Sunday, July 18, 2010

Notes N More Update available

The new version of Notes N More has been approved and is available for download / update from the iTunes App Store. The following major features were added -

1. Voice Memos
Ability to play or record and take notes simultaneously. It is also possible to add time stamps of the voice memos in your notes section

2. Freehand scribble
Ability to create notes by drawing with your finger or stylus. There are multiple color, background and color options. It is also possible to pick an image from the photo library and annotate it with freehand.

3. Tasks
A one click view of all open (unfinished) tasks

4. Cloud Sync
Ability to export notes and multimedia items to a cloud storage system and access them from your desktop.
Ability to store files from your desktop into the cloud store and accessing them in your mobile device.
Ability to share cloud items via email, twitter or facebook.


Notes N More Desktop (Version 1.0.1, 24MB)
Mac OSX (Leopard or higher and Intel Macs only)

The desktop application requires Java Runtime Environment version 6.
If using OS X, this is included by default with the OS.
If using Windows, you can download it from http://java.com


23 comments:

Miki said...

Aashish,

I Can't seem to find your email address, so I'm writing this bug report as a comment.

I have updated to the newest version of Notes N More ver: 1.4

When running on an iPhone 2G FW 3.1.2, the application crashes when trying to open any collection in the Collections tab.

Please fix!

Thank you.

Aashish Patil said...

Hi Miki,

Thanks for reporting. I was able to reproduce the issue and was able to fix. Will submit a bug fix upgrade soon.

Currently, it affects any iPhone / iPod devices with versions less than 4.0.

It does not affect the iPad version.

Its a UI issue related to viewing of collection contents due to use of an API only available in 3.2 and 4.0. You can still continue creating notes and assigning them to collections.

As a temporary measure you can use the Daily or Calendar views which can be filtered by a Collection by clicking on button in the top-left.

Thanks for your patience,

Aashish

Bill said...

Aashish,

I am using the latest version of Notes n More on my iPad 3G, iPhone 3GS (iOS4), and the latest desktop version on my iMac (OS 10.6.4).

I have acquired an ATT Synaptic account and successfully loaded a note from my iPad to it. I have also been able to download that note on my Mac (but it seems that every time I open my desktop app I have to re-download it. The notes are apparently not saved. Is this correct??

Also when I try to upload a document from my Mac I always get an upload error "Error uploading file //nnm/1279485088860.rtf is not a valid object path
I get this error no matter what document type and which path I try to use. Help!

And even if I could there does not seem to be a mechanism to establish a new tag for it.

Also, I am unable to download that note from the cloud to my iPhone.

Please tell me what I'm doing wrong or fix these bugs in this Great App!

Thank you,
Bill

Aashish Patil said...

Hi Bill,

You are right. In the current version the app needs to be connected to read the "text" portion of notes. However, any multimedia items (e.g. video, image,...) once downloaded are available locally and do not need to be downloaded.

You are not doing anything wrong. There seems to be a bug with the file uploads from the desktop.

I've updated the desktop application with the bug fix. Please download the latest version, delete the old application folder and use the latest one instead. Once the upload succeeds, the note / file will be downloadable from the iPhone / iPad by clicking on "+ -> Cloud Files".

Let me know if you run into any other issues.

Thanks,
Aashish

Anonymous said...

Aashish,

Thanks for the super fast response. I have updated the desktop app and it does work correctly. However, I still have a bit of confusion about tagging an item. There is no way to do it that I've seen from the desktop app during the upload.

Also on the iPad app, it took a bit of doing to download the note I added from the desktop and include it in a new collection I created. I feel that this process needs some work to make the process flow either more understandable or more visible and controllable. I basically just clicked my way around a few times until lo and behold I had it downloaded (that part is straightforward) and in the collection I wanted - but not with a tag (at least that I was aware of unless getting it in the collection put that tag on it), and not sure how I did it

Anyway, I can now use the app as advertised - it's a really useful app with a very clean interface. I look forward to future features.

Thanks,
Bill

Aashish Patil said...

Hi Bill,

I understand the confusion now.

The confusion arises because the cloud store categorizes notes based on tags while the app uses the concept of collection. I will clarify the documentation around this and improve the process in the future.

When you put a note from the desktop into the cloud, you can assign it additional tags after the file upload is complete. The uploaded file should show up under a tag called 'Files'. There, right click on the file and click on 'Add a Tag' to add additional tags.

When you put a note from the desktop to cloud to device, it needs to be first downloaded. The app will wait for the user to initiate download because the files could potentially be large (e.g. videos, audio, ...).

Thanks for the feedback and I'll work on improving the process in the future.

