Monthly Archives: March 2010

My children are 6 and 9 years old and so it is important for me to keep a log of their early years and to have a visual record of their lives during this most important time. I have many photographs taken from the day they were born, but these just sit on my PC in a folder and only come to life when I take the time to look through them. The problem is that they do not come to life fully because it can be difficult to relate them to a particular time. A picture may say more than a thousand words, but a picture with 10 words says a lot more than just a picture. Something as simple as knowing the date it was taken adds meaning and when you throw in descriptions, locations and more the moment that disappeared a long time ago rushes back through time and hits you right between the eyes.

I have been using Momento as a journaling app on the iPhone and it is without doubt a clever piece of coding. Each day’s notes can be assigned multiple pictures and your social networking mutterings will automatically be included alongside information from last.fm and Flickr. The interface is simple, but offers enough personality to make you appreciate the content you build over time and it all works very well. However, there is a big problem with the app at the moment and that is the fact that you can only view your diary on the iPhone itself. You can export the entries as an XML plist which is close to useless in the real world. Even if I could be bothered to attempt to read it in another program the process would be so cumbersome as to ruin the entire experience. I wasn’t too bothered about the lack of flexibility in Momento until Ewan pointed it out in the discussion that followed his article at Mobile Industry Review, and so I looked for something else. As it happens I found a solution by accident.

I needed a decent note taking application and plumped for Awesome Notes. I had used the free version many months ago and decided to try it again. The problem was that I thought I had bought it previously and so I pressed the £2.39 icon and waited for the message telling me it was free because I had bought it before. Bugger! No message and £2.39 spent on an app I was not entirely convinced about. Anyway, I decided to cut down on Cappuccinos for the rest of the day to balance the finances and started to play.

About 2 hours later I was convinced that this is one of the very best iPhone apps available. It looks beautiful for a start and the marriage between sensible aesthetics and personality is as good as you could wish for. The customisation abilities alone make will make it work for most people in an area that is as personal as can be in the world of bland computerised data. You can choose backgrounds, colour schemes for each folder, change the font and do just about anything else to make it look the way you want. As a note taker it is fine and works like the myriad of other iPhone note takers available, just with more style. You can add To Do items as well and this area is simple, but just enough to please the majority who need this facility. It will not be welcomed by those who obsess about To Dos and who would rather create long lists than actually complete the tasks within, but for the rest of us it is fine.

I had no intention of using a notes app to create my diary, but a look at the example notes showed me what was possible and I was sold in an instant. A typical note can include photographs from the camera roll or photo folders or you can snap a quick one yourself, but you can also add a map of your current location. This is great feature for those of us who truly want to capture as much detail as possible and is particularly useful for holidays and quick trips away. The display of text, photos and maps is near perfect and mimics the feel of a paper diary well and this is what an electronic diary should be about. It should be able to take you back to that moment and bring back the memories that were special to you at that time.

All of the above is very nice, but how does that beat Momento when it comes to keeping the data secure? Well, enter synchronisation with Google Docs (or EverNote) and the solution is clear. Once you have entered your Google account details the first synchronisation will move your Awesome Note folders online to your Awesome Note account. Each note will of course also be synchronised and crucially retains the full text and photos (as seen below).

Sadly maps are not included and information such as the date of the diary entry is absent, but it may be possible for this to be added in the future although if I am honest I can’t see how. The fact is though that the integration with Google Docs brings many benefits and can easily turn Awesome Note into much more than just a diary. It is designed to be a note taking organiser and it does that extremely well, but with Google Docs attached it could easily become your central store for personal and professional information.

The goodness continues with a clever passcode lock which can lock the whole app or just individual folders and a quick memo option. Throw in badge counters for To Dos and the promise of further development and we are looking at a seriously impressive app. It’s not perfect- I would like to see the ability to easily add map locations by searching for them rather than just using my current position or having to manually find somewhere by hand, but besides that I am struggling to think of extra features that I need. Calling an app Awesome Note is asking for trouble, but ‘Awesome’ feels more than appropriate to me.

More details are available at http://bridworks.com. Lite version also available.