The article last week regarding Livescribe generated many emails from readers, for which I thank you. I really enjoy reading about your technology thoughts and discoveries, as well as tips like the one I got from Lisa this week. She told me about an application she uses on her phone and tablet which helps take notes too. It is a free app named "Cogi – Notes & Voice Recorder."
I had to find out what Cogi stood for — "cogent idea." So it is an app that helps you keep track of thoughts and information you gain, usually when attending a lecture or meeting. It is similar in that respect to Livescribe.
After you install Cogi, just start the app when your lecture begins. It buffers the audio portion of the talk. OK, what does buffering mean? When you buffer audio it means the application actually records the voices but does not save it to the memory card on the device/phone. It keeps a good portion of the audio in your phone/table’s RAM (temporary) memory.
If you hear someone say something really vital and important to remember or follow-up on, click the "Tap to highlight" button. It then records the audio portion to a file and continues until you click the, "Tap to stop" button. You can set it to go back from 15 to 45 seconds.
Once the lecture is over and you have "highlighted" the important parts tap and hold the button and it stops. It names the session for the date you recorded. You can rename the file to something more familiar to you if you wish.
During the recording you can also add photos you take during the lecture. Say someone draws a diagram on a whiteboard. You can photograph it and add that into the recorded session. That way you have any visual information with the audio so you have it all.
You also may add any photo to the recording session if you would like. In their demo they show that you can even photograph a page of notes to add to the audio lecture.
At this point Cogi is only available for Android or iPhones. I imagine they are writing code for Windows phones too, but this remains to be seen.
They advertise that the concept is simple and I agree. When you hear things that are significant, many times you cannot remember or capture them. So this makes it easy to remain focused on all that is going on and grab the information you need.
I gave Cogi a spin a few times and found that the WAV sound of the voice recording was nearly 5MB per minute. A little large but it played very well when I played it back on my phone. It also gives you the options of emailing the files (pictures included) to someone or saving them to your computer, Copy.com, Dropbox, etc. The pictures I took looked great too, they were large files; however, that is dependent on your camera not Cogi. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
