SimpleNote

SimpleNote is probably my favorite app on the iPad. Sure, it's free, but that's not why I love it. It only allows you to make, and store, simple notes without any formatting (bold, italics, and the like). So why all the likey? It has always been a good app, but last week they released version 2 which adds important new and powerful features.

Syncronicity

The ultimate in smooth automatic syncing is the key to SimpleNote's beauty. If you are a Mac or Windows user you can find free (or low cost) software that "talks" to SimpleNote. So what? Currently I have all my notes automatically synced in 5 places: iPad, iPhone, Mac at office, Mac at home, and on the SimpleNote website. This automatic syncing, in and of itself, makes SimpleNote a thing of beauty. Visit the SimpleNote downloads page to learn more about other software programs that "play nice" with SimpleNote on a Mac, Windows, Palm, or Android systems.

Tags

Version 1 had no tags or folder system. Simply a long list of note titles. It wasn't impossible to find notes if you had a lot of them, but it was a bit of a struggle. With their new tag system it is super easy to categorize notes and subsequently find them for later viewing. Right now the tags only sync to SimpleNote on the web, iPad and iPhone. I imagine some of the outside developers will rework their software for Mac/Windows so that those software programs also recognize the SimpleNote tags. In the screenshot (above) it shows what it looks like when I've chosen the tag "multimedia": the result is I see only the 5 notes having that tag plus a small advert at the top.

Live Sharing

For educators this feature has mucho potential. If you activate sharing for a specific note then SimpleNote provides you with a web address where the sharing takes place. Email this web address with whomever you like. In real time multiple people can make changes to the "note" and the results, once again, are automatically synced across all your devices! When done with the "sharing session" then turn off the share option for that note. Why is this potentially important? There are likely many benefits including live online discussions between students, collaborative editing of text documents by a group, live updated class notes where the notetaking responsibility is distributed across several students in a class session, and many more options. Sharing may be the most important new feature in SimpleNote.

Create Web Pages

An alternative to sharing is to create a web page. This is somewhat akin to the sharing option in that SimpleNote will automatically give you a web page location where others can see a specific note. However, using this option others can not make changes to the text. On the other hand, you can continue to make changes to the note and the webpage will be automatically updated. Very nice.

Full Screen

This is a very nice option. In the lower right corner of your iPad/iPhone screen is a grey icon for viewing an individual note full screen. Tapping this icon hides the ad, the list of other notes using the same tag, and the top toolbar. Very nice for reading longer notes.

Summing Up

I'm sure there are other features of SimpleNote that I'm ignoring at the moment—but this app is certainly worth exploring on your own. You'll need to open a free SimpleNote account at their website. You'll also need to download the free SimpleNote apps for iPad and iPhone using the relevant App Store. The regular free version comes with some limitations: including ads which are shown on part of the SimpleNote screen.

For $5 you can remove ads. For $12 per year you can upgrade to their premium package which removes ads, offers 30 backup versions of notes, allows you to create notes by email, and allows you to create an RSS feed for your notes. I'm still on the fence about whether I'll upgrade to premium. My guess is I will, but I want to give the new free version 2 a month or so of usage before I make a final decision.