Dan Bricklin's Note Taker

Dan Bricklin's Note Taker review

App store down!

Waah.

Can you do that?!

I was playing the iPhone and iPod touch game Audio Puzzle by Dexoris and I stumbled upon this cacophony of noise and sound, Ostriches & Chirping by Elliott Smith!

I had forgotten all about this song but you should definitely check it out, because I think you will like it!

---

Rediscover your music collection with Audio Puzzle by Dexoris

Sent from my iPod

You will like this album!

Haha, great way to promote your app from within the game. 

I was playing the iPhone and iPod touch game Audio Puzzle by Dexoris and I stumbled upon this brilliant song, Comme Il Faut by Carlos Di Sarli!

This song is from the album Y Su Orquesta, a brilliant album that you should definitely check out, because I think you will like it!

---

Rediscover your music collection with Audio Puzzle by Dexoris

Sent from my iPod

WriteRoom with Textexpander FTW non JB

Well it's not vim on mobile terminal but it's close and way bigger
which is easy on the eyes. My date stamping days are ahead.
Simpletext.ws is the new web based service that WriteRoom syncs to
with a Google login. The code is open and it would be great to pair
this to TiddlyWeb.

iBlast Moki is a blast

Really having a blast with iBlast Moki!

Graphics plus cuteness matched with physics puzzles and blasting is a
perfect formula.

Get it!

Orbital threes

> Pure mode of Orbital is a masochist's paradise. Hurt me with bigger
> balls. Ha.

geoDefense Swarm Medium 6

Yep I made it to nucleotide.

Civilization for the iPhone wastes life

I lost 48 hours of my life trying to get nukes to besiege London...
Playing Sid meier's Civilization for the iPhone, still enjoyable
despite a few white out bugs.

GoodReader is my PDF reader

Alright so you've got Stanza which O'Reilly brilliantly covers, but
what about reading your PDFs from Packt, Manning or Apress?

GoodReader is indeed a good reader of pdf files. Do yourself a favor and just buy it at the current sale.
I bought AirSharing at 5 smackers and tried Files lite as first gen readers but they lacked speed and navigational features.
GoodReader brings this and more. Zooming and free flow of movement through the document results in a better experience with maps. The toggle to snap on the vertical after zooming smaller pdf fonts is a well used feature. I have no trouble transferring documents through the WiFi. It's so great to finally read pdfs from computer publishers or other technical image or code heavy documents that gives my Kindle trouble. I've since transferred my pdfs from AirSharing to GoodReader. This is a great pdf reader a long time coming.

Tiddlywebwiki benefits from iTW

Followed FND's lead and imported BidiX's iTW into TiddlyWebwiki for
the iPhone.
Had to set upload config to false in iTWTweaks. It is a great UI but i
miss my list of tiddlers viewed directly and hope to craft a better UX
in the future.

OReilly ebook via Stanza

Picked up some new media bits reading this book without the page weight.

It's saved as an .ipa

Good: priced to go, save a tree for the flocks, and searching and
linking

Bad: takes up one app slot, only on the iDevice.

Now I just need a bigger iTablet.

Battle of the note taking apps part 2: Trunk

So what happens after you get your notes written?
How will can you access them?
How are they organized?
Here TiddlyWeb can help, but starting a web server after becoming root
first is tedious.
The answer is the only native full featured wiki on iphone OS, Trunk.
Trunk supports links and Markdown markup. Full text search and tag
filtering propels Trunk over the competition. Functions are now
supported so double curly bracketed commands have special meaning.
Get a list of recent notes, notes tagged by a certain word are all
doable. Snippets for boilerplate text from shortcut macros are more
productivity frosting.
Get Trunk and enjoy the portable wiki in your pocket.

-- This message was composed with PhatWare WritePad Notes

FastFinga good for the short note

Battle of the note taking apps, part 1

Battle of the note taking apps

My initial premise:
Because there is no conversion to text and thus no search, Write Pad
is not as fast as ShapeWriter since ShapeWriter makes words from
shorter screen travel not full characters like WritePad.
Also sucky is that full text search is disabled in WritePad; you can
only search by title.
If the ultimate output is searchable notes
I had a real world test today of the speed and versatility of WritePad

Losers: ZeptoPad-despite the latest terrific upgrade, a Vector drawing
app is no fast note taker.
Resizing glyphs and rearranging word graphics is not speedy nor
productive

Shapewriter
Surprisingly despite having to write out words vs. shape writing them,
the familiarity and recognition of WritePad proved quicker. The lack
of a quick undo in ShapeWriter proved to be its failing.

