Back when Dave Chappelle was still doing his show, he did a sketch about a fake product called the “Home Stenographer.” The premise was that, for a small one-time fee, you could keep a live courtroom-style stenographer in your house, who would sit on the sidelines and keep a record of everything you and your family said throughout the day. If a conflict ever arose about who said what, the stenographer could then just read back the transcript and settle everything with hard facts.
The sketch was outlandish, but the underyling idea — a device that would make it possible to hit “rewind” on life and play back things you said in the past — has an undeniable appeal. Who hasn’t heard someone utter an amazing sentence during casual conversation, and later found themselves wishing there was a way to hear it again?
Well luckily, there’s a new wearable gizmo called Kapture that’s here to help you out.
At first glance, the device looks just like every other wristband that’s been released in the past few years. But unlike all the FitBits and FuelBands of the world, this one doesn’t track your steps, count your calories, or even read your heartbeat. Instead, Kapture records audio — and that’s it.
With the help of its finely-tuned omnidirectional microphone, Kapture picks up sound within a 5-foot radius of your wrist. It does this constantly, and continuusly records audio in a 60-second loop. Once you hear something that’s worth recording — a brilliant quote, a great joke, or a verbal contract, for example — you can just tap on the wristband’s face to save the previous minute of audio, which is immediately beamed to your phone via Bluetooth. If you don’t touch it, nothing is saved, and Kapture just keeps on recording until you stumble upon the next preservation-worthy minute.
To be fair, this isn’t the first product that can “rewind real life,” so to speak. There are a handful of smartphone apps that give your phone the ability to constantly record audio and replay snippets from the past few minutes, so the concept isn’t exactly new at this point. What makes Kapture different, however, is the fact that it takes this audio recording capacity and removes it from your phone, which essentially gives you easier access to it, and avoids draining your phone battery.
And the best part? The device is currently up for pre-order, and you don’t have to wait around for a crowdfunding campaign to finish before you can get your hands on one. The Kickstarter campaign concluded almost two years ago, and Kapture is now past the production phase and ready to begin shipping some time next month.
