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Life Recorder

Ever wish you could recall a forgotten fact you learned a few months ago? A system developed by Sunil Vemuri, a doctoral candidate at MITs Media Lab, allows people to record and archive conversations and then search for snippets of them months or even years later. Vemuris system, which he calls a memory prosthesis, works in three stages: a commercial handheld computer records discussions throughout the day; the resulting audio files are downloaded to a laptop computer, where off-the-shelf speech recognition software translates them into text; and lastly, search tools Vemuri devised hunt for a specific conversation based on search criteria. Those criteria can include words or phrases and a date range.

The results appear on the computer screen as a list of days and times. A click reveals a transcript of a conversation, with search words or phrases in boldface. If a user does not remember the exact date of a conversation but recalls that it took place around some event, such as the New Hampshire primaries or the Super Bowl, he or she can employ a memory-trigger function Vemuri built into the application. This function automatically stores text from major newswires on the computer and then, when directed, sorts through it to find key dates that can be used to restrict a conversation search.

Vemuri says that the real obstacles to commercialization are social and legal, not technical. Hes currently working on a version of the system that will allow users to record, store, and search for conversations all on one handheld device. What Im thinking of is a watch- or cell-phone-sized device, he says. Really miniaturize this, and see how it helps in a more mobile setting.