A new solution was discovered by a team member last week. We’ll update the post after we have beat up on the case for a month about how it’s wearing. Meanwhile, the case… Russell+Hazel has created a leather case that holds a pad of paper and pen as well your iPad, in it’s own protected pocket. The case comes in Black, White and Gold. There is also small pockets for cards, etc…

It might be a great way to travel light and keep a professional look.

From time-to-time, we just need to jot down a quick note. For handwritten notes, most often the solutions are stickies like. Those solutions leave the notes as handwriting, just like our little yellow pads on our physical desktop.

An app, MyScript Memo, is nice Universal app that is between the paper pads and the big notepads. Write a bit of text, add a photo or draw… limited to a single page each. The text entry, note page, offers quick access buttons across the top. From left to right, ‘Notes’ is a picker for your previous created notes, ‘Undo’/'Redo’, Pencil (tap and hold to adjust pen tip thickness and ink color), Eraser (tap and hold to erase the whole page), Lasso is to circle any/all of the text to convert, Settings, Photo (take a picture or use a picture from the iPad library to use in a note), and the ‘send’ button (send as text or the page as an image).

Choosing the ‘send’ button on the upper left corner gives you the option to send the note as a image or as text. Choosing ‘image’ gives you an image of the note (background optional). MyScript Memo lets you save the image to an email, add to your clipboard (copy/paste to another app) or save the image of the note to your iPad’s Photo Library. There is also social and cloud options of Facebook, Twitter and Evernote.

Tap the ‘Lasso’ button to draw an circle around the area you want to capture. This way you can convert only part of the text if you prefer having some left in handwritten form. You can also select all of the page by tap/hold on the Lasso button. With text boxed, you are offer a menu to delete that text, export as an image (like above) or have the handwriting converted by MyScript Memo to text.

With ‘Export to Text’ chosen, you are given a pop up of the converted text. You may notice in the screen shot below, the converted note is not sharable in the ‘free’ version of MyScript Memo. You can go back to the handwritten note page by tapping the ‘Cancel’ button. If you decide to pay $2.99 through the in-app purchase you get: Select actual text to copy/paste, email text, SMS text and submit to Facebook, Twitter and Evernote. All of these are actual Text and not the image of the text.

Interesting, while you can select some or all of the text in the note, you are not able to edit the text.

For a ‘simple’ looking app, MyScript Memo packs a lot of options in the Settings area. A very long list of languages to choose to have the conversion work with, adding words from your personal dictionary… what pen and paper defaults you want to start each note with too. The option for “.notes export” will put the notes you create with MyScript Memo in with the notes in the Mail app on the Mac.

Backgrounds available are lined white, blank white, grid, lined yellow and a grid/lined combo.

Images inserted into MyScript Memo notes can be resized and moved as you need. They stay with the notes as created if the notes is exported as a image or the text is converted. It is handy to have the ability to have some text be converted while the arrows around a image are left as they where created, three parts come together into one exported item.

Selecting ‘Notes’ gives you a list of notes you have created, the option to delete those notes and create new notes. After a bit of using MyScript Memo, we found that key reference information should be written in the upper left corner of the note so it shows in the list as thumbnails are not resized.

Sincerely Ink Cards has all of their usual cards to cover Birthdays, other ‘Holidays’ and even Thank You (we use the Thank You cards for follow ups to our client meetings). The addition of the Valentines Day cards to the FREE Universal app means we can use pictures we have, add some text, tell the Sincerely service where to send the card and they print/mail it right out. Even better than a small bundle of flowers is a personalized card… well, we hope so, cards are so easy and inexpensive when we create them on our iPads!

Jaja stylus, which is currently fully funded but still open on Kickstarter, sent an update this evening telling of ProCreate updating their software to use the pressure sensitive pen action. They are still looking to work with other software developers to enhance their apps too.

If you have not tried ProCreate, artists should really take a look. It holds too many features to try to explain here, the bullet list alone takes several pages. In the developer’s words:

The new HD canvas is bigger than a Bluray movie, and captures an incredible amount of detail and achieves quality like never before on a mobile device. And, of course, artists will still be able to create 16 layers and access 100 redo/undo states! A first in its class.

As a first for a mobile painting app, Procreate is engineered to allow creation of completely new brushes in a few easy steps. Make every brush your own with 16 fully-customisable characteristics, many of which are unique to Procreate. Import anything from your Photos library to create endless effects!

Procreate uses the advanced OpenGL Silica™ painting engine which has been engineered exclusively for iPad, to use every drop of juice from the GPU (graphical processing unit). The result is unparalleled performance on a mobile device, from incredibly responsive brush strokes and 64-bit smudge sampling, to full brush customisation. 

