[X4U] Transcription, document management (A)

[Stroller]

On 28 Sep 2006, at 02:58, Jim Robertson wrote:
>
> We have an Asante VPN router in our office
> ... is it possible to create VPN tunnels on an ad hoc basis?

Yes, it should be - either with this router, or with a cheap  
replacement - but it'd be quite a clumsy way to do ad-hoc secure  
connections and I wouldn't rely on it.

> When I bought the router a few years ago my understanding was that  
> dedicated
> hardware was needed on both ends to create a VPN session.

You can set up Windows XP or Mac OS X as a VPN client, but firewalls  
can interfere and I think the hassle of setting it up would be  
prohibitive to the remote user. There may be a relatively "simple"  
way to do VPN, but I'd bet on having support issues down the road  
that make it often unusable. I have done telephone technical support,  
and am proud to think I was very good at it (calm and patient) and  
good at visualising what the other person should be seeing), but I  
wouldn't like to talk someone though connecting to your VPN.

The "correct" way to allow your clients to access stuff on your LAN  
is via an SSL website with user:pass access - it wouldn't actually be  
very expensive to employ a programmer ("consultant") to write a a  
functioning web-app to automate the process, but security auditing to  
a standard commensurate with patient privacy concerns would be cost- 
prohibitive, I think. Apache & webDAV might be worth considering,  
tho', as it can be secured over SSL.

> Does anyone know of transcription software that our Mac-loving
> transcriptionist could install on her computer so that we could still
> dictate into the phone and she'd receive digital sound files?

Her Mac will play most any standard audio file. The problem is  
getting them to her.

I have my home phone answered by an old 28.8k voice-fax-data modem,  
an out-going message played and the resulting voicemail is sent to my  
email box as an MP3 attachment. This was not expensive to implement.  
When I check my mail I see a message subject "Voicemail from  
01234987456 at 3:34am on Thusday 24th November" and in the message  
body is a play-button and slider - try emailing yourself an mp3 from  
your iTunes library and you'll see what I mean.

> I've looked at
> "Express Dictate", but it requires a Windows computer with a sound  
> board and
> special modem to accept the incoming analog data and convert it to  
> digital
> sound files.

Having said that... she may struggle to find software that will allow  
the transcriber to fast-forward and rewind conveniently through the  
audio. I don't know anything about this, except that I understand  
transcribers often need to jump back 5 or 10 seconds, and prefer to  
do so without taking their hands off the keyboard. I believe there is  
Windows software for this, and I'd imagine that it plays common  
formats such as MP3s, but I don't know about for Macs.

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