Emad Alashi's Blog » DotNetArabi

Best Skype Audio Chat Recorder

Emad Alashi — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:24:08 +0000

This is a shout-out to MP3 Skype Recorder, the best Skype recorder I have ever used to record Skype calls.
It’s been two years since DotNetArabi’s first episode, most of the episodes were recorded over Skype using MP3 Skype Recorder. It wasn’t the only tool I tried, I have downloaded several, but none competed with its simplicity and robustness, never hanged, never failed, and it’s totally free!

If you want the best Skype audio recorder, check MP3 Skype Recorder

Exposing DotNetArabi for OData

Emad Alashi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 08:14:43 +0000

Lately OData (Open Data protocol) is gaining a great momentum, everybody is talking about, and in fact it deserves all this fuss. OData is a protocol through which you can share data provided as ATOM or JSON formats by exposing URI’s to be invoked via HTTP, check the FAQ for fast information.

One of the interesting things is that the protocol provides various options through the URI to query all sort data; conditions, ordering, filtering, smart selection, …etc, in addition to very smart linking between exposed entities.

So hereby I provide the data of DotNetArabi through OData on the link http://odata.dotnetarabi.com/odata.svc for the sake of fun and for anyone who might find it useful. I used the Entity Framework for this purpose since it was the easiest, you can find a very helpful information here.

To start playing around check:

http://odata.dotnetarabi.com/odata.svc/Guests
http://odata.dotnetarabi.com/odata.svc/Episodes?$filter=AudioFileLength gt 40

I hope you find it interesting.

DotNetArabi Podcast Equipment

Emad Alashi — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:14:22 +0000

After publishing 8 episodes of DotNetArabi, I think it would be nice to share on this blog how it goes and what equipment needed in the process. But before we begin, dear reader, note that I am not an expert, I am still in the beginning of the way, though it’s going good so far.

My working machine is HP dv 6700 laptop, my first trials with recording was with simple microphone like the ones you use for chats; recording in winter made things smooth, but when summer came a long the heating problem became obvious in the low quality of the audio recorded, in addition to the higher target I needed anyway, so a different measure had to take place.

I looked for an audio device that would clear the recording of any noise that is caused by the internal electrical and the fan. I had different options then, but the most interesting one was the MobilePre USB audio interface which I finally got. It takes analog inputs (2 of which are XLR) and transforms to digital signal view USB.

Of course it appeared that it is over bloated than what I really needed, but I liked it anyway and produced the quality I looked for, though if you are going to record voice only, I believe there are other devices with lower cost.

To complete the set I got myself two XLR Microphones, not fancy ones, 15 JD’s each (about 22 US $) and that was it.

Now on the software side I use Audacity, I find it the best free audio software.

After all that, you’d find it surprising that you still need to use the Noise Removal feature in Audacity. And by that you can have your own podcast