I reviewed ZoomNotes 2 back in May and I was impressed with the sketching app for iOS. Since May, ZoomNotes has been updated several times and is now my preferred app for quick sketches on iOS.
I’ll just get this out there right away. The ZoomNotes interface is not pretty. The UI elements have a terrible color and gradient. I admit that. However, the feature set is hard to beat.
Simperium, the makers of the Simplenote iOS app and the Simplenote syncing service, have been acquired by Automattic, the makers of WordPress.org. I’m cautiously hopeful for this change.
I miss Simplenote desperately. It was great for several years but this past year it took a serious nosedive.1 It chewed through my data and lost new notes and old notes indiscriminately without any notice from Simperium or the apps they make. It’s that lack of transparency that caused me to finally kill off my subscription.
Pinbook is still the best Pinboard app for iPad. This is a nice option for Safari and iCab users.
I still use paper and pen. It’s the most efficient and least distracting kit for taking notes in a meeting with non-nerds. Bringing out a computing device invariably results in some discussion about the technology. But I work in plain text files for everything before and after the meeting.
Here are some options for commingling those two worlds.
Evernote Evernote is very good at instant capture. At the end of a meeting, I snap photo notes into Evernote of the whiteboard and my paper notebook pages.
You know what? I’ve never really trusted Siri enough to complete draft, address and send an email. Perhaps learning the magic incantation outlined on OS X Daily will help me accept the future.
I’ve used OmniFocus since the first week it was released. I’ve reached a professional tipping point. I manage some large projects with dozens of contributors that span several years. My OmniFocus database has many, many hundreds of tasks. Six months ago I realized that contexts were becoming irrelevant in an always-available and online world. I can do email at any time. I can write or search the web from my phone.
David Sparks is the master of presenting.
Disclosure: I helped with beta testing Tally. I also like Agile Tortoise. We all have our biases. Now you know mine.
Tally is a simple app for counting. It’s as simple as counting should be. Start the app and it shows a zero count. Tap anywhere on the screen and it increments by one. But maybe you’re a power-counter. Incrementing by one is for grade school. Slide right to left and a configuration panel opens.
A very imaginative use of Pythonista to control a home lighting system.
Foword is a news reader with filters and a good deal of style. Perhaps it has too much style and not enough filter. Foword pulls news items from a few non-cusomizeable sources and lets the user group and filter the news by keywords. Like Apple stuff? Create an Apple news group but filter out anything with the words “samsung”, “lawsuit”, “rumor” or “exclusive”. That should give a reasonably interesting news feed.
