There’s no great way to record phone conversations. Apps and recording services come with fees and limitations. There’s my clunky way – putting the phone on speaker with my digital recorder nearby – but I will often lose a good quote from some sudden outside noise.
A company in Israel wants to mass produce a simple solution with an iPhone case that has a built-in recorder to pick up both sides of the conversation with the press of a button.
Both case and company are called JIC (short for Just in Case) and it launched on Indiegogo Tuesday with an early bird price of $29.99.
The JIC case comes in a variety of colors, is fairly slim and puts a two-button interface (one for record and the other for playback) on the back of your iPhone (cases available for the iPhone 5 on up).
Photo: JIC
Conversations are recorded with a well-positioned microphone and layered in the case is a small processor that converts audio into an MP3 file, which gets stored to a micro SD card. The case can also work as a stand-alone field recorder. The company claims the recorder has eight hours on a single battery charge.
Or course, you should understand local laws about recording phone conversations. In many states, all involved parties must verbally consent to the recording.
There are various software solutions. For iPhone users, there is a free app called Call Recorder FREE, but there’s a hitch – if you want to listen past the first 60 seconds of a phone conversation, you will need a $10 in-app upgrade.
If JIC hits its $30,000 target and there are no snafus with production, the case should begin shipping in May. Test units are not available, so it’s hard to vouch for the recording quality but it’s a great idea for people who regularly need to record phone meetings, interviews, etc.
