原创 Cool iPad app: Notes Plus (handwriting, text, shapes, audio...)

In a few of my recent blogs, I've been talking about some of the apps I've found for my iPad (see A wealth of apps for IPad Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).

Well, one of those apps was Notes Plus, which is so amazing it really deserves its own discussion, which is where we are today.

Of course the iPad comes equipped with its own Notes app, but even if we're being kind we have to say that this is rudimentary at best. By comparison, Notes Plus is in a league of its own – this is the sort of app that fully utilizes all of the iPad's capabilities and turns the iPad into a tool rather than a toy.

I think I paid $0.99 for it a couple of weeks ago, but the last I heard this had risen to $4.99. Whatever it is today, it's more than worth the cost, not the least that if you purchase the current version now you'll get a free upgrade to the forthcoming version 3.0, which promises to take things to a whole new level.

So why is the Notes Plus app so amazing? Well, first of all it's incredibly intuitive and easy to use. It's also got a wealth of well thought out productivity features that happen behind the scenes to make your life easier. Let's take this step by step:

Notebooks: The basic idea is that you store your notes in a Notebook. When you create and name a new notebook it starts with a single page, but you can add pages as required. You can also copy pages, rearrange the order of pages within the notebook, delete pages, and so forth. You can also create folders (and folders in folders) and then create your notebooks in these folders, all of which helps you organize things.

Handwritten Input:ÿ You can enter handwritten notes with your finger or with a stylus. I purchased a stylus, but to be honest I find it easier to use my finger (plus – unlike the stylus, I never have to worry about where I left my finger ... if you see what I mean).

There's also a "Close Up" mode. All you have to do is place your finger on the screen wherever you want a note to appear and hold it there for a second, and the "Close Up" dialog appears. This is like a zoom-in view – you can use your finger to write large characters that are automatically reduced in size as they appear in real time on the screen at the location you requested for your note.

You can create one big handwritten note or lots of smaller ones wherever you want them to appear on the screen.

Selecting and Moving Stuff: Suppose you've created some small handwritten notes as discussed in the previous topic and now you want to rearrange them on the screen. All you do is use your finger to draw a circle around a note (or notes) to select it and then drag and drop it in its new place. Note that this technique also works for other objects like typewritten text and shapes and suchlike. (Once you've selected something you can also delete it or change its attributes as discussed below.)

Typewritten Input: Rather than enter handwritten text, you can click the Text icon in the toolbad and then tap your finger on the screen at the location you wish your text to appear and start typing on the pop-up keyboard (or on a physical keyboard if you have one). Again, you can create one large note or lots of smaller notes, and you can mix things up and have multiple handwritten and typewritten notes all over the page.

Drawing Shapes: This is just so cool. If you draw a line (or a series of connected lines), or a triangle or a square/rectangle or a circle, the app automatically detects this and converts it into a sharp vector-based object. You can specify all sorts of things like outline color, fill color (if any), transparency, and so forth – otherwise the system will simply use your previous settings. Once you've created one of these vector objects you can select them, resize them, move their vertices, or move the entire object around the page.

Changing Attributes: If you've already set up the appropriate attributes before you enter handwritten text (color, line width, etc...) or typewritten text (font, size, color, etc...) or shapes (line width, line color, fill color, transparency, etc...) then the system will use the previous settings. Also there's a Palette icon that allows you to quickly choose between recently used settings. Alternatively, you can select anything that you previously created and modify its attributes.

Sound Recording: This just keeps on getting better and better. If you click the Microphone icon you can record an audio note that will be associated with the current page in the active Notebook. In fact you can have multiple audio recordings associated with each page.
Sharing Your Notes: If you wish, you can export your entire notebook (or one or more pages thereof) to iTunes as a PDF or to your Photo Albums as an image. You can also email your notebook (or pages) as a PDF or an Image. You can also upload to Google Docs or synchronize with your Dropbox account. The possibilities are endless...

So, the bottom line is that Notes Plus has my official seal of approval and it wins one of my converted "Ten Cool Beans" Awards (and you don't get much better than that [grin]).