Evernote 4.0 for Android has launched today bringing a brand new user interface, some new features and some improvements to older ones along with it.

In a blog post, Evernote has detailed the Android update which should stand to greatly improve the productivity application. Version 4.0 overhauls the application completely. In fact, every single screen within the application has been changed.

Starting with the home screen, the new home screen in Evernote 4.0 now combines all of the familiar note taking options with a series of buttons that allows into features like notebooks and tags. Evernote has also made the home screen easily accessible. Users only have to swipe to the right or tap the elephant in order to get back to get back home.

From the home screen, a swipe left will now take users to a note list.

In fact, swiping gestures are now found throughout the application. From within places like notebooks or tags, users can now use horizontal swipes to move from one category to another.

Evernote has also changed up both the note and notebook features of the app. The look of the note list has been redesigned and the notebook list now has a single view for local lists and ones that others have shared.

Other UI changes include new action bars which are housed along the bottom of the app and allow users to easily edit, share, and tag notes. Navigation on notes also now fades away when users start scrolling. A simple tap makes them return.

Evernote has also added a new feature called Places in which the app will mark a note with the place that it was made, assuming location services are enabled. From the Action Bar, users will then be able to see where they made the note on a map.

The update is also loaded with fixes for several bugs and performance issues as most major app updates are.

This update comes on the heels of Evernote’s purchase of digital inking app Penultimate.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin has promised tight integration between his app and his company’s new acquisition.

Libin also has said that Penultimate will remain the same will remain the same digital ink app that it has always been.

Evernote 4.0 for Android Launches is a post by Adam Mills from Gotta Be Mobile.

Well, well, well. This is an interesting pairing. Evernote is announcing that it has acquired Cocoa Box Design, the company that created the very popular Digital Inking iOS App, Penultimate. The news of the acquisition comes very shortly after Evernote completed a $70 million funding round that puts its valuation at the $1 billion mark. But that’s the business end of the deal. What has me intrigued here is some of the history and the potential for the future.

I’ve used Evernote for quite some time. Many Tablet PC fans will remember Evernote as a digital note-taking app that allowed you to store info, and yes, create notes in Digital Ink. Do you remember the scrolling metaphor for all your notes? Evernote was one of the few companies that paid serious attention to Digital Inking back then. Yes, it did more than Digital Inking, but hey, that was our reason for picking it up. Using a combo of Evernote and RitePen (a part of the Evernote family) was a very good solution for digital note taking for many. (Check out some more links on Evernote and RitePen here.) Oh, and by the way, I believe the founders of Evernote were a part of the handwriting recognition team for Apple’s Newton.

And then along came the mobile explosion. Evernote, which had established itself as multi-platform success was poised to make a move and it did. Scan any top App list and you’ll find very few that don’t mention Evernote. The free and premium paid model seemed to work well, but for Digital Inkers there was a feeling of being left behind as Evernote continued a successful evolution. I can remember Rob Bushway publishing a few posts and a few tweets asking Phil Libin of Evernote when we would see Inking to its mobile Apps.

There were some advances here, but no direct integration. In fact, Penultimate could be tied into Evernote, allowing users to send pages or notebooks to Evernote. Speaking of Penultimate, it is still my favorite Digital Inking App for the iPad. I’ve been using it for quite some time. (BTW, Penultimate was just recently updated as well.)

So, what happens now that Evernote owns Penultimate? Evernote CEO Phil Libin is promising tighter integration between the Apps and also porting it to other platforms. The back end technology for character recognition already exists for searching Ink documents on Evernote’s servers. He’s also promising that Penultimate will remain the simple digital note taking App that it is.

I’m excited to see this marriage of two important Apps in my arsenal. I’m also excited about the potential for what this may mean for Digital Inking on iOS and other platforms. How about you?

Back to Early Roots: Evernote Acquires iOS Inking App Penultimate is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

Last week I started a series on how Tablets help me with my quest for simplicity. As I said in this post, the quest isn’t one that finds me actively searching for some sort of simple holy grail. Rather, solutions often find me as I test new Apps and new solutions. Tablets promise a new paradigm regardless of whether you view them as consumption or creation devices. One of the keys that make that new paradigm possible is something we’ve been talking about for quite some time and that’s Cloud Computing.

