#9 in Productivity - February 2011
The screenshots show the making of a multi-media note...
Much more than a "notes" app, Moe's Notepad gives you the power to record ideas and thoughts you have, quickly, on the fly, without having to name or categorize them. What kind of thoughts might you record?
* shopping lists
* photos of cars, animals, plants, or other items to check out
* audio/video walkthroughs of real estate (yes, it's ready for the camera in the iPod 2!)
* fingertip sketches
* stories, meetings, classes, lectures, jokes, concerts, and other audio gems
* to-do lists
* citizen journalism pieces
* audio/visual emails
For each note, Moe's Notepad stores:
* audio
* photo - works with iPad 2's camera!
* video
* freehand sketching
* text
* tags
* GPS location
Later, you can easily find a note with simple yet powerful filters. You only have to remember one little thing about it to find it:
* some text within it
* some tag you assigned to it
* some notion of when you recorded it
* some notion of where you recorded it
(The latter is accomplished with particular flair. All your notes are displayed as pins on a map. You then a box around the notes you want. See the last screenshot.)
Now you've found your note again. Would you like to edit it? Moe's Notepad really shines here:
* audio - trim, change volume, strip silence, reverse, change speed
* visual - organize any number of images and/or videos
* image - crop, resize, change brightness
* drawing - rectangular box or freehand
* video - trim, create thumbnail, grab frames
* text - insert data from Address Book
* tags - choose from list or type in new
* location - drag, set from Address Book
* date/time
What next? In many cases, you'll want to share your note with the outside world. Moe's Notepad provides several ways to do this:
* email
* MoeMail - email directly into the note lists of other Moe's Notepad/Notes users
* Facebook - upload text, images, videos
* Camera Roll - copy images/videos to and from your Camera Roll
* iTunes File Sharing - transfer audio/image/video files to your laptop
* (integration with web services is coming)
Or maybe your note is about something you have to do later. You can set an "Alert" for a note that causes it to be opened automatically sometime in the future. You can choose which media within the note to display or play! The alert will notify you even if Moe's Notepad isn't running, even if your device is asleep.
Soon, you'll have 100s of notes. You may finding yourself wanting to email, upload, rename, or re-tag many notes at once. No problem! Moe's Notepad allows you to select more than one note, and edit, email, or upload them all at once.
With all these features, you might think Moe's Notepad would have many, many screens to plod through. Not so! Moe's Notepad is the only iPad app that implements splitter bars, allowing you to freely allocate screen space. You can choose to see the note list, and all the characteristics of the selected note(s) at one time. Or you can tap the zoom button on a splitter bar and see its pane expand to fill the entire screen for detailed viewing and editing. Touch the zoom button again to return the splitter bars to their previous positions. (Moe's Notepad remembers separate sets of splitter positions for landscape and portrait device orientations.)
NOTE: Many of the advanced editing features listed above can be tried for free a few times. Then you can purchase just the in-app upgrades for the features you use.
History Note: In 2010, Moe's Notepad was published by the San Francisco App Studio, which went out of business. Unfortunately, this required that this app be re-launched by Moe's Kitchen, the original creator. If you bought Moe's Notepad last year, thank you very much! I hope you will consider checking out the new Moe's Notepad.