Even for common words there is a lag from having to correct words or
registering new words when a lecturer never stops; it really decreased
the efficiency I found when composing at a slower pace.
While there is a lot of mileage with forming words by shape writing,
in practice with a lot of unknown words it can get tedious if you
don't remember the correct spelling of the word. Unknown words must be
typed out so on the average spelling out the word with letter
recognition proves more accurate when the content is unfamiliar to the
dictionary. Also cursor placement is too sensitive so that entering
unfamiliar words is further delayed.

ShapeWriter is more comfortable and less fatiguing but when speed is a
consideration, WritePad wins for me; and I really enjoy shapewriter
with it's unique method an all text search.

Digital ink
Ultimately Tankazu Pad is not as good as Write Pad.

Liqbase is promising but I don't want to spend for another device
albeit an orphaned one, like the current Nokia Internet tablets, maybe
when the. N900 shows up.

-- This message was composed with PhatWare WritePad and ShapeWriter Pro

Fastfinga: search digital ink by tag

Fastfinga tagging notes and filter:

Note overview:

Fastfinga is looking really buff with features galore. Most notable are filtering notes by tag which are text based, bridging the gap between digital ink based apps and search. So scribble and tag brings an advantage over simple sketching and drawing apps.

Fastfinga updated

Fastfinga is getting better and better with more features. Only a date
time stamp is missing.

Tiddlywiki via TiddlyWeb via Tiddlywebwiki on iPhone OS

Day 2: it still saves!

Not only that I copy and pasted a plugin from mobile Safari into my Tiddlywebwiki, tagged systemConfig, saved, refreshed and it worked!




I forgot, get this Tiddlyweb/wiki goodness and instructions over here:

• http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlyweb?hl=en
• http://tiddlyweb.peermore.com/wiki/
• http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
  

Tiddlyweb in your pocket

Tiddlywebwiki, a vertical of TiddlyWeb, which started as a server side
RESTful framework of TiddlyWiki has been successfully installed on
iPhone OS. It truly is a full featured wiki in your pocket much like
Trunk Notes.

Thanks to Chris Dent, FND, Jeremy Ruston, iPhone Dev Team, Jay
Freeman, Lance Fetters, and so many more...

Fastfinga 1.3 in da haus

TegakiMemo is now updated to 2.0

Now you can see where you write on the memo.

FastFinga is out and good

Zeptopad 3, your digital moleskine

Wooah.

Running Zeptopad 3 after an upgrade to iPhone OS 3 and Zeptopad 2!

They, UEI have done a lot to this new version making Zeptopad more
full featured and complex as a premier vector drawing app for the
iPhone.

The two biggest issues I had with previous versions have been
resolved. The drawing smoothness has greatly improved along with the
line gradient. I can now scribble decently.

Folders have been added and drag and drop is supported for worksheet
moves into folders. Holding onto a worksheet icon toggles the deletion
state making it far easier than a tiny swipe to invoke deletion. I
have not found a way to move a worksheet to a different folder,
though. There is no cut, copy or paste of worksheets that I could find.

There is a slideshow feature that allows you to preview worksheets,
but I'm not sure of the utility of toggling between the worksheets
with the three views: main, sub1, and sub2.

Another improvement is the addition and handling of basic shapes like
circles, box, text, connectors and lines. Each object can have
editable attributes like fill or outline color that is found on a sub
menu. You can color, pastel or gradient your way to artful creations.

Did I also mention that there still is peer to peer sharing, real time
viewing mirroring over the desktop, saving to pdf?

Unfortunately because we're dealing with digital ink, search is out of
the question. A helpful future feature request would be a text field
to tag worksheets so they can be sorted, filtered, or searched later.
At least the text can be searched.

Nevertheless, Zeptopad is finally becoming a great digital moleskine
sketch pad for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Sent from my iPod

Peggle sale 99cents!

Peggle
Just bought Peggle for 99 cents!
Review to come soon after. If Peggle was anything like it was on the
iPod Nano, this is going to be fun!

Sent from my iPod

E Ink eaten by Prime View, in need of Pixel Qi

All your E Inks are mine!
What do ebook readers Kindle, Irex, cybook and Sony reader all have in common?

They use E-ink technology that allows them significant energy savings and paper like contrast ratios.

Another thing in common, is that they are PRICEY!

Now the suppliers for these screens are coming under one umbrella.

Translation: don't wait for prices to drop any time soon.

We need Pixel Qi more than ever.

Headspace is at v1.5!

Whoa man Headspace, that whacked out mind mapping app from Flat Black
Films is out at version 1.5 with Unicode support, big files stuff and
bug fixes. The steady progression of updates is promising. I'm still
loving that flying global search. Hee haw.

I can read! Amazon Kindle v1.1

My Amazon reader app for the iPhone just got updated to 1.1 with
noticeable improvement. Added features are color, landscape support,
orientation lock, font sizes, and bookmarks making for a overall great
reading experience.