Regards,
Aashish

K.S. said...

Dear Aashish,

Thank you for a great application (Notes N More). I have bought it today and started using it on my iPhone.

One very important question. The cloud/desktop sync feature is crucial to me. Being able to sync with a desktop application is even more important than sending the data to the cloud. However, what you seem to provide is syncing via AT&T service.

AT&T services are available only to US domestic customers. This is not clearly stated on the iTunes Store pages. I am moving now to the UK, but I am also travelling a lot in Europe.

Is there any other way to transfer my data from the iPhone to my desktop computer?

Best wishes,

Kris

Aashish Patil said...

Hi Kris,

You are right. The AT&T service requires a US credit card and address to sign up though once signed up the service is accessible anywhere. I will clarify this on the iTunes page.

Currently, one way to move items to a desktop is using the FTP option. If you have a Mac, there is an inbuilt FTP service (System Preferences -> Sharing -> File Sharing) or if you are using Windows, you can use one of the free FTP servers (e.g. http://filezilla-project.org/).

I am working on a pure desktop export option but its not there in the current version.

Sorry for the confusion,
Aashish

BillWillard said...

Can Notes and More files be saved on an Apple Me account or Apple iDisk file?

Anonymous said...

Or dropbox?

Anonymous said...

Dear Aashish,

Thank you for a great application (Notes N More). I have bought it today and started using the iPad.

Is it possible to make new groups for task?
Home
Work
Waiting
.....

And give the task a start-end date?

Regards, Jos



Best wishes,

Kris

Aashish Patil said...

Currently, it is not possible to save to Apple's Me / iDisk or Dropbox.

The cloud sync feature may be used by US customers to save notes or share files from desktop.

Thanks,
Aashish

Aashish Patil said...

Hi Jos,

It is possible to use the collections to group tasks.

Each task can be assigned a date which essentially becomes its due date. From the edit view, click on the small 'calendar' button in the bottom toolbar.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Aashish

Moyado said...

Its a powerful app!  I like the voice memos and ftp sync features. 
What  I dont like is the paper backgrounds on the ipad version , looks too noisy and it doesnt have a good repeat sequence , it should have blank background option. Please!  

Anonymous said...

Hello Aashish,
I left you an email, but perhaps it could interests other, so :

I've just bought your appli, which is really great.
Anyway, the first reason I bought it is that I'm looking for a notes app able to sync with a FTP server as I want to sync notes with my own NAS, and not through any cloud service.
I then wrote a test note, and tried to upload it to my NAS, notes n more answer "transfer succeeded" but there's nothing on my ftp server.
I'm sure about rights and other usual settings, but still see nothing. Could it be a bug as I'm trying to transfer through ftp://1.2.3.4/home/ instead of ftp://myftp.servername.com/home/ ???
Second question, once I've uploaded my notes to my ftp server, is there a way to download them back to my Ipad ??
Thanks !
Best regards.

ALD said...

I also am using the blog to report a bug.

I am seeing randomly truncated lines of text displayed when using NotesNMore on my iPad. When on Recents page some notes and tasks are truncated while others are not. I need to see entire first line of text for each entry, if possible.

Aashish Patil said...

Hi ALD,

This was an issue with earlier versions of Notes N More. This is fixed in the current version but some earlier notes may still display this issue.

Can check to see if you have any updates available in the App Store app and if yes, upgrade to the latest version.

If you have the latest version of the app, can try the following -
Open a note that has this truncation issue, edit it and close it. Let me know if that fixes the issue.

Feel free to contact me at aashish.notes.improv@gmail.com

Thanks,
Aashish

Billwillard said...

I take a lot of notes in meetings. Sometimes it is commitments or an idea. Sometimes I need to add a task in the middle of a note taking session. The current work around is to write the task and then copy the task and then paste it into a new task. Is there a way to create tasks inside notes?

Aashish Patil said...

Hi Bill,

Good point and it makes sense. I will look into this.

One question - are you using an iPad or iPhone?

Thanks,
Aashish

Anonymous said...

Hi Aashish,

The app is really cool but just one stupid question - how do you select and delete something on the iPad version?

Cheers, Tony

Aashish Patil said...

Hi Tony,

To delete an item, just swipe your finger horizontally across it - similar to the built-in mail app.

Thanks,
Aashish

Aashish Patil said...

To follow up on Bill's comment on creating tasks while taking notes.

The latest version 1.5 now has the ability to simply select text within a note and create a new task from it while still continuing to take your notes.

Thanks,
Aashish

Anonymous said...

Hi Aashish,

Thanks for the reply - easy when you know how!

Tony

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