With the advent of Google’s GDrive apparently right around the corner we’ve seen some of the other players make some big moves with their Cloud products lately. Dropbox announced some new changes ahead of Google’s announcement. Microsoft is rolling out updates to its solution,  Skydrive. Apple will most likely roll out supposed improvements to its iCloud later this year. Other third party Cloud services (Box, SugarSync, etc…) will also be working to keep up with the competition. The bottom line here is that everyone wants your stuff in their Cloud and not their competitor’s. The good news for consumers and businesses is that we’ll have choices. But as relates to the big three, (Apple, Google, Microsoft) they are each hoping that their respective Cloud solution becomes the tie that binds you to their OS and other products. The third party folks probably have a leg up in the minds of those who don’t want to be tethered to one of the big companies, but, by an large, you can choose just about any Cloud solution and eventually access your data on any device.

And that’s where simplicity comes into play. Easy, thought free, secure access to your data is the most important factor in my mind. I’ve been relying on a mixture of Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud for my Cloud solution for some time. I’ve got accounts with Box, SugarSync, Microsoft, and I’m sure I’ll have a GDrive account as soon as we know what that means. (Like many I discovered this morning my Google Docs storage jumped up to 5GB, presumably in the run up to GDrive’s release. I don’t use Google Docs much, but when I need to it’s there.) The reason I’ve been relying on Dropbox is that no matter what device I’m on it is a simple no-brainer way for me to save or retrieve any file I need to, when I need to. Apple’s iCloud can’t do that. Yet. It needs to if Apple really wants its users to buy into iCloud. But I do use iCloud for syncing contacts and calendars and some media stuff.

At the moment this mixed solution is drop dead simple for me the way I use computers and Tablets. I should say that, with a few exceptions, I could be doing the same with Box or SugarSync. Of course the next few months will determine if I stay with my current solution or not as I try out other options.

What’s most attractive to me with Dropbox has to do with how I move files back and forth from desktops to my Tablet. Today, I’m prepping for a board meeting later tonight. As I work on my notes, financial data, and agenda items, I simply save the files to Dropbox and when I get to the meeting the documents are there when I need to call them up. Microsoft’s Skydrive offers a similar solution at the moment, and if you’re a OneNote user, Microsoft’s Skydrive makes a lot of sense. Word and Excel files work fine with Dropbox and QuickOffice HD, which is the App I use to access those files in a meeting. But OneNote is still in the Microsoft’s Cloud only, unless you use third party Apps, or Microsoft’s OneNote App to access those files. As much as I like OneNote (remember it is Microsoft’s Killer App that they don’t want anyone to know about), I’ve gotten away from using it the way I used to. I look forward to getting reacquainted with OneNote as I get more and more into Windows 8 and whatever Microsoft rolls out with the Office suite.

As a third party solution, Dropbox has attracted a number of developers who use Dropbox as their file storage solution. In fact, I’d say that Dropbox is the de facto Cloud solution for iOS when it comes to documents and files. Other third party vendors have access to their Clouds via APIs as well, but Dropbox, seems to have a real lead in mind share. And mind share and early leads are going to be important drivers in the race to capture your digital life in the Cloud.

As I said, the downside to all of this Cloud competition will be the choice we as consumer’s have to make. Even though you get some free storage with each solution currently available, eventually, if you use the Cloud the way I do, you’ll need to expand your storage into a plan that requires payment. Monitoring storage in the Cloud is a tedious exercise and defeats the simplicity principle. I suspect in the future consumers will settle on one service and happily pay the freight for extra storage. Look for a new metric to become a quarterly staple of blogs as they begin reporting on which Cloud service as gained/lost the most users in the not to distant future.

