Dining tables had been a center of conversation since the dawn of human civilization, until we invented portable devices. Today, we coexist with devices; whether we want to capture photos, videos, messages, or moments meant to be shared. The living room, bedroom, kitchen, and even bathroom, every space of our home is dominated by these devices, leaving barely no room for human interaction as it once used to be.
Even with no devices particularly meant for the dining table, the conversation has somewhat died, with everyone – or almost everyone – glued to the phone screens. Striving to remind people of what dinner time looked like before the smartphone, Prego has collaborated with StoryCorps to launch the Connection Keeper. It is a puck-shaped audio-recording device to save conversations from around the table and optionally immortalize them, verbatim, turning anecdotes into keepsakes.
The company famous for making tomato sauce designed the device to be sleek. It is the size of a puck or a Prego sauce jar cap, and fits neatly in the middle of any dinner table without taking up precious space. It doesn’t have a screen or an operating system. Instead, the Prego Connection Keeper employs a pair of spatial audio microphones to record CD-quality audio, backed by an ARM Cortex-M7 CPU.
The conversations are recorded to an on-board 16GB microSD for up to eight hours. This works particularly well when dinner runs long. Now the idea is not to record everything that goes on at the dining table. It starts recording almost instantly when you hit a button, so you can begin and stop whenever it suits.
Now the idea is not to keep track of an unfortunate argument, a situation that we all know too well. Instead, StoryCorps provides a set of prompt cards with the Connection Keeper to help launch your gatherings with some amusing anecdote or story.
The Connection Keeper is meant to immortalize rare conversations or anecdotes. For instance, a last meal with a great-grandparent, who speaks of an inspirational story, something that could help you in a life situation. Or someone narrating their harrowing tales of a war or a funny tale that has everyone rolling off the chairs, because hearing a first-hand account of a funny story is always the funniest.
So, immortalize the precious moments that happen around the dinner table with the Connection Keeper and listen to them when nostalgia hits. How do you do that? You, the user, can choose to upload and store the conversations on a special part of StoryCorps for retrieval and listening at any time. If a recording happens to be particularly stimulating, inspirational, or amusing, you can even allow StoryCorps to upload it to the Library of Congress for other people to listen to as well.
The device comes with a USB port to initiate a high-speed transfer to your PC. TechRadar says the things are made even simpler as “the puck automatically switches from recording device to high-speed transfer hard drive as soon as you plug in the USB cable.” The best part? There is no AI involved. It is more like putting a tape recorder down on the table.
You may assume this nifty little contraption costs handsomely. But the cards and Connection Keeper come as part of a limited-time $20 bundle, which naturally includes a jar of Prego Sauce and a box of spaghetti. You can whip up delicious pasta and share anecdotes with the recording device on the table.
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