Writing or typing takes your attention away from what's going on around you. Cogi lets you take down what was just said with a single finger tap, so your attention can stay with the room.
Cogi keeps the last few moments of audio buffered. When someone says something interesting, just tap the highlight button and Cogi backs up to capture and save what was just said. When the moment has passed, just tap again and Cogi will stop highlighting. You can have as many highlights in a session as you like.
Since Cogi only records the important moments, you can review exactly what was said without wasting time on all the jibber-jabber. Attach photos, videos and even text notes (if you’re still into that sort of thing). You can review images, transcriptions and text notes while listening to your highlights. You can also add tags and contacts to your sessions to give even more context.
Over the past several years, the Cogi team has put in a ton of work and has developed substantial technology, including:
We need your help to complete and release our solution.
Here are the project goals:
All who participate in this campaign are invited to the exclusive Cogi Membership Beta, where the extended services are enabled and launched. These extended capabilities include media storage in the cloud, the ability to use Cogi on phone calls, and high-quality transcription of the audio highlights. The duration of each membership level is defined, from six months to two years. Campaign members also get special discounted pricing on transcription and telephony for the duration of their memberships.
Cogi is free to download and free to use. However, a Cogi membership gives you access to our premium features, such as: transcription, telephony, cloud storage and more.
We are working on all facets of our solutions, and the following is the high-level schedule for each phase of the service launch:
Cogi was formed by a group of technologists and entrepreneurs who have worked in the communications space for their entire careers. The pain point of trying to capture the important points from a meeting, a lecture, and especially a phone call led to the creation of a communications platform specifically designed to make it trivial for anyone to capture these ideas, and just as importantly, be able to leverage that content.
And, as we all know, in today’s world, our lives are inundated with images and sounds… So, the application can capture the highlights of what we see and hear. Think of this as a highlight reel for your day, whether you are a student attending lectures all day or, like the rest of us, participating in meetings or various phone calls throughout our day.
Our goals are to make it easier for everyone to leverage what they see and hear, all the while ensuring that the focus can remain on the conversations at-hand and not on the tools we have created. We believe this is a big problem that faces so many of us, and we are confident that we are delivering a most compelling solution.
Email us at feedback@cogi.com to let us know what you think about the applications or
ideas that you might have to improve the services we are delivering.
Cogi Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Check out the answers to questions you might have. For many of these responses, we've included views of the application in action from our Android mobile app to help highlight the benefits of using Cogi.
What is Cogi?
It’s about focus, engagement and the sound bite...
Cogi provides the most intuitive mobile applications to be able to CAPTURE, REVIEW and SHARE the important moments from our conversations, meetings, lectures, interviews, and phone calls, all situations where someone should remain engaged on important content.
We have often considered these important moments as time periods from our day that needed to be highlighted. Sound bites are by definition a shorter piece of audio that represents a key idea of an longer audio segment, such as interviews, speeches, phone calls, etc. So, what Cogi allows you to do is capture these sound bites as they happen "in nature" and be able to easily and dynamically leverage those sound bites later.
So, how does Cogi work?
Cogi stands for "cogent idea". The concept is simple. As we hear things that are important, often we can't easily remember or capture them. So, wouldn't it be great if we could remain focused on the topic at hand and yet capture these fleeting moments easily?
The Cogi concept is to remain focused on the conversation by presenting an easy-to-use experience. When you decide it’s time to start listening for these important thoughts, just start a session by tapping on the interface.
With the session started, the Cogi application begins to buffer what you are listening to. Then, when something interesting is said, you tap the big Cogi button on your mobile application and a highlight is started. That’s
it.
Cogi, just another recording application?
Yes, Cogi is a voice recording application. The “big idea” is to create an experience where you are focusing 100% of your attention on what you are listening to (ok, 99%, as you do have to tap that big Cogi button).
You remain engaged on the meeting, lecture or that important phone call from your most important client. We don't want you to worry about typing or writing or anything, especially on a mobile device.
And we do so much more than just recording the audio...
What about recording the entire meeting or lecture?
Seriously, if you recorded a 90-minute lecture or meeting that you sat through, what's the likelihood that you'd listen to it again?
Zero.
It wasn't necessarily that interesting the first time, or maybe it was, but who has the time to listen to all of it again? But there are usually valuable sound bites during that meeting or lecture. With Cogi, you can save those
easily.
What about that "aha moment"?
