Record Your Ideas As You Go

15 February 2018

The best ideas occur spontaneously – when you take a shower, jog, drive a car, walk on a busy street, have lunch with your colleagues or go out with your friends. Yet, before you whip out your smartphone or organiser to jot down notes, something derails your train of thought. The moment is gone and you forget what you were thinking about. Sound familiar?
This same ‘bitter’ experience motivated a team of Ukrainian talents headed by Nazar Fedorchuk to develop Senstone – a tiny (29.53 mm in diameter!) portable standalone voice-recorder that carefully keeps track of your thoughts, goals, and impressions, while you are on the go.
Inspired by brain and sound waves, the gadget is oval in shape and so far presented in two colours: grey and black. Minimalist in design, you can clip it on your clothes as a brooch, hang it around your neck as a pendant, or wear it around your wrist as a bracelet.
It works easily, quickly, and conveniently. Whenever inspiration overwhelms, just tap the button on the item’s side and speak. Press the button again and it stops recording.
If your phone is not at hand, Senstone can record for up to two-and-a-half hours and store all notes. When online, the gadget will sync with your phone (it is compatible with iOS and Android) and upload the recordings to the application and in the cloud. That is where Senstone shows its true power. Its technology translates your voice memos into text and sorts them by location, date, time, and even categories if you provide a hashtag at the start – diary, tourist blog, shopping list, birthday reminder, etc. If you find errors, you can edit the transcript and play back the audio notes.
Though Senstone recognises 11 languages, including Ukrainian and Mandarin, the product will be launched only in English. It works best at a distance of 20 centimetres from your mouth. Perhaps, too far away to record a lecture in a big hall. However, the short range means background noise is minimum used.
Senstone is now manufactured in Shenzhen, China and has nearly 4 000 pre-orders, coming mostly from the US and Japan. In spring, the device will be available for purchase on the official massive at a price starting from 109 USD.
Of course, it is all a question of habit as to whether you choose to wear something with you all the time to record your mindflow. Still, the Ukrainian-designed device is worth a try considering its backers already include Mike Butcher, famous IT journalist, and artists and producers who worked on Stranger Things (TV series) or Catch Me If You Can (movie).