For written notes that will be shared outside of the office, there are two apps used that will take the written notes and convert the ink to text. PhatPad and WritePad, interesting both done by the same developer.

Why two apps? Because there are different ways people work with their handwritten notes and switching within a single app would get confusing as you try to remember if that is a feature you want/need in the interface your using.

In short, the differences comes down to if you want to work with your written words or with type. Everything else like sorting notes, views, dictionaries and sharing is the same.

In the case of WritePad, your handwriting is converted to text as you write. You then edit the typed words to correct any letters wrong or to move words around.

For PhatPad, the app leaves the words in ink till you tell it to convert. This means that while you can edit the converted text, you can also edit your handwritten ‘ink’ text prior to converting. This conversion process carries over to shapes too so a round bit your wrote can become a graphic circle instead of a ‘O’.

Everyone has an opinion about whether handwritten ink converted to text programs work. It really has to do with your handwriting. Some systems ‘learn’ as you write and correct… we have seen results all over the place with that… some people it gets every word and others not a single letter. If you truly want to use the feature for your notes, you need to learn a bit to help things along. Try writing letters in every fashion you know and see how they convert, use the successful style going forward for best results. An ‘e’ is a great example where you can write it with three lines ‘E’ or a single line ‘e’ or like a reversed 3… we have found the single line reversed 3 works the best.

This all gets to be more fun now that you can get either PhatPad or WritePad to recognize your handwriting in 7 languages: English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

You choose a default language and the conversion engines looks for letters/words in that letter style. The actual interface is available in English, German and French.

If you find you need more than one language to write in, you can add more languages to the single instance of the app for about half the price of buying another full copy of either program.

We also mentioned that Adonit is showing off a version of the Jot Stylus that is pressure sensitive, telling your iPad how hard your pressing via Bluetooth. To be sure you enjoy the full capabilities of the pressure sensitive iPad Stylus… when it is released… Adonit has released their own drawing/painting iPad app. Below we will cover what the JotStudio app does for you, but let us point out that it is free this week only.

Choosing to create a new page gives you the options for a blank white or black page, lined paper, graph paper and storyboards.

From the left side of your drawing area is a pop out drawer with the types of drawing devices and ink colors. JotStudio  was designed to make the tools quick to get to so your time is spend drawing and not navigating through endless menu pull downs.

On the right side of the image, we did a quick scribble of each of the pens so you can see the result. The ‘pencil’ is light and skips all the way up to the chisel tip marker. The ‘undo’/'redo’ options on the left are handy rather than having to erase all the time when making a small mistake. JotStudio also has enhancement tools to copy, paste, rotate and scaling is available.

Images are saved to the JotStudio desktop where you can view as thumbnails. Tap one to open it, choose the ‘+’ to create a new page, share, and the bookmark icon will let you apply a color bookmark ribbon to a note.

Save your creations to your iPad as JPEGs, share via email or Print directly from the JotStudio app.

Photo enhancing/editing keeps getting more powerful on the iPad. Tapping, pinching and sliding all works more naturally for zooming into spots on a photo for fine tuning.

Photogene for the iPad has received a big leap forward in the mobile photo editing world via a update today. This update includes enhancements to the included filters, including Clarify that we normally only have access to use on a iPhone only app.

Beyond filter updates, Photogene has received a few features that are not even found on many desktop photo editing solutions. Cloning a image is one of them that is made easy with the fingers or a stylus. Also, you can now copy from one image and use in another image. Photogene is one of the few apps that lets you have access to your images to create collages without the need to have location services turned on.

Exporting your enhanced images through Photogene has a very long list of options. Send via email, to Cloud services, share through social sites and post directly to your blog.

A new feature that surprised us was the ability to export wirelessly a image from your iPad to another iPad that has Photogene loaded. This capability is supported with specialty apps, not usually built into a editing app.

A feature becoming more popular in photo apps is the ability to choose to have the images your working on professionally printed. Photogene for iPad offers to print to cards or magnets for a small charge.

The Universal app IntoNow has been out a while. Now shown as from Yahoo, will listen to a TV show or Movie and tell you about it. Then, to keep your whole life social, you can share with others that you are watching the show. Friends and strangers can share their watching history.

With the update this weekend, more info about the TV show or Movie is available right away. When watching a show, launch the app and tap the big green screen button for IntoNow to listen to the show. Based on the digital signature of the show, you will get a result showing you who else is or has watched the show, who is in the show and discussions about it.

Tapping any of the information shown will expand that information through a window on the right. Swiping these will close or expand. Tap a person in the show results in more info on that actor and other shows they ave been in.