WritePad Notes is a text editor app that uses natural gestures like you would

WritePad Notes is a text editor app that uses natural gestures like
you would write on paper. Cut and paste are supported and more
surprisingly between notes.

The recognition engine makes writing more enjoyable over typing. With
the addition of the landscape keyboard for a secondary method of
entry, WritePad is superior to other apps that only have one method of
entry.

Although there is more editing involved as, punctuation can be an
issue if not written beforehand and I find myself editing afterwards.

Limited search to just titles seems like cripple ware as there is no
full text search, which is still true as of version 1.8. Perhaps they
are saving that for PhatNotes.

Diskaid is a desktop program that was used in prior versions to backup
notes to the desktop. Now there is a formal desktop application to
backup notes, dictionaries, and other files which works over Wifi.

They listened to users and added a date stamp insertion feature along
with an innovative shortcut feature. It works by writing a word then
circling it which pastes the longer text or does a edit like cut or
paste. Wonderfully, users can add their own shortcuts on the fly using
WritePad's text entry method. All in all, WritePad breaks new ground
for text entry; it truly feels like having a digital Moleskine.

WritePad is enjoyable to write with, but the missing feature is still
global search across all notes. At the current sale of $2.99, WritePad
is a great bargain.
May 17, 2009 10:14 AM

-- This message was composed with PhatWare WritePad Notes

WolframAlpha - Computing on the fly

Wolfram Alpha works on the iPhone and is surprisingly brisk. My middle
school algebra has been transformed.

ShapeWriterPro review

This post was composed by ShapeWriter Pro.

Good - the writing method is the closest thing to fast that I have
tried. The auto correction is pretty spot on along with the auto
spacing.
Search works across all text.
Has security masking records feature to a single password.
Easy to add new words to the dictionary.
Bad - hard to perform letter case changes, email backup is a good
start. There is a game mode to help training shape writing.

Ugly - no date stamp, no WiFi data exchange server, poor user interface.

Conclusion - ShapeWriter is worth the $4.99 I spent just for the sheer
pleasure of writing fast and the great search capability. I miss the
date stamp and a more secure method to backup data than emailing the
whole record set.

real game zen

Primrose by Jason Rohrer

Rating 5 out of 5 stars

$3 are you kidding me? I can buy X,Y, and Z for that price.

In this 99 cent climate with big name productions of terrific games, how can some simple looking, square grid matching game make it?

The game is out in public domain and you can even play for free! Free. The backdrop of a misunderstood game genius story is over the top too.



But, Primrose is deep, beautiful and brilliant. I'm stuck by that same meditative joy i felt as a kid playing with Merlin, the electronic wizard.

The polish of the design is zen.

Glowing, pulsing pieces, simple but deep game play, make Primrose feel like a classic. Simply enlightening.

This is well worth the time and money. Kudos to the developer and I look forward to his other work.

Kraut - sweet magical match puzzle

Kraut is a unique sweet magical well crafted polished pattern matching game.

Rating: 5 out of 5
Controls: touch
Sound: excellent
Graphics: photo realistic
Playability: pick up casual to deep campaigns
Audience: all ages
Developer: Monsterkodi
Brain training: pattern recognition, creativity
Paid: $1.99

A floral theme pervades the game as you manipulate a set of flowers in matches of 4 or more.
Unlike other matching games like Bejeweled, where individual elements are moved on a grid, Kraut turns that concept around.
Instead you make your own grid of matches by putting triads of flowers together.

Like another game, Smiles, there is a jump area where the triad is available to rotate in for play. The triads can be rotated along the middle flower axis.
The help is extensive and some of the best tutorials I've seen for a match puzzle game - definitely great for kids and grandparents.

The flowers are photo realistically gorgeous and there are many types to choose from, further customizing play.

The floral theme continues with insect power-ups or helper units. They add more variety and depth to the game play and are generated by pollen points from matches.
The integration of incredible sound effects from the startup screen, menus and the game play is superb.
There are race the clock arcade and campaign challenge modes along with awards. High score signatures are hand drawn by the player.

Kraut is great for casual pick up and play with a family friendly theme, but has durability and depth with campaign and awards. The unique twist of building your own grid of matches paired with pattern recognition exercises creativity makes this game well worth the value and play.

The level of polish and detail from the slow movie motion of flowers in the menu backgrounds to the righty/lefty considerations really shows the care from the developers and should be rewarded.

If you are looking for a special game in the sea of matching games, Kraut is highly recommended to bring out that inner child and make you happy!

We love this game.

Similar matching apps we play: Trism, Frenzic, QuardrumColors, Bejeweled2, Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab, Gaia Lite, Collapse!Chaos, ScribBall, Pinch n' Pop!

Other apps to consider: Booty Blocks, Chain3, Smiles