February 20, 2005, Updated September 13, 2012

NaturalRecorder technology automatically records calls that are received or placed from the mobile phone without the user having to remember to activate the recording system.Imagine this scenario – you’re rushing somewhere in your car when your boss calls on your cellphone. “Can you meet me on the corner of 5th and Main in 10 minutes and bring the Webber files, the diskette of the accounts, and the folder on the left side of my desk?”

Yes, of course, you say as you maneuver the traffic to make your way back to the office. But by the time you get there, it’s become hazy – was that 5th or 6th? The left side of the desk or the right? At that point, don’t you wish you could listen back to the conversation?

Now, you can with the revolutionary cell phone recording software of Israeli startup Natural Widget called NaturalRecorder.

This first of its kind technology, NaturalRecorder allows mobile phone users to retain important information from their phone conversations by automatically recording phone calls without any user intervention.

According to the company’s co-founder Patrice Uzan, the software is easily downloaded from the company’s website.

“In the month that it’s been available, we’ve had over 15,000 downloads, from around the world,” he told ISRAEL21c.

NaturalRecorder technology automatically records calls that are received or placed from the mobile phone without the user having to remember to activate the recording system. The user can then playback, save, or delete the phone conversations at his or her convenience.

This is made possible by a revolutionary memory management technology (patent pending) so that the phone will never run out of memory storage space, a recurrent problem in most previous phone recording technology.

The problem with automatic recording of all (or most) phone calls is that the phone will quickly run out of memory. You would then need to erase recordings often enough to prevent the memory from becoming full. This is such a nuisance that it would make the automatic recording feature almost useless.

NaturalRecorder uses a smart automatic memory management technology which methodically erases your messages the way you would do it yourself:

When a specified amount of memory (number of recorded minutes) has been filled, NaturalRecorder will automatically erase the oldest recording thus freeing the memory.

NaturalRecorder dedicates a user-specified amount of memory to recording telephone calls, and will continually record phone calls up to the specified amount of minutes – removing older calls outside the time limit as new calls are recorded. You can always save specific calls so they are not automatically deleted.
Within the application on your phone you can review all recorded calls, playing them back on your command.

“In cell phones today, when you’re doing things like saving photos, there’s a problem with memory,” explained Uzan. “We’ve solved that by enabling a huge amount of memory on the phone (about 60 kilobytes per minute) – eventually the older calls will be erased but the user is able to save whatever calls he wants before they’re lost.”

“With our unique memory management technology it is now possible to record automatically all phone calls without worrying about the memory of the phone becoming full,” added Henri Tebeka, CTO of Natural Widgets.

Cellular phone users can configure the NaturalRecorder software to prevent certain names or numbers in their phone book from being recorded. When the recording function is enabled, it will emit short beeps periodically during the phone conversation to remind users that their calls are being recorded.

According to Tebeka, the software is compatible with the Nokia Series 60 cell phones and will soon be supported by other manufacturers.

“We are able to port the software quickly to other Symbian Series60 devices (such as the Siemens SX66) and we plan to do it as soon as the sales for the Nokia product are high enough,” he told ISRAEL21c.

Natural Widgets, based in Rosh Ha’ayin, was founded by four partners with extensive (20 years) high tech business experience. NaturalRecorder is the first of a range of products dedicated to revealing the potential of mobile devices as smart assistants.

Uzan and his partners – originally from France but living in Israel for over 10 years – started and owned a successful modem manufacturing company – Kortex – from 1985 to 2000.

“We then started a voiceover IT company called Aplio – creator of the first stand alone VoIP adapters – which was sold to US company net2phone in 2002,” said Uzan, adding that Natural Widget was founded only a year ago.

When asked if the NaturalRecorder capabilities could possibly be abused for surveillance or in a ‘big brother’ eavesdropping sense, Tebeka defended the right to tape recordings.

“‘Big Brother’ is when a third party listen or records the conversation. In the case of the NaturalRecorder, it is only one of the users who use the recording feature to help remember some information that the other party agreed to tell him,” he said.

Anyone who has a boss issuing ten instructions in 10 seconds is liable to agree.

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