I frequently use a whiteboard to convey a concept or have a dialogue with a client.  With whiteboads and whiteboard markers it is a good chance that they are not what you want them to be when you show up at someone’s office:  the whiteboard is blurry or stained and there is usually one red market – the exact color you do not want to use.  I usually carry my own set of whiteboard markers to avoid just such a problem, but I can not carry my own whiteboard, or can I?

An entrepreneur founded DrawTop, to make sure you always have a whiteboard with you.  By taking advantage of the unused space on the back of your laptop, or should I say the space used only for stickers and pictures, the DrawTop provides a whiteboard that is with you when and where you need a whiteboard.  The DrawTop Laptop Whiteboard is a white vinyl sheet that looks simple thanks to an adhesive back and even includes a set of Expo whiteboard markers.  I only wish you could print on these to create a standard whiteboard diagram for  illustration purposes or add your company logo.  I also wonder how it works on Mac’s as the light up Apple Logo may be viewable through the DrawTop.  I guess I will just have to order one and let you know.

Priced at $12 for a single DrawTop , $16 for two, or $10 for a special DrawTop for your tablet of choice.  Available today on the DrawTop website.

Filed in categories: Gear, Laptops and Gear, News

Tagged: Laptop Accessory, Notes

Need a whiteboard? Use the back of your laptop with DrawTop! originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 19, 2011 at 1:00 pm.

[I'm going to share one of my favorite Android apps every week or so. I'm not trying to claim that these are always the best app in its category, but they will be apps I like to use.]

One reason I carry a Smart phone is to be able to capture quick notes effectively. The thing is the form of the note- sometimes, it is best to do it as a voice note, sometimes as a text note, sometimes as a quick scribble. While there are apps for each of these, SoftXPerience’s Note Everything brings it all together in one tool that can be displayed as a quickly accessed widget for Androids.

Note Everything is available for free version or in a ‘pro’ version (est. $4.32) that adds-

• Photonotes
• Checklists
• Durable checklists
• Gallerynotes
• Reminders
• Encryption (password protection)
• Stick notes to statusbar
• Full backup to sd-card

The widget (shown above) can be set for 2×1, 3×1, or 4×1, which basically changes how many quick access buttons it shows- just text; text and voice; or text, voice, and sketch. The notes can be shared in several ways- to Google Docs, the calendar, or to another device via a bar code they can scan, although not all kinds of notes can be shared equally.

With the 4×1 widget set, I can open a note format with a quick tap or tap the icon and get the list of saved notes. I work as a service tech and as I roam the facility I get a lot of people telling me about service needs. With an app like this, I can pop it open and save the note almost instantly. My preferred format is usually a scribbled sketch- a habit leftover from the ‘Notepad’ app in Palm PDAs.

With the Pro version, I can even set a reminder to go off when I am back in the shop or make an icon show in the status bar, making it even harder to forget the note. Tap the bar, select the note, and it opens right up! The ‘share to calendar’ feature makes it a snap to set up quick meetings- make the note now, set the meeting a little later. Its not quite smart enough to recognize phone numbers or dates, but it can capture bits of text to use elsewhere.

The interface is pleasant and user-friendly, and most commands are easy to find and understand. It is also just one of those apps that ‘feels right’ to me when I use it. 2.99 euros (about $4.32 US) is a bit steep for a note app, but I have not regretted getting it.

Paint app and menu

Text app and menu

Main app menu

Filed in categories: Android related, Reviews

Tagged: Android, App, Notes

My Android Apps: Note Everything originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 18, 2011 at 2:00 pm.

If you’re like me, you multi-task all day and have notes all over your office and probably at home. So when I came across the Dane-Elec Z-Pen my heart did a little jig.  The thought that I had found something that would transcribe all of my notes into type-written text that could easily be filed away neatly and electronically, held a lot of interest for me. What made this pen different from some others I had looked at was that it did not require any special paper to use. All I had to do was clip it to the top of my common office pad and away we go!  I had a meeting coming up and tried it on for size. Two hours later I returned to my office and plugged it into my office PC.  The transfer was simple and painless; the output was jumbled and painful.

