Notes Plus For The iPad

Aside from Pages, which is the top-grossing iPad app of all-time, one of the best-selling note taking apps for the iPad is Notes Plus - Handwriting, Typing, Shape Drawing and Sound Recording [iTunes link].  So, I decided to give it try after reading some positive reviews.

I have to say it's very easy to use.  Here's my test page:

Using my Pogo Stylus, I was able to get pretty good control over my handwriting.  There is a function to draw shapes nicely if you draw them big enough.  You can also type in notes and add a recording to your notes.  As you can see, you can also export to PDF (which shows up iTunes when you click on the Apps tab), you can e-mail yourself the PDF then save it to an app like iBooks, or you can upload it to Google Docs.

There is a bug when uploading to Google Docs.  The typed words do not show up - only the drawn text and shapes.  The developer is aware of this and is working on a fix.  Also, when you export to PDF and view the PDF on a PC (mine at least), the typed words is a different typeface, sometimes unreadable.  Even when I downloaded it to my iPhone, it looked like this:

When I downloaded the PDF to my iPad, it came out perfect.  I suppose there are typefaces that are on my iPad (via the Notes Plus app) that are not on my PC or iPhone.  The developer is working on an export to JPG and PNG in addition to PDF to get around some of these incompatibilities.

One of my favorite features in Notes Plus is the Palm Pad.  There is a grayed out area that you can adjust to rest the Palm of your hand without affecting your document:

The developer is also working on integration with popular apps like Dropbox, Evernote and iDisk as well as printing with iOS 4.2 and adding images to your notes.

I got Notes Plus for $.99 over the weekend and is normally priced at $4.99.

Here's a video of Notes Plus in action: