We interrupt your regularly scheduled Russia travelogue to announce the release of a new application for Mac OS X.

Last night, my friend Chad from Tresys released his new application Pear Note:

http://www.usefulfruit.com/pearnote/

If you take notes during meetings or classes, this app is for you. It’s a simple note taking app with a brilliant twist: it records the time you make every single keystroke, and it records the audio in the room as you take your notes. The result is not just notes. It’s notes with full context.

Did you write something down that doesn’t seem to make sense? Click on the word you typed and it will jump to that exact moment in the audio recording. Scrub around in the audio recording and it will highlight what words you were typing at that moment. Hell, you can even play back the whole class or meeting from beginning to end. Listen to every word and watch Pear Note highlight what you wrote at the exact moment you wrote it.

It’s not just audio, either. It also records video and even slides (PowerPoint, Keynote, or PDF). Point your camera at the action, drag the slides onto your notes, and start typing away. It will record which slide was up at every moment. Play it back to hear the audio, see the video, and watch the slides, all integrated as one complete note document.

I’ve been testing this app for a while now, and frankly I think it’s going to be a hit. It’s flat-out fantastic to have the full context of a meeting recorded with your notes. I took it to a meeting with my tax accountant, and a week later when I couldn’t figure out how the hell I was supposed to fill out a particular form I just opened up my notes, clicked on the part where I had tried (and failed) to write down his instructions, and listened to him describe it all again in full original detail. Brilliant.

Check it out and let Chad know what you think!