The software is bundled into the receiver. You simply plug in the device, it is usually recognized quickly and you download three programs: Pen & Ink Viewer (for viewing an exact copy of your handwritten notes); My Script Notes (converting the handwriting to digital text) and Note Searcher (to look up notes by keywords). There isn’t a written manual included; you are expected to go to the website.  After checking the online manual it was suggested that I had started “too high” on the pad which was why even the Viewer software wasn’t accurately reflecting what I wrote.  I quickly tore off those pages and started writing random notes on the third line down from the top of the pad.  This time I could see all of my notes on the screen. I then had to “train” the software to decipher my handwriting. This was a fairly long and tedious process that took about an hour–mainly because I had to keep redoing the training sheets.  It seems my receiver didn’t always want to work when I started on the third line, sometimes I had to start on the fifth etc. I then loaded this into the computer and it proceeded to “read” my writing. Each letter, word or sentence was analyzed and then you correct any of the mistakes the program made in translating. After another half an hour of that I tried to transcribe my random notes from earlier. The result was a combination of broken English and Klingon. I couldn’t bring myself to train the thing again so currently the pen and receiver are sitting on my desk in the “things that still need refining if they are ever going to be useful to me” pile.

The Z-pen retails for about $100. Included in the package is the Z-pen, receiver and USB cord. Can I recommend this product? No, I really can’t. I’d like to think that I’m not an overly impatient gadget user with a Dr.-like scrawl that can’t be deciphered by modern technology. In essence, it should have worked better than it did and if they are going to make the fact that you can use regular paper a selling point, then it shouldn’t require you to navigate all over the page and never knowing if your receiver is picking up all of your words.

Filed in categories: Miscellaneous

Tagged: digital pen, Digitize, Notes

Dane Elec Z-Pen Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 11, 2009 at 10:25 am.

While much of what I need is on the Web in one form or another, there are times I need to access information when there is no network available. This has been, until recently, one of the few real issues I have had with the iPhone: notes taken on my computer can’t be shared easily with my iPhone and vice-versa. Recently, I’ve been using SyncBook, an iPhone app that syncs with my Mac via text files over a local network connection.

There have recently been several different apps released that come at this issue from various angles. I have tried a few, and have come to rely on SyncBook for my needs, for reasons explained below. (A word for all the Windows and Linux folks who will complain that I don’t mention their platform – this is not my decision. The developer is not interested in the Windows market, and has no plans for creating a client there. While this is a negative for many, it holds no barrier to entry to me, so will only slightly come to bear on my final grade. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.)

SyncBook is delivered as a 1 MB app downloaded to your Mac. The iPhone app is purchased from the iTunes Store’s AppStore area at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290800829&mt=8.

I used Palm devices for most of the last decade. While I was a Newton user first (and still would be if the right device/software existed), the Palm III won me over by being in my shirt pocket whenever I needed it. Writing notes and having them sync with my Mac was quick and clean, and gave me all the data I could want in the palm of my hand. I moved up to Documents to Go during the beta test of version 1, and stayed there until DataViz dropped the ball by not providing compatibility with the MissingSync when this became the only way to sync a Mac. I moved to Mark/Space’s excellent Notebook included with that product instead. I was a happy Palm user, having had the same Tungsten|C for over three years when, about a month before iPhone Launch Day in July of 2007, several folks in my office started discussing the looming Launch with me. After a few more such conversations, I decided to get an iPhone and converge my phone and handheld.

(apology/aside for those who have yet to drink the Apple/iPhone Kool-aide)
I have never, from the first time I held that iPhone in my hands, regretted it. I live in a 3G area, my company is very Mac-oriented and many folks use iPhones. Plus, as a member of an area Mac User group, I have a lot of other friends who are also in that camp. In the last year, however, I’ve noticed that everyone everywhere that isn’t a button-down business person or lawyer seems to be toting an iPhone: mothers, pastors, chemists, architects – everyone. I see them at church, in stores, in restaurants, and on the street. Students, musicians, baristas – it’s strange to me that these things are so prominent in my area. (I live in central North Carolina, in an area known as the Research Triangle, where we have loads of high-tech companies, in addition to three large research universities: Duke University, University of NC at Chapel Hill, and NC State University. This may account for the large geek cred of the area.) For these reasons, I assume most of these people are not “Apple fanboys” but True Believers®. So, that’s my bias, but you can see where it comes from.
(end aside)

Here’s how this pair of apps works: Download the Mac version and install it. This will create a folder for saving text files in your Documents folder. Purchase the iPhone app ($3.99) and sync. In order to sync these two, you’ll need to either be on the same wireless network, or create a wireless network on your Mac for the iPhone to connect to. (How to do this is beyond the scope of this review, but it’s trivial. If you’re reading this, you’re enough of a nerd to know how to do this or to have friends who do.)

