There's nothing quite like scrolling through a load of your old Twitter updates and wondering what in the hell you were thinking of when you posted that thing six months ago. Lack of context can often mean that something that made perfect sense at the time can be rendered meaningless months or years down the line.
Kennedy, a new app from the ever-excellent Brendan Dawes, is a really nice attempt to add just that sort of context to your memories. It's a kind of diary app, in that you can create text notes of what you're up to, just like you might type into Facebook or Twitter, and maybe add photos to the notes while you're at it. The clever tough, though, is that Kennedy then adds an extra layer of context.
And so to each note is added your location, the date and time, the current weather conditions, a news headline and, if you're listening to music on your phone at the time, the name of the track you're listening to. The result is that instead of a dry note that won't really mean much down the line, you instead capture a particular moment a lot more fully, complete with plenty of prompts that can help bring back a memory in much more detail. Just like everyone who was alive at the time can remember what they were doing when Kennedy was shot, Kennedy adds prompts to your memories to make it easier to remember a certain moment.
The more you use Kennedy, the richer the experience; you might want to search the archive for moments when it was raining or when you were listening to a particular song, and you can do just that. Or perhaps you might want to convert your memories into some kind of infographic, in which case you can export all your captured data as a JSON file, perfect for creating data visualisations.
It is, of course, a fine-looking app that's only really as good as what you put into it. We reckon that if you get what it's trying to do you won't have any problem coughing up the reasonable asking price, and we doubt you'll regret it; Kennedy's an intelligent and thoughtful aide-mémoire with lots of potential.
Key info
- Works with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
- Price: $1.99/£1.49
- Developer: Brendan Dawes
- Version: 1.2
- App size: 9.3MB
- Age rating: 4+
Words: Jim McCauley
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