Free apps can record, transcribe important conversations

We often leave the doctor’s office scratching our heads. It’s not because we have lice; it’s trying to remember what he said. So now we put ’em on tape. (We don’t really use tape anymore; we record them on Joy’s cellphone.)

One doctor we recorded baffled us even after we played him back. So we fired him and got another. But the recording helped us get on a new track, so to speak. We think his problem was a one-track mind.

We started out with Smart Recorder, free from the Android app store. It automatically skips periods of relative silence. Tap the “share” icon to send a recording by email or text, or upload it to Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook Messenger and many other storage places.

But what about converting a recording to text? It’s timeconsuming to listen to a long one, faster to read it. The free Otter Voice Notes for iPhone or Android works well, instantly transcribing what you hear. You get 600 minutes of recording and transcribing per month for free or 6,000 minutes for $10 a month. It makes some errors, but we’ve found that all the automatic transcription programs make errors, and they’re not real bad ones; you can always figure out what was meant. A big advantage is you can search on a particular word or phrase to go right to the part you want.

If you need to transcribe a recording into or from any of 30 languages, there’s Just Press Record, $5 for iPhones. Though it’s for iPhone, you can transfer the recording to PC or Mac, or upload it to iCloud. There’s also Voice Memos, a free app that comes with the iPhone. ■ Search the phrase “100 best science books of all time” to find some impressive lists, one from ListMuse.com and the other from oedb.org. ListMuse ranks On the Origin of

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Species by Charles Darwin No. 1, and QED: The Strange Theory

of Light and Matter by Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman No. 2.

Oedb.org goes after more popular science books: Carl Sagan’s Cosmos makes the No. 1 slot in the astronomy category. No. 2 is Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of

Life in the Void by Mary Roach, whom The Washington Post has dubbed America’s funniest science writer. Under psychology, they list one of Joy’s alltime favorites, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.

■ Search for the phrase “bestpaying employer in every state” to find an interactive map from

Money magazine. Hover on a state to see the company with the biggest median salary. The highest one we saw was $964,000 from New Jersey’s clean-energy firm NRG Yield. Another biggie was $495,513 at Infinity Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Mass. Closer to reality was the $115,353 median pay from El Dorado-based Murphy Oil.

We read recently that the average cellphone has 25,000 germs per square inch. Computer keyboards are in the same

germy ballpark, so we tried out a washable see-through cover we can type on. The one we tried is from Cherry, a German company that makes good keyboards we have used before.

This is the sort of problem that matters in situations where many people use the same keyboard, such as at schools and libraries. You can get soft plastic keyboard covers for a huge variety of laptops and desktops, including major brands like Dell, HP, Apple and Lenovo. We saw plenty for $15 at ProtectCovers.com.

The cover gives the keys a rather ghostly appearance, making them harder to read. This is no problem if you’re a touch typist, and just need to glance at them now and then. Joy is a typing speed demon, but sometimes has to hunt and peck a few keys. If you hunt and peck, you’ll need good eyesight or a strong light to see through the plastic haze.

Without bothering to remove the cover, dab a little cleaning liquid on it to remove germs. Use a 10 percent bleach, alcohol, or hydrogen peroxide solution, and your keyboard will be almost as clean as a surgical table.

This kind of cover would have prevented the destruction of our Macbook, which had orange juice spilled on it. It could also prevent messes by kids with smeary fingers. You can also get covers for computer mice.

Remember Google Glasses? They were tiny computers that fit into your eyeglass frames and sent information to a tiny corner of your lens. It turned out they were more useful for industry than consumers. However, we just got news of Kopin Corp.’s Solos smart glasses that would be a good fit for athletes, especially bikers and runners.

The glasses have tiny speakers that provide turn-by-turn directions. (Joy gets lost easily.) But you can also take calls or play music, without having to look down at your phone. An in-ear headphone is included. There’s a lot of data displayed in the corner of the right lens, in an area the size of a human pupil. Athletes can see their elapsed time, speed, pace, cadence, heart rate, etc. The Solos work with any Android, iPhone, or smart watch. They’re $499 from solos-wearables.com.

In a CPR class, Joy learned how to do chest compressions in an emergency. The hospital suggested timing the compressions to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive,” the song to which John Travolta famously strutted in the opening minutes of Saturday Night Fever.

(A recent study by the University

of Spain suggests the song “Macarena,” but we can never remember how it goes, thank goodness; it’s hard to get it out of your mind once it starts.)

But what if you don’t remember when to use compressions and when to call for help or breathe into the victim’s mouth? Use a CPR app. That’s how we came to download the Real Time CPR Guide. It’s free in the Android or Apple app store.

The CPR course instructor who developed the app said that students have told her over the years that in times of stress, they can never remember what to do and therefore choose not to perform CPR. This app talks you through it. It mentions seven situations for using it: heart attack, choking, sickness, electrocution, drowning, smoke inhalation and poisoning. If none of those fit the situation, tap “other.”

We tapped the button for “heart attack” and noticed you can tap a link to call for help. The app tells you what to do if the victim has a pulse and can receive a rescue breath every six seconds, or doesn’t have one and needs chest compressions at a rate of 100 per minute. Compressions can also work for choking if the Heimlich maneuver has failed.