email me: chris@chris-karath.com
February 2012
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Picture Post: Click the linkTwitter: Mon 02-20-12 22:21:47 -0500
Chronicle
I want to hear your 
Made the potato chips using the special potato chip microwave try I bought, pictured a bit farther down the page. They're very tasty and a modest potato makes about 50 chips.
Also made some cupcakes in the little cupcake maker, ended up frosting them with some vanilla cream frosting. Tasty.
Twitter: Sun 02-19-12 10:37:21 -0500
Notetaking apps for iPad
There are alot of note taking apps out there, someone at work asked me what I used, I set her the reviews below, and decided to make a post about it here.
Notetaking programs
Notes Plus - $7.99
This one I keep coming back to and using, it's not as simple or intuitive as some of the others but I like it. One nice feature, it will allow you to email a single page as a pdf, whereas alot of similiar apps email the entire "booklet". Most of the time I write in one booklet so being able to email a single page is useful.
Drawpad Pro - $1.99
Notes Plus above has a smoother vector line, but for the most part, you have to use the little zoom panel to write in. In contrast, Drawpad Pro let's you pinch to zoom and use your entire screen. The lines are raster and not as crisp, but I find the pinch to zoom let's me get alot more notes on one page, I'm using this one about half the time now. This app also has alot of pre-built paper styles to write on like, lined paper, graph paper, parchment etc.
Clibe - Free
Clibe isn't something I've used for work at all, but it's a really pretty app, it would be great for putting together a travel log or something similiar, it's free, so it's worth a look.
Notetaker HD - $4.99
Not much different than Notes Plus, but is a little less polished in my opinion. There are alot of apps that use the the "zoom window" to write in, and this is yet another one.
Penultimate - 99¢
This one has one of the smoothest flowing inks, and is a little more attractive like clibe. It alows you to import pictures and write over top of them too. If it had pinch to zoom or a magnifying window for writing I'd use it more.
Phatpad - $4.99
Phatpad is interesting, smooth text writing but it also allows you to convert your handwriting to text. You lasso the part you want to convert, select convert to text and it tries to recognize your handwriting. I find this to be hit and miss with my handwriting and don't use it much.
Sketchrolls - $4.99
This one is I really like and use if I'm in a meeting where I just want to write notes all over the place. This was my top pick for awhile, it's a very designer way to do notes. It simulates a long scroll of paper. Basically you get a "sheet" of paper about 5 times taller than an iPad screen.
Bamboo Paper - Free
This one is made by Wacom, it's very clean and simple, very similiar to Penultimate. It worked better before iOS 5. As the iPads multitouch gestures interfere with it a bit. But it's free, reputable company and worth playing with a bit.
Capture Notes - $4.99
Capture notes is an insanely over featured note taker, it has multiple books, audio recording, little flags to embed audio at specific parts of your page, picture inport etc. Personally I find the whole app abit overwhelming and haven't used it much.
Protakinote - $2.99
This isn't really a notetaking program per se, this is really set-up to do to make little handwritten checkbox type lists. Cool though.
Not notetaking but related:
Dropbox - Free
Dropbox is a must have, it's the easiest way to upload pdfs and other files from work and be able to access them on your iPad.
Paperport Anywhere - Free
Paperport Anywhere. Will let you take pictures of paper documents, it will convert them to pdfs and store them in a dropbox cloud that you can access from your iPad or your Desktop later. Very useful.
PDF-it - $2.99
Actually an iPhone app, but works great on iPad too. Sometimes taking notes on paper is the easiest thing, but then I take a picture with my ipad camera, import the pictures into PDF-It and can quickly make a single PDF of notes that I can email. I use this fairly regularly.
Goodreader - $4.99
Not a handwriting notes taking app, but GoodReader is fantastic for everything else, it reads and lets you make notes on PDFs, doc, ppt and xls files and more. While I play around with alot of notetaking apps, I really haven't needed any other document reader since I got Goodreader. When I get an email, I just press and hold the attachment and then select Goodreader, once the document opens in Goodreader, you're good to go.
Photopen - Free
Nice free app. Take a picture of a whiteboard or something, and then use a red pen to draw on it, easy, simple, free.
Taskboard - 99¢
Taskboard has really nothing to do with notetaking, but I use it as my todo list. You have columns that you can move little cards around on, it's very visual. It's like a little virtual screen with index cards, you move the tasks around or pull what you are working on to the top. I have collumns for "now", or "on hold" etc and I move projects around as needed.
