Whether you’re interviewing someone for a blog post or trying to capture insight from customers for internal use, recording a conversation is usually the best way to ensure quote accuracy and context. (It also spares hand cramps from aggressive note taking.) After recording the interview, the next step is transcription, which usually involves opening a text file on one half of the screen and an audio player on the other and pausing/rewinding frequently while typing feverishly. There are, of course, tools you can use that automatically convert audio into text, but I am forever skeptical of them from an accuracy standpoint and insist on doing things manually.

BUT that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cool tool for the slow-and-steady way of doing things. It’s called Transcriptions, and it basically combines my above-described scenario of text document and audio player into one handy window that adds timestamps to lines of text as you enter, which you can then double click to jump back to that point of the audio file. It’s a super lightweight program, and free! It’s Mac only, though.