the ways in which work can be too. 

Joe Pinsker, writing in The Atlantic

Think Yourself Young

According to a wealth of research that now spans five decades people who see the ageing process as a potential for personal growth tend to enjoy much better health into their 70s, 80s and 90s than people who associate aging with helplessness and decline, differences that are reflected in their cells’ biological aging and their overall life span.

“There’s just such a solid base of literature now,” says Prof Allyson Brothers at Colorado State University. “There are different labs in different countries using different measurements and different statistical approaches and yet the answer is always the same.”

Many people will endorse certain ageist beliefs, such as the idea that “old people are helpless”, long before they should have started experiencing age-related disability themselves. Those kinds of views, expressed in people’s mid-30s, can predict their subsequent risk of cardiovascular disease up to 38 years later. 

David Robson, The Expectation Effect: How your Mindset Can Transform Your Life

Plant your own gardens

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. -Jorge Luis Borges

Planning

Planning is improvisation on a sense of direction. -Harlan Cleveland

How Feelings Help You Think

If you’re in a grocery store, and you're hungry, everyone knows you're going to buy more stuff. You go into the store, you have certain data. If you go when you're in a non-hungry state, you have all that data in front of you, and all those choices to make, and you make a series of choices. If you go when you're in a hungry state, same data, same information, and you make totally different decisions. That's a good illustration of what emotions do. The emotions are a framework for your logical processing. It affects how you evaluate data, how skeptical you are of certain ideas versus how accepting you are of those same ideas. Your brain doesn't process in a vacuum. 

Leonard Mlodinow, quoted in GQ

Fleeting Happiness

I have now reigned above 50 years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call. I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot. They amount to 14. —Abd al-Rahman III, the emir and caliph of Córdoba in 10th-century Spain

The Struggle for Social Innovation

Social problem solving is not only slow, it is untidy.  Purposeful social change occurs through a long and disorderly process of trial and error not unlike that of an infant learning to walk. The infant tries, fails, has partial successes, learns, bumps its nose, cries, and tries again. It has many failures before it succeeds. This is why Harlan Cleveland says that “planning is improvisation on a sense of direction.”  No plan for social or institutional Improvement can be put into effect without innumerable in-course corrections.

John W. Gardner, On Leadership

Data Science articles - Feb. 2022

Using artificial intelligence to find anomalies hiding in massive datasets

Using Google Maps to track the invasion of Ukraine —the app alerted researchers watching traffic before it hit social media or news sites

Technological advances make hiding military movements in Ukraine difficult—thanks to rapidly updated imagery from commercial satellites in the public domain & the IOT (from fitness trackers to cell phones) 

The role of analysts in Geospatial Intelligence technologies such as Very High Resolution (VHR) images, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images

Dispelling the mysteries around neural networks in healthcare

A pitch for symbolic AI as a way to meet the shortcomings of machine learning

A new R package for simulation-based calibration of Bayesian models

Assessing the use of deep learning to detect deepfakes

Will the data-centric AI movement replace the shift to deep learning? A look at the attempt to yield “small data” solutions to big issues in AI

Pro tips for organizing, storing, & recalling pieces of Python code—managing code to be reusable

One of the world’s largest constellations of satellites is operated not by a government but by a company—what’s planned for the 100 Spire satellites floating just above Earth’s atmosphere

DeepMind says its new AI coding engine is as good as an average human programmer—more likely is progress but not great results—yet

5 Ways Google Does Data Engineering Differently

“5 things that I actually did at work as a data scientist“

“90% of the data generated is unstructured but only 32% of companies can extract business value from their data”- but you ignore unstructured data at your own risk

While there are plenty of resources talking about pruning neural networks there are few explanations of the code behind it— here is look at the nuts and bolts involved in pruning deep neural networks

Report: U.S. military needs a better way to buy commercial satellite imagery

SpaceX rocket successfully launches US spy satellite

Microsoft researchers say their AI model can create poetry from images