While you are listening to whomever is talking, and you say to yourself, "Gee, I should write that down", you used to be required to change your focus and try to capture the idea on your computer or paper.
Now with Cogi, when you determine that something important is being said, you just tap that big Cogi button, and Cogi backs up to capture the context of what was said that drove that interest in the first place. You then just tap that button again when the "interesting" part of the conversation is over.
And don’t worry! We know that not everyone reacts the same. This back up feature is configurable to what works for each user. You can configure it from 5 seconds to 45 seconds, and that can be a lot of context!
We all brainstorm, so how to support the creative?
Just think about how many times someone said, “Oh, that was a great idea”, yet no one could remember exactly what was just said. With Cogi, you can essentially backup and capture these creative nuggets. It’s like a DVR for everything you hear (well, everything you hear that’s worth saving!).
How to create the highlight reel from your day?
Consider our football Sundays.
There are dozens of games, and perhaps we watch one or two. But for most games, we count on watching the highlights of all the big plays from all the games.
With Cogi, you apply that same concept for your meetings, lectures and phone calls... just capture the sound bites and any other context that might be help, such as that great diagram on the whiteboard.
How does multitasking help me?
It doesn’t.
Many of us think that we are great at multitasking. The irony is that the comprehensive studies show that while multitasking, we are actually doing each task more poorly than if we focused on just one thing.
Stanford Communications Professor Dr. Clifford Nass stated that the only way to truly digest information that you are listening to would be to pause the speaker, reflect, take a note, or compose a question.
So, is taking notes a form of multitasking? We think so.
A solution like Cogi doesn’t quite achieve the objective of pausing the person speaking as Dr. Nass suggested, but it does capture that moment so that you can digest and/or reflect on it when convenient for you.
But, writing helps me remember… what am I missing?
We understand that for some people, the act of writing notes helps them remember and digest the content. We are not suggesting to always replace taking notes with Cogi. But, for so many situations, Cogi can capture things that note taking cannot.
And for those people that don’t take notes (or never have), Cogi can augment their ability to remember the key points from their day.
We often work in a hybrid model. Write notes where notes make sense. Use Cogi when there’s just too much information to digest or when that content is really important and can’t be lost.
Oh, and you can take a picture of any notes you do take and add that image to your active Cogi session, keeping all of that related content together in one place.
How does Cogi get all of what I need?
Sometimes it takes us a few seconds (or more!) to register that something important is being said.
But don’t worry, as Cogi is listening, just in case you needed that information. When you tap the highlight button, the Cogi application rewinds to record the context that led you to think to tap the button in the first place.
And for those of you that worry about when Cogi is actively listening, we only have the microphone active if you have started a session. Otherwise, we are just waiting for you to let us know when the important stuff has started.
What about what’s on the whiteboard or your own notes?
Cogi has even more tricks up its sleeve by allowing you to add text notes and pictures to your Cogi sessions to help you remember even more details from your meetings, lectures and conversations.
Think of a whiteboard where you drew diagrams or notes on and how nice it would be to see that content when reviewing your voice notes!
How do I keep track of all my valuable highlights?
You can tag your important highlights with a simple swipe and tap. Any time during a session, just slide from the right edge of the home screen or tap the tags icon on the home screen to easily add contact or text tags.
Contact tags typically reference a person’s name, such as @TheNameOfMyBoss. For text tags, the application has a number of predefined tags that you can use, like #FollowUp, or you can just add your own (e.g. #Photosynthesis).
How can I capture the highlights from phone calls?
You can just as easily capture these important highlights or sound bites on your phone calls, no longer trying to figure out how to remember important details when you are away from your desk.
Or, even if you are working from your office, taking a call and focusing on that call is important. Let Cogi capture the important sound bites. And, unlike most if not all of the mobile applications that claim to record phone calls, Cogi has built the infrastructure necessary to take the compelling and intuitive user experience and capture high-quality audio from of the call.
Ok, but is call recording legal?
Regulations vary from state to state (and country to country) regarding call recording. In the United States, most states (38 of them) are a "one party" consent state. That means that if you want to and you are recording a call that you are participating on, then you are all good.
The other states are "all party" consent states, and as the name implies, everyone on the call must consent to the recording.
The bottom line is if you have reservations about consent, where applicable, then just have Cogi at the ready. Then, if and when the mood strikes, ask for consent. A simple example would be at the end of a long call where it's agreed to use Cogi for the final summary points and action items.
