WaveSurfer Review
WaveSurfer is an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation. It is designed to be used by both novice and advanced users. Typical applications are speech research and education, speech/sound analysis, and sound annotation/transcription. It can also be extended or embedded in more advanced/specialized applications through custom plug-ins and visualization components.
It is a lightweight application, so you can save it to USB flash drives and directly run on any computer. Moreover, there are no setup packs and the program does not install new updates in Windows Registry and does not leave leftover files on hard drive after deletion.
Transcriptions
WaveSurfer supports several formats for transcription of audio recordings, time-linked to a digital file (e.g. HTK, TIMIT, ESPS/Waves+, and Phondat). You can create (or edit) transcriptions of short audio clips and long recordings.
The software is primarily aimed at researchers, although some features are useful to teachers and students as well. It includes a user-friendly and intuitive interface, which can be adapted to various tasks, and is easy to learn.
It also has many useful features, such as support for different file formats and encodings, and is free of charge. You can download a trial version from the developer's website.
There are a few other free programs for Windows. Among them, we would like to mention AutoHotkey and Launchy. These two apps are excellent tools to automate your workflows, such as launching apps, opening documents and files, shutting down your PC and more.