Andean Aymara

In this entry I will list some of the most useful programs I’ve found to help with the language documentation-related aspects of this project.  I will focus more on three programs which you may not have heard of but which are definitely handy. I’ll leave Elan and Praat for a different entry.

1.  Wavosaur - This is a simple, free, audio editor (for PC only). Of course it isn’t anything like Praat, but it does have several advantages. For one thing, it is light (213Kb), so it can easily run from a USB.  To be clear, it isn’t the sort of thing you want to use to perform phonetic analysis (though it does have a spectrogram view), but it is helpful to cut down long recordings and extract excerpts for playback as a seperate (and obviously smaller) file.

2. Evernote - This program is a great way to organize and search all those metadata txt files which you probably have associated with your audio. Instead of searching a drive of a specific laptop, you can quickly search the Evernote files, and best of all, your database can be accessed online from any computer (I think this is Evernote’s main advantage of MS Onenote). If you manage your usage carefully (or pay for premium membership), you can also upload some audio clips, photos, and other pertinent material for tagging and easy access on your laptop or on a public computer with Internet.

3. Mozy - Backup up to 2GB of your most important information whenever you’re online.  For $5/mo you can enjoy unlimited free backup.  True, 2GB isn’t much, but think of it as a last resort for the most essential stuff… of course it is best to maintain a copy of your data backed up on an external drive (and store that in a pelican case).