Is Your Pasta Sauce Listening? Prego Debuts Recording Device for the Dinner Table
American Italian pasta sauce maker Prego (in collaboration with StoryCorps) is looking to turn family chatter at the dining table into permanent records with a gadget that ensures no family anecdote ever truly dies. Now, it's up to you to decide if the Connection Keeper is the perfect Mother's Day present or a tabletop surveillance and privacy nightmare waiting to happen.
Design-wise, the Connection Keeper looks discretely like an expensive caviar tin or maybe a premium jar of marinara. However, instead of slow-simmered tomatoes, the puck is a simple, screenless recording device made to store those fleeting moments of banter, wisdom, or standard-issue bickering come dinnertime. When the meal begins, you simply tap the lid, use the optional conversation prompt cards, and the device starts eavesdropping.
From a technical standpoint, the Connection Keeper is streamlined. Raw recorded audio is automatically recorded into memory, then later synced to the cloud on the StoryCorps portal where families can save, organize, re-share, and revisit their dinner logs later.
In a time when consumers are increasingly paranoid about their smart fridges and digital assistants listening to their private lives, Prego has decided to skip the subtlety and put the microphone right next to the Parmesan. As if phone distractions at mealtime isn't enough, the recorder transforms the act of eating into a performance for the archives.
StoryCorps claims that its portal—and therefore, any uploaded family musings—are preserved behind full encryption and user privacy controls (even if details on each have not been provided). The portal will become accessible on May 4, and according to the company, files are private by default, but users have the option to upload any file into the StoryCorps public archive. Even cooler is that these public recordings will be preserved at the Library of Congress, allowing access to future generations.
"At StoryCorps, we believe listening is a profound way to honor and connect with our loved ones—and that some of the most meaningful stories are shared in everyday moments, like around the table," said Sandra Clark, CEO at StoryCorps. "We're proud to partner with Prego®to help families be present with one another, and to preserve their stories for generations to come."
The Prego x StoryCorps Connection Keeper has no screen, speakers, or wireless connectivity. What it does have is a button control, a USB-C port for charging and file transfers to the cloud, and an included 16GB microSD card that is good for up to eight hours of audio. The device is slated to hit the shelves on April 27 for $20, although supplies are reportedly very limited.
