Working with OneNote’s Mobile Solution for the iPhone: MobileNoter

Posted by | 08/25/2009 | 23 Comments

img_1070I’m lucky to be participating in the Beta for an iPhone mobile solution for OneNote called : MobileNoter. Yes, it’s an iPhone app that allows you to sync Notebooks between your desktop and your iPhone. It’s early in the Beta but so far I’m impressed.

Here’s a bit about how it is working currently.

MobileNoter installs on your iPhone, and you have to have a desktop (Tablet top?) client installed as well. MobileNoter creates a new Notebook on your computer called simply Mobile Noter. Under that Notebook you have a Mobile Notes section. The corresponding Notebook on your iPhone is called Mobile Noter as well. Anything that you jot down (no there’s no Inking on the iPhone) gets synced between these two folders. You jot these notes down via Quick Notes on the iPhone app, which as the name implies allows you to capture a quick note. Of course you can select other Notebooks to sync up as well. In my early testing, I’ve created a Mobile Test Notebook and am working with that as my primary sync folder.

Inking shows up well in the iPhone app, as you can see from the image below. You do have to use the iPhone’s multi-touch features to expand any page you want to view as everything appears very tiny in its native format. I have not synced any audio or video yet, but pictures do come across as displayed on the OneNote page.

This has been a long time coming for OneNote.   EverNote has leapt ahead of OneNote on multiple platforms, especially the iPhone where it is always listed as a favorite app. I’m anxious to see how MobileNoter continues to develop in the future. It is still way early in the Beta process, and I’m sure there is more to come, but for the moment MobileNoter gives those of us who love OneNote a chance to have our OneNote data when we’re out and about from our computers.

For Inkers, OneNote is certainly a better experience than EverNote. Evernote does allow you to Ink notes and I use that feature quite a bit. But for taking lots of notes, the OneNote Inking experience is far better in my opinion. EverNote hasn’t quite forgotten the Inkers out there, but I get the sense that they are devoting resources in other areas currently, and this may give the OneNote and MobileNoter teams the opening they need.

At least among those of us who value taking notes in Ink.

The first three pictures are from the iPhone app. The last two from the Desktop client.

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Category: Software

About the Author (Author Profile)

Warner Crocker is a professional theatre director, producer and playwright and also a Tablet PC enthusiast. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Tablet PCs. Send email to Warner.
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  • ethibault

    “There is no Inking on the iPhone in MobileNoter or Evernote”

    too bad :-(
    one could think that with a capacitive screen the iphone could be good at it, am I wrong ?

  • scoobie

    @ethibault
    that’s an interesting question, I’d be interested in the answer

  • scoobie

    Question on syncing – is it seemless?

    Preferably , I don’t want to have to keep booting the sync agent to sync the two devices.

    Ideally I’d like the option for me to just be working at my PC and I click on the Mobilenote application on my iphone, and that way it syncs automatically, detecting that the wireless “home” is near.

    Also I’m nervous if my notes are being stored on an external server – have I understood this right? What is the role of the external server in this? I’d have thought the iphone could sync direct to the client app and onwards to onenote itself

    How does syncing work?

  • scoobie

    @Vitaly
    thanks for your reply.
    Don’t forget ON tags are used to prioritse and structure information in a three dimensional way.
    So in my opinion tags need to be searchable.
    For instance, all my most important notes are tagged with a “review” icon. It would be useful to search through these “review” tags on the iphone.
    Adding tags however, I guess I could live without in the short term, though ideally I’d like that too!

  • http://MobileNoter.com Vitaly

    Inking: this can be done, and we will do if users ask. But I have a feeling that this is rather a ‘toy’ feature for iPhone, isn’t it? Do you know any iPhone app where pointing by finger is made as good so it can be practically used for daily note taking?
    Syncing: I will new post about it on mobilenoter blog
    @scoobie, thanks for your suggestions

  • ethibault

    inking on iphone would be a killer app !
    imagine you have a notebook all the time with you
    you can sort them etc.

    because when you note on paper after what do you do with them ?

  • bluespapa

    The Palm Pre has a similar capacitive touch, and there’s a third party app that emulates PalmOS designed for resistive technology. A third party app for PalmOS for touch drawing, Diddlebug, works, but I find it frustrating. The lines aren’t really good enough to jot a number or not down, even with a capcitive jotter pen.

    That said, there’s a beta drawing program for the Pre that’s more accurate, but the lines are too thick to permit writing useful notes, and you can’t save them.

    If the thickness of the lines were controlable, and it were accurate enough to read, ABSOLUTELY it would be ESSENTIAL to a OneNote-type app. One of the best things about my old Palm device was that I could jot a phone number or date FAST in situations where typing or even writing with Palm script is frustrating, and carrying pen and paper defeats the whole purpose of having digitized notes.

    THIS IS NOT A NOVELTY TOY. This vital, especially if I can get it all synced effortlessly into my OneNote notebooks.

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