Do you need a hand jogging your memory of the day’s activities? Owly, a new free app from interestingly-named studio Seductive Lemon might be able to help.
Owly uses your phone to record 10-second sound bytes (which it calls “Owlies”) at random times over the course of your day and correlates them with your location. You can replay your day to track your locations and listen to the sounds that were around you at the time, and if you find something interesting you can save and/or share it.
Recordings don’t leave your phone until you share them, and Owly will only keep recordings for 7 days unless you favourite them in order to keep a lid on its storage space usage. You can caption both days and individual Owlies, and share the recordings via Owly’s own service or export the MP3 file. There are calibration controls with preset volume levels (measured in “Owls”) for a number of devices, and quiet times where the app won’t record anything. Owly’s battery usage seemed minimal over the weekend.
I left Owly to record in the background for a few days, and when I went over its recordings this morning I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes what it captures is just uncanny. While there were a number of Owlies that were simply noise when the phone is in my pocket, on Saturday alone it mapped my trek around Sydney pretty accurately and captured confusion over train platforms, discussions of Ingress portal locations and tactics, Game of Thrones spoilers and a drink order at the pub.
There’s a few parts of the user interface that could stand to evolve a little, and using the Owly sharing service currently requires creating a username and password – I’d prefer to see it use the Google account on my phone, or perhaps a Twitter/Facebook login to make sharing a little easier. A little more control over frequency and length of recordings might be fun too, and I wonder if the developers might even be able to work on recording both ends of a phone call if you happen to be in a call when the app wakes up to record. The development team is pretty receptive to suggestions, too so
Owly is a fun, free little app that can prove a useful way to relive your day. It might also remind you what happened at the pub on Saturday night – whether you like it or not. Give it a try today!
Do you have a place for Owly in your life? Let us know in the comments!