Run the app on your Mac, and in the iPhone app, click the small gear on the bottom left. This is the “Settings” icon. In Settings, the first item is Syncing. Click to search for your Mac. Once you see it, click to select it and go back to the main window. Now, whenever you want to sync, click the circular arrow on the bottom left of the screen. New notes you create on the iPhone will show up in the list on your Mac, and new text files you place in the folder the Mac app created will show up on your iPhone. (As with any syncing program, changing both versions before syncing will cause data confusion. SyncBook realizes this and does warn you, but how you get out of it is up to you, because you know which changes are more important. It’s easy enough to select all and copy on the Mac, sync, then paste in the copy and compare, but it’s so fast to sync, you shouldn’t let yourself get into this situation.)

While you don’t have to, the latest version of SyncBook Mac has a button to “Add Note” that creates a note in the Notes folder, already added to the list and ready to update. I’ve been using this to create a notes with no problem.

Looking at the Mac window, you can see small color labels on some of the icons. There are unlimited categories you can add to and name as you feel, and a select few colors (helpfully named “Red”, “Orange”, “Green” and so forth) that you can optionally assign to your documents. This can only be done on the iPhone app, but shows up on the Mac at the next sync.

For the money, it’s one of the cheapest and best notes syncing apps I’ve seen. There are freebies that aren’t as powerful or require an odd format on the Mac, or require syncing through a web service, rather than directly. Evernote, the most notable challenger (and one I had been using for a while before finding SyncBook) is one such alternate. I’ll post another review of it later, but, briefly, it has a Mac client (and one for Windows), an iPhone app, and a web app, where you create a login. All data is always synced to the web first, then sent out to other clients. This works wonderfully, until you want to sync something really secure that you don’t want anyone, anywhere, to accidentally have access to – medical records, business info, financial records, whatever. With SyncBook, I can be riding on a train with no network access, fire up my Mac’s ad hoc access point, find that network on my iPhone, and sync everything immediately, securely, and with no worry about network connection speed. (I had only thought this was an issue, thinking no one would really want to look at things posted to a note account, when I saw a tweet from @EverNote commenting on a picture of a whiteboard written in Chinese. They actually sent a link to everyone on their list linking to a user’s data, and admitted that they had no idea what it said. It could have been his phone number, or plans for a new internet device, or the timetable for their bid to world domination. In any case, it was not Evernote’s right to post it. But that’s the choice you have to make when using a web service. SyncBook will never expose your data to anything beyond your local wireless LAN. If you have something you want to keep private, private it shall remain.

There are a few bumps on this road to happiness. For one, the Mac app has almost no control, other than creating, removing and showing notes. You can’t create or edit categories, sort, change labels, or anything else on the Mac. On the iPhone, you can move categories into any order you choose, add and edit categories and colors, and change font shape/size/color globally. There is a search feature on the iPhone app, but other than telling you a certain word or phrase appears in a note, it doesn’t help. (Granted, with no selection feature for text available in the iPhoneOS, this can be partially forgiven. But they could offer to find and move the cursor to the beginning of the target phrase.) Syncing via wireless is great if you have a MacBook of some flavor, but if your machine is the base-level MacPro (the only Macs that don’t ship with a built-in wireless card), you’ll have to figure out another option. One editing snag that continues to irritate me on the iPhone: when I’m editing, or even if I’m scrolling and happen to hold my finger still for too long, it switches to Edit mode, and I lose the scroll-by-flicking that is at the heart of the iPhone. I’d rather be in browse mode until I decide to edit, hit the button and go. Then I’d like to turn off the editing and go back to scrolling, without having to close the document and open it back up.

For me personally, this app combo is a solid 4 out of 5 stars. I don’t create huge notes that need internal searching, and I don’t need Windows. Sorting on the Mac and a slightly more robust viewing/sorting/categorizing feature would add a lot, as would options such as an “edit” button, but it’s so functional for me currently (in my minimalist way) that this cluster of missing features is only one star.

For many others, however, I’d have to rate it 3 or 3.5 out of 5 stars, since Windows compatibility is important, and some may be after more features. While you can’t have the same pricing and distribution structure on Mac or Windows apps that you do with iPhone apps, having an advanced “syncs with Windows” version that only added that capability and cost more but provided a “free” Windows app download would be a great feature for those callous Philistines who insist on staying with the Devil’s OS. (I’m kidding, just kidding. Stop writing hate mail!) Or charge for the Windows version, since he’s probably going to have to hire that out.

Filed in categories: iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: Notes, Software, Syncing

SyncBook iPhone Application Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 19, 2009 at 1:00 am.