The options along the left of the IntoNow app will show you what you and others have watched before, particulars about previously ‘liked’ shows as well will tell you things you may like to watch.

Choosing a show that you watched earlier or that someone else flagged will result in the same info that you would view if the show was live. IntoNow shows you who else flagged the show, reviews, discussions, more info on the actors and ‘links’. The links shown below center/low on the page are short cuts to info on IMDb, the show’s site and Wikipedia. Also, if the show is available on iTunes or HuluPlus. Tapping their logo will take you to view the show on those services.

‘Official’ is a link to open a site related to the show your looking at.

Wikipedia is always a handy source for more info, where there is a page available for the show, IntoNow offers a button that opens the page within the app.

PaperPort Notes has the concept of a pile of pages of paper, inside of grouped stacks. Each page can be treated as an individual enhanced page so you aren’t stuck with one note type through the whole group of pages.

Starting with a blank page, the choices of how you capture notes are all in the upper right cover. In the screen shot below starting to the right of the title ‘Testing’:

The book icon is Bookmarks and Search.

The microphone icon is for audio recording that is attached to that page… if you share a page from the stack, the audio goes with it, but not audio recorded while other pages where open. This is a audio recording and not the Speech to Text feature.

The ‘T’ button is for typing text which can be tuned with the extra bar that opens (and can be collapsed) beneath the title bar. The tuning features include font size, how the text will appear on the page and the color of the text. Notice the ‘Font’ selecting (there is a very long list of font options) is handled through the button just above the keyboard low on the screen. Fonts are for the whole text area, it does not effect a single word in a text box. Below is the text appearing in the Sticky text area. Text boxes can be moved around the page.

The speech to text feature in PaperPort Notes is handled from the above typed text note creation option. You tap the screen to create a box, then select the ‘Tap to Speak’ button just above the keyboard. Speak, then the Dragon Voice Recognition engine will create text in the box, which can then be edited. Your results will vary depending on how you speak for the app to convert… we have a couple folks that the program gets perfect just about every time.

After the ‘T’ typed notes option is the Pen button. Both the pen and the next ‘Highlighter’ button have optional pen thickness and colors of ink. Next is the eraser to get rid of items on the page that aren’t as you hoped. To the left of the top of the page is Prev/Next page navigation and the Undo/Redo buttons. Undo is pretty handy if you choose the wrong pen thickness, tap the button and quickly re-draw.

Below is the same PaperPort Note page as above but the ‘text box’ option was changed to show you don’t have to have a yellow sticky look, it can be transparent so the text is on the actual page. Along with the background of typed notes, the frame/border can also be adjusted. As well, the ‘T’ text box can have a image inserted into it.

The notes pages you create in PaperPort Notes can be viewed in large thumbnails via the Menu button. Tapping the button shows you a list of pages in that stack (there are searchable). Selecting the ‘Notes’ button will take you up a level to see the stacks and their names. This is where you create new stacks of pages.

The speed of the app makes it very usable during meetings. Writing on the iPad screen is done directly on the page rather than a ‘writing box’ along the bottom of the screen many apps does. Typing notes into boxes which can be moved around then or later. Use highlights to make important items stand out and draw diagrams or arrows to help remember later. If your falling behind, just hit the record button to use later.

The ‘app’ is more of a enhanced book application called Color Uncovered. It’s purpose is to help you better understand everything about colors. How your eyes see colors, how your mind ‘sees’ colors, how colors play into the impact of a photo and ads. It is actually a very important subject for anyone that snaps a photo from time to time. As well, helpful to our creative and not so creative folks. It’s a all-ages, everyone app… and it’s free.

Color Uncovered was created by 8 folks with The Exploratorium in San Francisco, California. It encourages you to wonder and ask why, with their help you should be able to get to your answers.

Opening the ‘app’ presents you with a list of contents, or in this case a list Color interactive articles.

You can tap an article to jump right to it is swipe through one at a time. There doesn’t seem to be a must to read the content in order. Articles can have just text or include video, pictures and graphics to help expand on the particular color subject. Color Uncovered provides a little or a lot of information on every aspect of color and using color to deliver the message your looking for.

Some articles have very little interactivity on their opening pages. There is just a short teaser so you can decide if you want to dig deeper. On these pages, Color Uncovered has a button at the bottom that will expand the content to much more detail.

Tapping the ‘more info’ options takes you to more details in the form of text, video and charts. There is a lot here do you can learn the top level basics or spend a lot of time on any of the color subjects Color Uncovered offers. Like this article explaining how that lighting will completely change the impact of a picture way beyond just being brighter or darker. Swipe from side to side to move to the next article.