But there are other issues out there beyond storage and costs that will affect consumer and business decisions. Security is one of those. Another is reliability. I was a big Microsoft Mesh user back in the day. (Mesh is the predecessor of Skydrive). But I abandoned it after it became unreliable. Again, simple is best. Currently I save a file on my desktop or laptop, leave the office, show up at a meeting, open up my Tablet, and the document is there when I need it. The first time that doesn’t work that simply, or I have to find myself checking to make sure what I need is on my Tablet before I leave the office is the time that I start looking to change Cloud providers.

Apps and applications (do we call them applications anymore?) will also determine which solution users will gravitate towards. I already mentioned OneNote. If that’s your App of choice than Microsoft’s Skydrive will be an easy choice. If you’re into Apple’s suite of work Apps than iCloud eventually might be your path. But Apple has to prove they can pull this off with its iWork suite on Macs. So far they haven’t.  And don’t forget other Cloud solutions like Evernote. For many those kind of solutions can solve most of their needs.

So, what are you thinking about Cloud solutions and your choices? I’ve avoided talking about other Cloud products like Office 365 and Google Docs much here, because I really don’t use them that often. Do you? How much storage is enough for you currently? How much do you think you’ll need in the future? I’d love to know your thoughts as we enter into a new phase of the Cloud Computing wars.

Tablets and Simplicity: The Cloud is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

Evernote is the latest Silicon Valley company to hit the $1 billion valuation mark after raising a reported $100 million.  I’m not a venture capitalist, but from a user’s point of view I can certainly understand why Evernote deserves to be in the billion dollar club.

Evernote’s primary product helps people take notes and remember things. As of December 2011, Evernote reported that it had 20 million registered users, including 750,000 premium users. Premium users pay just $5 per month and enjoy features such as offline notebooks and higher upload limits.

An app that takes notes might sound boring, but Evernote’s managed to build an app that many of its users can’t live without. If Facebook’s willing to pay a billion dollars for Instagram, a company with 30 million users that apply filters to their photos and share them with friends for free, it’s easy to argue that Evernote is worth the same.

Taking notes might sound mundane, but Evernote’s one app that simply cannot live without. The service is my digital filing cabinet, white board and note pad. The more information users like myself upload to Evernote, the more valuable the service becomes to users.

We first started following Evernote when it launched about three years ago because of Rite Pen, a Tablet PC note taking application. It’s been very interesting to watch as Evernote’s morphed from a relatively simple note taking app into a full-blown platform.

Evernote has a lot of raving fans and I suspect there will be many more in the near future. The company consistently provides an excellent user experience and pushes out elegant mobile apps. The Evernote iPad app is one of my favorite iPad apps.

Evernote is Worth a Billion Dollars is a post by Xavier Lanier from Gotta Be Mobile.

Evernote is a great tool for students, and the note tracking and syncing service is even better for college students who can get a free year of Evernote Premium.

Evernote Premium adds a number of great features to the Evernote service, many of which college students will find as helpful as business professionals.

Students with a valid .edu address have until April 25th, 2012 to claim the free year of Evernote premium. The offer is open to current and new Evernote users. Evernote limits the deal to US college and university students. Evernote may asked to complete a survey about their usage during the free year of Evernote premium.

College Students who don’t use their .edu address in Evernote can change the email address in Personal Settings, before requesting the free year.

5 Reasons Students Need Evernote Premium

The premium version of Evernote includes a number of great extras and features that fit the increasing amount of information that needs cataloged and recorded.

• Monthly upload allowance increased to 1GB, Maximum note size upgraded to 50MB
• Access previous copies of notes
• For Android, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, access your notebooks offline
• Search within PDFs
• Priority image recognition

As a professor, I know students can benefit form uploading recorded notes, class handouts and accessing the previous versions of notes. PDF search and priority image recognition makes it possible for students to search the handouts I share and can recognize text in photos of in class exercises.

Offline access is also helpful for the occasional class or study session that takes place where WiFi is missing.

Finally, Evernote makes it simple to share and collaborate on notes, which helps with final exam prep and group project coordination.

Students can scan all their handwritten notes into Evernote for easy searching, so there’s no reason to complain about the arrival at the end of the academic year.

