Filed under: Podcasts, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review, Music
SayAgain - an audio bookmarking app
A few weeks ago we covered the Bookmark app, a subsystem for playing and bookmarking audio books. I was quite impressed with it, but some comments dinged it for not playing in the background when the app is closed. It also only handled audiobooks and some felt it would be more useful if it covered any audio file in your iTunes library. SayAgain [iTunes Link] is another bookmarking app which solves both of those problems, but not nearly as well or as elegantly. It is compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. It sells for US$1.99.
One of my pet-peeves is that many apps give you no instruction on how they work, and SayAgain is one of those. When you run it you are presented with a lined screen titled 'Annotated Media'. To the left is a + button and to the right is an edit button. Now what? Clicking on the developer link in iTunes brings you no help, only a description of what the app does. Nowhere in the app is an info button to bring some direction. But, one might say, it's intuitive. You don't need help. I say, nonsense. Everyone comes from a different level of experience and assuming intuitiveness is a bad assumption. Bookmark, on the other hand, gives full instructions and a tutorial right inside the app.
SayAgain is a generalist audio bookmarking app, allowing you to add bookmarks to any audio file in iTunes. This is quite useful since you might want to bookmark a story in podcast or even a great drum solo as well as a place in an audiobook.
There are two ways to use it. Either play something in iTunes and then run the app which will display your audio file as Now playing, along with the name of the song or file. Or you can run it without playing anything and hit the + button which brings up iTunes. Leaving the app doesn't stop the audio, a major advantage. To add a book mark you click the star (which in other apps means favorites), and you'll get a window with a keyboard and buttons to 'Set start marker' and 'Set end marker'. On top of the screen are buttons marked back and play.
Read on to see how well it worked.
To create the bookmark, press the 'Set start marker' button, then type in something descriptive for yourself. The start time is displayed. Play a bit and click the 'Set end marker' button and a ending time is displayed along with the start time. So far so good, but playing it back seems to be designed backwards. Click on play and the file will start at the right time, but it won't end regardless of your end marker. In fact you get no time progress information at all.
Hit back, though, and you'll see the time progress, but you can't play the file from that screen. You have no automatic way of stopping the file so you have to hit the back button and manually stop the file when the progress display reaches the time noted in the bookmark. If you don't manually stop it, the file will just go on playing. That's too many buttons to push when it could have been done from one screen. And if a 'Set end marker' option is present, it should do something other than look pretty.
On the Annotated media screen you have the option of jumping back and forth 10 seconds, an envelope icon that brings up email with the subject 'SayAgain' and your file name along with the start and stop time and any notes you typed in, already filled in. That can be quite useful.
The major advantage of this app is that it can run in the background since it invokes iTunes. Notes are nice and so is the ability to designate a start time. On the downside is a really poor design with no instructions and a confusing system of bouncing back and forth between two screens along with stop markers doing nothing.
The idea of SayAgain is terrific. The implementation leaves much to be desired. With a total design overhaul this could be a wonderfully useful app but in its present state it looks like a work in progress and not ready for prime-time.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rob E. said 10:35AM on 9-24-2009
According to the specs, SayAgain does work on the 1st Gen iPod Touch, which, as a 1G Touch owner, is the feature I care about most, and the one Bookmark is missing. Being able to bookmark podcasts might be useful, too. Especially if you listen to PodioBooks. And being able to start a file in the iTunes ap and move into SayAgain when you need it may be the killer feature. Design issues or no, this seems like it might have an edge for those of us who can't keep from surfing around to other aps while listening to our audio books. It's a shame that it sounds so clunky to use. And I would like to see an automatic bookmark showing where you last read to, which it sounds like Bookmark does. It sounds like if these two aps joined forces, or if someone plucked the best features of both, we might have the best audio bookmarking application.
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Bob Balinor said 3:17PM on 9-24-2009
Bookmark was updated a while ago to support 1st-gen touch. The author seems not to have updated his website to reflect this, but the description in the App Store has been changed appropriately. I can confirm it works, because I helped test it on my 1G touch.
Rob E. said 3:24PM on 9-24-2009
That's great. I check it every time I see a refresh when I hit the button to check for updates, but I must have missed that one. As of last week it definitely was not working or was still saying that it would not work because I posted while quoting directly from the iTunes' store description on 9/15. I'll try and install it again as soon as I get home.
Elver Loho said 7:55AM on 9-25-2009
SayAgain supports 1st generation iPod Touches just fine, but 3.0 or newer software is required.
Give it a try, though. It's actually a lot less "clunky" than the review makes it look. And version 1.1 will fix a lot of these issues soon.
Elver Loho said 10:45AM on 9-24-2009
Many thanks to David for reviewing SayAgain! We'll definitely be adding a quick introduction for first-time users in the next version. Another feature that will be in version 1.1 will be the ability to sync/share bookmarks via email and bluetooth. It's already working in the lab.
To celebrate the TUAW review, we'll be picking three SayAgain fans who comment on this story here to receive a SayAgain promo code so they could share the app with their friends. Please include your Twitter username so I can follow you and message you the promo code :)
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Mihkel Sirel said 10:44AM on 9-24-2009
Overall it's a great app... once you get a hang of it.
Personally I'm not too distressed about the end marker not stopping the audio, however I can see that when you are presenting (a lecture, a training session, whatever) and want to play a small piece of a podcast or something, it could be useful to stop the audio at the end marker - this could maybe be implemented as a setting for users who want that.
And of course some "help" could be useful to get people started a bit faster instead of testing and messing around.
And an idea that came to me ~5 minutes ago - why there isn't a desktop version? A quick google on "audio bookmark mac" didn't give any good results about anything similar that could be used on a desktop.
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Elver Loho said 7:59AM on 9-25-2009
The reason that playback doesn't stop automatically at the end of the marker is quite simple: we can't stop the audio if you close SayAgain and we can't track the playback position anymore.
We figured that it would be better not to stop playback at all, because it stopping sometimes (when the app is running) and not stopping other times (when the app is closed) might be a bit confusing to users.
I've got a fix in mind that will cure this ailment... Not sure if we'll ship it as part of 1.1, but it'll be in 1.2.
chris neitzert said 11:12AM on 9-24-2009
What a super helpful app. I think a desktop version of this would go far, but on the iphone it does exactly what it advertises. Quite helpful when listening to podcasts and i want to bookmark items of interest. Great app, I hope to see more innovations like this from these guys...
twitter @cneitzert
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Ain Alabert said 12:04PM on 9-24-2009
Well, I waited for long time with my iPod Nano that Apple should do something about the need to jump back and forth few seconds in podcasts that are too long to start over if you skipped something. What a waste to listen again 47 minutes, hah?
So today as a very fresh iPhone 3GS owner (few hours), I definitely will be a user very soon :)
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David Winograd said 12:12PM on 9-24-2009
Ain,
The iPod in the iPhone 3GS has the ability to jump back 30 seconds built right in.
Ain Alabert said 1:21PM on 9-24-2009
Well, didn't know that yet - Few hours had it only... but on Nano I really, really missed the feature.
Tex said 2:56AM on 9-25-2009
I love the app, it does its work without me needing to change how i listen to my books and recordings. Its also cool that if you delete a song or book from the iPhone you don't lose the notes! Great for lecture recordings!
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Jack said 4:04AM on 11-02-2009
great app, cant imagine how i did it earlier. http://www.iphonesayagain.com/
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Jack G said 3:34PM on 11-20-2009
they have demo video now http://www.iphonesayagain.com/about-sayagain/
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