Note taking applications.

I have had my iPad for about 6 months now, and it has certainly changed the way I use computers. It has become the one device that I use the most. Even more than my work laptop - but that has a lot to do with the amount of time I am spending in meetings these days.

In meetings I do use my iPad for note taking. The most common application I use for that is Evernote. I like that it automatically synchs my notes back to my computer. I have been taking monthly subscriptions to the premium service so I can have offline notebooks as well. The one short coming I find is that I cannot draw with Evernote. So I have started looking for another program to fill the gap.

I have been using Adobe Ideas for a bit as well. It is good. I like the zoom in and out capability. It also smooths out jittery lines nicely. But it does not work so well for written notes. The new version allows for emailing of completed drawings. I would like some better interop with Evernote.

With Evernote's Trunk feature there was an app called Inkest. I gave it a try. It seems to be geared towards artist who would like to sketch. I didn't find that it worked well for written notes. It does allow for drawings to be saved to Evernote's web site (not the local app). If you are connected that doesn't page much difference, but if you are not connected you will have to remember to Upload your notes latter.

On to my third try. InkShelf. It has a nice notebook interface similar to iBooks. Some templates that help get things organized. It does have the nicest writing experience ... The ink flows really nice. The multipage paradigm within a notebook is nice. It does allow you to pick different papers for your notebooks, which is nice, but it is a choice for the entire notebook, so if you want lined paper on one page and grid paper on the next, tough. It does allow you to save your notebooks to both Dropbox and Evernote.

There are two features from all of these that I am still looking for. The ability for the app to transcribe cursive writing into typed notes and the ability to edit the notes once they have been saved to a cloud mechanism.

I have used penultimate on other peoples iPads. It seems nice, but I think I prefer InkShelf.

The next thing I need to get is a stylus.

Happy Canada Day ... The Canadian Bookstore Arrives

Previously I lamented about the lack of selection in the iBook store. It was just the free titles at that time. Today the Canadian content came online and there is a lot more to choose from. I still find the selection to be thin.

One thing I didn't notice before was alerts. You can set an alert on an author so you notified when a new book by that author becomes available. It would be nice if you could set an alert on a search phrase.

A feature I like about the amazon store is the wish list. Sometimes I am interested in something but don't want to buy it quite yet. Amazon let's me make a note about that by adding it to the wish list.

Zinio - I like it.

One of the apps I decided to try out based on somebody else's recommendation was Zinio. It is a magazine reader much like iBooks is book reader. There is a fairly wide variety of magazines available, but not as complete as I would like. They do offer a few complimentary issues which allows you to check out the experience without having to subscribe to anything. The app itself is free.

I browsed through the compliementary issues and was impressed enough that I have subscribed to a two. The text clarity is excellent, images are good as well. These magazines are more than just the print version render in electronic form. The ones I have explored have embedded videos, and slide shows. It is generally an engaging reading experience.

One quibble have will point out is the app is not the most stable. I have found it to crash about every 10 to 15 minutes. Long enough between crashes to be tolerated but definitely annoying. Fortunately it does a pretty good job of saving where you left off when you restart the application.

I have not done much to explore oth magazine readers. Have you? If you have found a good one leave a comment to let us know.

Thoughts on iBooks

Perhaps it is because my iTunes account is Canadian, but I have found the content a available on the iBooks store to be very disappointing. Close to useless for anything except old classics. I need to read some of them anyhow. Hands down the selection on Amazon is way better. However, I do think that iBooks is a better book reader than kindle. Oh well. The kindle read works quiet well, but iBooks just has a little extra polish.

What kind of polish? The bookmarks are nice as is the position within chapter and book. It seems less abstract than kindle. The page turn animation gets a lot of oohs and aaahs, but I am not so sure how much better it really makes the reading experience.

The one thing I really like is iBooks PDF feature. I have tons of PDFs; manuals, books, articles that I either want to read, or would like to have handy. A great example of a manual I have placed in ibooks is the manual for my camera.

Do you have a dropbox account? If you don't consider getting one. The drop box app makes it really easy to grab a PDF from drop box and then add it to iBooks. Slick. Get your own account here.[full disclosure - if you use that link I will benefit by getting more space. So please use it ;-)]

One big question remains - i mentioned it awhile ago when I wrote about the kobo. Just how many electronic bookshelves do you want to manage. I think I would prefer one shelf, connected to the amazon store which I could read with iBooks. Unlikely in the short term I think.

One improvement I would like to see to iBooks itself is a better way to manage a large collection of books.

Flash - my verdict

Much has been written about this by others so I'll just recap my experience. Are there websites I visit that use flash as an essential part of the site's purpose? Yes. Would I like to visit them on my iPad? Yes. So, if they want me to visit, they'd better change. I think that goes for my 20-something children as well, who want to borrow my iPad rather than hauling out their laptop.

Ironically of the the sites that I really wanting to use, bad enough to go to my windows machine is the Adobe store. It is all Flash based. (and not well designed either, but that is another story). I have been unable to complete my order there, I may buckle and actually call customer service, but only because I want the product sooner rather than later. If it had been available on amazon for immediate ship, it would have been bought already, and done from my iPad.

New family member - welcome iPad

I finally broke and bought an iPad. My rationale is that it does appear to be defining a new class of device and even though the next version will be much improved, I needed to understand the device now. For me that means using one as much as I can. Those who know me know that I will use it heavily for as much as I can.

I have had it now for a week; 32GB wifi. My rationale for the size was that it was bigger than my 16GB touch, and I could save a few dollars over the 64 model. Wifi only as I anticipated that if I really need mobile data access I would get a MiFi. I was also hoping that I would be able to pickup the hydro-one wifi signal from my desk. They offer an iPad data service for $5 per month. Unfortunately, I have not been able to make that work. Free open access does exist in many places downtown so generally am not too bad off. I think I will still miss the gps function.

I also purchased the dock, the VGA cable and the camera connection kit. The later because I hope to experiment with it as a tool for photographers as well.

So far the experience has been good. There was a good chance of it's new life with me when it was not available. Maybe I should have ordered two - or three. It has been very popular with the family.

That should be a good start. Of course this is all written on the iPad itself using the blogger web application. Works well.