Evernote premium is normally $45 a year.

Free Evernote Premium for College Students is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

The iPad is a great tool for writing, blogging and note-taking with the right tools.

I use my iPad to write on a regular basis, and these apps make it possible to get work done on the iPad, even replacing a laptop on short trips.

The key to content creation, note taking and writing on the iPad is using the best apps. I share the top 10 writing apps in the video below. From note taking and research to writing and posting online, these iPad apps are the best available.

Top 10 Writing Apps

iAwriter ($0.99) - iAwriter is the best way to write without distractions on the iPad. Even without an external keyboard the extra row of punctuation and navigation keys speed up typing dramatically. Thanks to iCloud sync, I can work on a document on my iPad, pick up on my iPhone and then finish on my iPad later. There’s also a Mac app. Any article I write on the iPad begins in iAwriter.

Blogsy ($4.99) – Blogsy is a great tool for WordPress users, offering a built-in browser, great image placement options and much more. Blogsy is the best way to use WordPress on the iPad.

Pages ($9.99) – Pages is the best app for creating and editing word documents on the iPad. iCloud syncs documents between the iPad and iPhone for easy editing on either device.

WordPress (Free) – The WordPress app is good for small edits and changing post options, but is too limited to use full-time. I never compose an article in WordPress, nor do I place images using the app.

GoodReader ($4.99) – GoodReader allows users to keep documents and PDFs on hand for easy retrieval. I like that the service can hook up to storage solutions like Dropbox.

Evernote (Free) - Evernote is my favorite research tool. I post any article, idea or note I take to Evernote for retrieval when I am ready to write. Evernote makes these notes searchable, even handwritten notes.

Bamboo Paper (Free) – The Wacom Bamboo Paper app is a simple note taking app that offers a good solution for notes in simple situations.

Penultimate ($0.99) - Penultimate is the note taking tool I keep coming back to. It’s not perfect, but the options and good inking experience is one of the best.

Notability ($0.99) - Notability is quickly replacing Penultimate as I learn how to use all the features. I love the palmrest that helps users avoid issues with palm marks. The app also handles PDF annotation, audio recording and more.

TouchDocs ($3.99) - TouchDocs is the best way to use Google Docs on the iPad. I’m still not a fan of how it handles spreadsheets, but for word documents it is stellar.

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When I am serious about writing, I use an external keyboard like the Kensington Keyfolio Pro 2, which allows me to remove the keyboard from the case and prop my iPad up at a perfect angle.

With these iPad writing apps and the Kensington case my iPad can replace a laptop for a trip to the coffee shop.

Top 10 Writing Apps For the iPad (Video) is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

Evernote updated its Android app to version 3.6, adding support for speech-to-text and new widget options that let you customize your Evernote experience.

The new speech-to-text feature uses Google’s text transcription for Android, which means it should work as well as text transcription elsewhere on the device. The feature will put words into a note instantly as you speak, which is one of the big features in Ice Cream Sandwich.

The new feature is only available to users using Ice Cream Sandwich and “certain other devices.” If your phone doesn’t have Android 4.0 you’ll need to see if the option is available to you when you update. There’s no other way to know, as Evernote hasn’t mentioned any specific devices.

As with speech-to-text in other apps, you’ll need a working Internet connection for the transcription to work. You’ll also get the best results with a headset.

The other new feature is one that’s available to everyone – new widgets.

The new Evernote Widget app adds the ability to choose a theme for the widgets, as well as the ability to choose what’s in the toolbar widget. That way you can have exactly the Evernote toolbar widget you want in either green or the new dark theme.

If you don’t want a widget toolbar, Evernote Widget now offers 1×1 widgets as well.

With these new, smaller widgets you can put just one Evernote function on your home screen, and it will take up the same amount of space as a single app icon. Finally you don’t have the Evernote widget take up multiple spaces when all you really need is the “new note” function.

The new versions of both Evernote for Android and Evernote Widget are now available in Google Play.

Via: Evernote

Evernote for Android Adds Speech-to-Text For Ice Cream Sandwich is a post by Shawn Ingram from Gotta Be Mobile.

