Eidetiq Review – Notetaking for the Modern Student

College students are spoiled with awesome technology. Every kid has a laptop, cell phone, PDAs…and I’ll stop before I show my age. Back to the point; I was browsing iTunes store and stumbled upon a really cool app–Eidetiq. Eidetiq is a phone app created by Chubby Weasel Technologies. At first glance this app records the class lectures (sound only). What good is that? There’s the voice recorder already in the iPhone. Eidetiq steps it up a notch by adding the ability to take photo snapshots of whiteboards and maybe your classmates’ notes while recording sound.

I’m sure Eidetiq comes from Eidetic. “Eidetic or photographic memory is popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme accuracy and in abundant volume.” –Wikipedia

Replaying the lecture is easy. Select the lecture, press play. When you first replay the lecture, you’ll see the first picture taken as you start to hear the lecture. Then as the lecture progresses you’ll see the next picture at the point where you took the picture and so on. I wish I had this when I was in school…I might have gotten better grades.

The app is really easy to use and the desktop client to replay the lecture makes playback easy. The icons are a cool addition too.

While the main purpose of this app is to take notes for students, teachers and professors, I’ll use it in my daily work life where I need to take notes and take pictures of those whiteboards of some office meetings. No more inaccuracies in meeting minutes! Yes, I’m just a little bit excited.

I don’t normally give ratings but this app is definitely 4 out of 5 stars.

Here’s a description from Chubby Weasel:

Students, teachers and professors use Eidetiq to take notes, to remember facts and to catch missing points from lectures where audio recording is approved. With Eidetiq, you log your notes automatically so that you can concentrate on listening and interacting with your professor and class in order to retain what’s really important. You can use Eidetiq to record approved lectures, simultaneously capturing the audio and clicking pictures of important events. The pictures are synchronized to the audio, so that you can easily replay what was said during the time where you photographed the event. Professors and teachers use Eidetiq to capture what works in their lecture for future reuse, as well as to record photos of white board and overhead in-class work.

Using free software that you download on your laptop, the Eidetiq app automatically syncs to your Mac or Windows machine. On your computer, you can review your recorded lecture including photos timetagged to audio for better retention and clarification of important points. Collaboration and improved learning and study techniques will result.

Here are some features I’d like to see in next versions:

• Highlight the picture or mark it up
• Bookmarks in the lecture
• A way to search for lectures

References:
http://eidetiq.com