Just so many other cases...
The key to call recording regulations is that there are so many collaborative situations for almost everyone where call recording regulations are just not significant (e.g. collaboration with team where everyone already knows we are using Cogi).
Why does Cogi require calls to be routed through its systems?
Besides our clean user experience, which provides for a seamless environment for capturing the important highlights from your day, we built a scalable telephone infrastructure that allows us to capture the highest quality recordings from both or all sides of a telephone conversation.
Virtually all of the free recording applications in the app stores rely on hardware dependent and often unsupported capabilities of the mobile phones and mobile phone platforms to attempt to record phone calls. The results are inconsistent, device varying solutions.
With Cogi, you can count on a perfect recording every time. And, with Cogi, you know when you are invoking the recording function on a call, with its clean user interface depicting who’s on the call.
How do you associate highlights, images and tags from a session?
The killer review experience...
We've now captured these audio sound bites, images, video, contact tags, hashtags. What now? Listen to audio? Well, yes, we have to listen to the audio. But with Cogi's review experience, the user may have captured key images from the whiteboard or used contact tags to easily show who was in the meeting.
Thus, you can see who's participated (visually with the thumbnail pictures of the meeting participants) or view the content of the whiteboard, all while listening to these sound bites. Engage your brain looking at these visuals while you listen to the sound bites.
All of us can record audio, capture images and video and type notes in our phones with existing applications. The key with Cogi is being able to capture these elements and put them all into one place to easily associate a given sound bite with an image from the whiteboard while also remembering who was participating in the meeting.
How does this help with disabilities?
Whether for students or business people, there are many who have different sets of challenges. After all, don’t most of us have difficulties with focus from time to time?
At colleges and universities, accessibility must be provided under Americans with Disabilities Act and other governmental regulations. This is not just tied to students with vision, hearing or other physical impairments but to students with cognitive challenges (e.g. dyslexia, ADHD, etc.).
Accessibility departments exist at most schools, and they are continually looking for solutions to help their students with the learning process.
Using the Cogi app can be the “cool” way to remain focused and obviate the need to take notes while listening in the lecture, study session, office hours, etc. And, for most students, the free application form of Cogi’s solution should work just fine.
And as it works for students in these contexts, does that not help the rest of us?
What if you’re listening in a language that’s not native?
For learning or business contexts, listening to content in a different language can be a challenge, depending on your proficiency in that language.
Just imagine that there are parts of a lecture where one or two terms might make the entire context confusing. By using Cogi’s lightweight application, a student can later clarify the meaning of those terms, and re-listen to just that part of the lecture which may have been difficult.
And, in some situations, having a written transcript of the sound bites further supports the comprehension process, as reading provides another way to digest the information.
How can I get these highlights transcribed?
Many of us would rather read than listen to recorded content.
With membership level services, you can easily request a transcript of a session or a given sound bite. Then you can just read the transcript of a given sound bite. Even better, you can do both, listen to the sound bite as the transcript is displayed in a "teleprompter" type rolling text pane.
And isn’t a picture really worth a thousand words?
Although the sound bites are central to the Cogi concept, augmenting these sound bites with images and video makes the experience much more rich. We just spent 45 minutes discussing a given topic, and we've used the whiteboard to capture many concepts. Taking a picture of the whiteboard (or even your "old school" paper notes on your note pad) augments the sound bites that were captured.
Who was in that meeting?
You just met with your team, or, as a student, you just went to office hours with your professor or TA. With just a couple of taps, you can add a contact tag for each participant (or at least the important ones). If you have a picture associated with that contact on your mobile device, that picture is displayed during the review state, helping you remember who was there and what was being talked about.
Seriously, do any of us like typing on these mobile devices?
Let’s enter the no typing zone...
We have these mobile devices and the apps associated with them. For many of us, the last thing that we want to do is start typing on this small device. One key theme with the Cogi application is to be able to do so many things with a tap or a swipe such that the minimum amount of typing or interacting with the application is achieved.
You can auto title your session just by adding contact tags for those that participated. You capture the audio with just a tap of the Cogi button. A couple of photos and you have the content of that meeting from the whiteboard.
And, does anyone really read manuals?
We don’t think so...
With Cogi, you get immediate and intuitive helps screens. For many application views, you’ll see a help icon that you can tap to get further clarity on what’s going on.
An MVP Android app with a great experience, available 
Complete the development of our iPhone application.
