Underscore Notify is a note taking and annotating application for iOS devices.
It kicks app a**
Sleeper gem.
This came out of the blue. I've tried many notes apps, but none as fluid in UI and full featured. Underscore Notify looks like the devs made the app for themselves to use regularly.
Pages are infinite. Read that again. Zooms are preset and pinch variable. Objects are movable: scribbles, shapes, text, web pages.
Truly a virtual canvas.
PDF, Dropbox, wow. I'm repeating- heck, I could not believe the audacity of the feature list, but indeed it is supported!
The interface is quirky but intuitive; no tapping around to get basic functionality, unApple like in a good way.
The help is extensive but only needed to flesh out detail.
I haven't had time to check performance with many notebooks, but so far on basic use, this is beyond 5 star.
Save yourself lots of beta testing and money trying others.
Slightly miffed as now I'll have to delete apps I bought that Underscore Notify replaces. Live and learn.
Also it's a Universal Binary!
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.
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 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.
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
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars; on sale for 99 cents while it lasts...
Reading the Big Lebowski intro, made me a bit hesitant at buying this new app thinking it might be from a fly-by-night no updates dev. But cred was established after checking out the screenshots at their main site and the price can't be beat!
You can add items or nodes that are grouped in a virtual headspace.
Headspaces are files akin to mindmaps.
Item nodes can have colors, links and can be stacked in groups.
The usual multitouch pinch -zoom, resize all applies here.
Flicking around with 1,2, or 3 fingers have different effects. You can rearrange items up and down the group hierarchy. Double tapping a group, pulls the camera view focus to that group.
Innovation: Brings to the table mindmapping unlike any other app tot he iPhone, not your usual Freemind-central-node. Think PersonalBrain on your iPhone; well the closest thing to it.
Usability: There is a bit of a learning curve with all this power, but having the freedom to zoom in and out of groups of headbits is worth the price of admission.
Sucks: NO SEARCH, yes you heard that right, with a slew of headbits floating around in your headspace, don't even think of popping in a query. Like just scroll around, man. NO EXPORT, yep, you and your emptied monkey brain guts are stuck in Headspace. There is not yet a way to get all those typed up nodes out to the desktop or web for backup. No email, webdav, saving to local dir for exchange via DiskAid.
Still Headspace is an awesome reach into the mindmapping appstore category that is often a re-tread of existing desktop ideas and for that 5 stars, baby.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars; needs better speed for sketching, snap to grid, and a cleaner UI
What: A vector based drawing app for the iphone and iPod touch that allows you to create mindmaps, diagrams and just about replace your moleskine notepad for portable brainstorming.
Why: I was looking for an all-in-one inbox that supports freeform input but with LARGER than screen saves. I use Sketches to create pictures or words then manipulate them using the excellent Photoboard to create a composite collage which can then be captured to the Saved Photos album. ZeptoPad 2.0 came out just in time
UPDATE: I just read a review of Zeptopad that compared it to other sketch apps. This is a fallacy like comparing apples to oranges.
The whole point of why ZeptoPad has an advantage over painting ink apps is that each vector path is an object that can be resized and manipulated, more importantly the canvas is HUGE (click the thumbnail below of a feedback map I made and how big the ZeptoPad export is).
There is currently NO app other than ZeptoPad that has these features. Mindmapping apps (BlueSky, iThoughts) while wonderful cannot add freeform lines, have photos as nodes, or rotate outside of fixed constraints.
Good:
UPDATE: You can copy/move a selected object from one worksheet(drawing) to another! Very cool.
Real-time interactive whiteboard - connect to your Mac and what you draw in ZeptoPad is what you see in real time on the desktop screen
Supports Ad Hoc wifi (my router done be broke) so I can connect ZeptoPad to my Mac without a router.
Saves your creations as jpg, PDF and backup file. The output pics are indeed larger than the iphone screen
Bigger canvas to create! much larger than iphone/ipod touch screen
Pinch and zoom to expand and shrink figure and whole drawings
Cut, copy, move, rotate and paste figures. Let me say that again, with ZeptoPad you can CUT, COPY, MOVE, ROTATE, and PASTE your scribblings. Try doing that with other digital ink doodling or sketch apps.
Type text using iphone keyboard as a figure and shrink and enlarge
import and export of thumbs from Saved Photos album in camera roll
Change color of lines and text selections; color code your mobile mindmaps
UNDO and REDO of your actions.
Bad:
costs $10 with no free lite preview version to try out. UPDATE: They now have a freeware version!
poor to fair drawing speed with free form figures and lines; even the freeware scribbler is faster but to be fair, ZeptoPad is vector based which have more flexibility than doodling apps for editing. Need for speed!
no basic shapes in toolset; just free form lines and text from keyboard
User experience/workflow is clunky: 1 Draw or type, 2 reposition figure/text, 3 repeat as needed, 4 connect with lines; ZeptoPad needs a snap to grid feature
No grouping of worksheets in Directory. All your creations (worksheets) are in 1 pot.
Ugly:
Non-intuitive user interface sucks, 1980's menus and so un-Apple like as to make Steve Jobs grimace: please UEI take a look at Photoboard UI and see how clean and minimal that is with its local circular menu per figure.
figures are automatically grouped so you have to select them individually in order to separate them. User is constantly needs to select menu to move any figure. It gets tiresome folks. Again look at use of proximity as with Photoboard.
No landscape, so you must pinch and shrink for longer words or wider figures
Competition:
Mindmapping apps: like iThoughts, BlueSky, MindMaker
Drawing apps: doodler apps like Sketches, Scribbler, Zibbler
Miscellaneous: ThinkDigits, Photoboard
Verdict: do the Japanesa!
Value is relative, but I'm satisfied with my purchase. ZeptoPad brings to the Apple appstore something unique and has really no competition despite the listing above. I'm free to pour ideas on a multitouch canvas larger than the physical screen and manipulate the various 'thoughts' or ideas represented as text and figures unlike any all-in-one application. The workflow to create is slow and takes many steps but the freedom outweights that. I may consider a mindmapper like iThoughts for speed. The realtime interactive whiteboard is cool but gimmicky and I can't currently see a use for it though it reminds me of the old Margi presentation system from Palm days. If you have falling $10 USD to spare from starving yourself from lattes4apps and you're into that 43Folders/GtD/Moleskine crowd pick up zany ZeptoPad.
