TheInterviewr is a new mashup that makes it super, super simple to record telephone interviews online using your existing telephone. It is a dream come true and for now at least – it’s free.
The system uses APIs from Twilio and Box.net to let users schedule interviews with contacts, enter notes for the interviews and upload associated files to a central place. Then, when it comes time to do the interview, both parties are sent an SMS to remind them it’s about to begin. The person performing the interview clicks a button on TheInterviewr website and both peoples’ phones are called automatically. Have a conversation, refer to your notes and documents, then click the same button to end the call. A recording will be available to listen back to immediately. It’s like magic.
“The idea,” explains British Columbia based developer Roger Stringer, “was to have a site where journalists / bloggers and anyone else who might conduct interviews (even applies to HR people hiring people), can keep everything organized in one handy place and refer to recordings of the interview later.”
I’m sure there are other ways to do roughly this same thing, but this is such a nice, clean, simple, fast service – I was in interview recording mode within 2 minutes of creating a quick account. I’ll be testing this over the coming weeks – but it certainly seems like something worth paying for.
Mashing up several services to make functionality like this easy and cheap (or free) is classic Read/Write Web stuff.
Thanks to Doug Coleman for pointing us to it.