Evernote has announced that it has updated its iOS application to support the new iPad’s Retina Display, just a day before the device lands on the doorsteps of  those who pre-ordered on announcement day. The developer has been hard at work getting the application ready for the arrival of the new gadget and from the looks of things, fans of the app will not be disappointed.

As you can see in the image below, the application now has graphics that are optimized for the new iPad’s high-resolution display.

The Retina Display allows for richer, more vibrant text, which is something that reviewers have raved about in their reviews of Apple’s latest tablet. Of course, support for the Retina Display isn’t the only new addition to the software.

Evernote’s note editor is now much improved over the last version with the company stating that it’s more reliable and responsive. That’s huge.

In addition, they’ve made a few improvements to the checkbox as it now supports indentation and new lines that are created after the checkbox will now insert a new box automatically.

Users can now select text by tapping it.

Evernote has also improved its note titling feature. Auto-title, a feature that was introduced in the last update, will now show more suggestions based on lists that you have created in the past.

All of these improvements are fairly subtle -  besides the graphics update, but it’s the attention to detail that has made Evernote such a fantastic application.

Oh, and there are also some bug fixes on board as well including a fix for sync errors that users have been seeing.

All in all, Evernote just got a little better, especially for those who plan to use it with the new iPad.

Evernote for iOS Updated to Support iPad’s Retina Display is a post by Adam Mills from Gotta Be Mobile.

You knew it was coming and it appears it is already beginning. The big feature for the new iPad is the stunning/outrageous/amazing/awesome/astounding/pick your adjective from the early reviews high definition display. And of course that means those of us who have been using an iPad or iPad 2 are in for a slew of updates that allow those apps to be viewed in all their Retina glory.

Already this morning I’ve seen updates from a couple of the major vendors including Evernote, the Kindle App from Amazon and the New York Times, all boasting that they now are ready for all those Retina displays. If you own a lot of Apps I imagine this might become a pretty tedious round of updating.

Keep in mind that these updated files are going to be larger in size than their predecessors, so it might be worthwhile watching how different your iPad memory usage changes once you start updating Apps. Remember, whether or not you’re getting a new iPad, you’ll still get the App update, unless you choose not to update it. So, regardless of which version of the iPad you own, you’ll see your storage fill up with App updates. Those opting for the 16GB sized iPads might get a little nervous if they use a lot of Apps, especially games.

New versions of Apps for the Retina displays aren’t the only reason for updating. The Kindle App now allows you to view your books in a Cloud view as well as view as to what’s on the device. That looks and works a bit more like it does on the Kindle Fire. and the New York Times is saying that you can now sync saved articles between iOS devices. I would imagine that the next few weeks are going to see quite a few App updates to take advantage of the new iPad’s Retina display. But then that’s part of the fun. At least until you fill up your device.

March of the iOS App Updates Begins with Kindle and Evernote is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

Users of Evernote and Skitch now have even more reasons to ditch the stock browser. Dolphin now has adds-ons for both apps which will integrate more of their functionality into the browser.

Power users will appreciate the ability to draw or scribble on web content and clip web pages easier.

And, since they’re add-ons, you won’t need to go into the Menu in order to access them, just drag the screen to reveal the right sidebar.

These add-ons don’t replace the Skitch and Evernote apps themselves, so you still need to have them installed.

The Samsung Galaxy Note came to mind when I first saw this news as there are built-in apps on that phone/tiny tablet that do the same things. Even if your phone doesn’t come with a fancy stylus, you can have a little Notetasticness in your life.

Dolphin is a popular browser around here and my favorite of all the browsers available for Android, partially because of the add-ons. I’m not a big fan of Evernote, preferring SpringPad for my note-taking needs. Skitch is a handy little app, especially when you need to take screenshots.

The team behind Dolphin Browser promises that more excellent and exciting add-ons are coming later this year. For now, the Evernote and Skitch add-ons are available via the Android Market.

Evernote and Skitch Now Available As Dolphin Browser Add-ons is a post by K. T. Bradford from Gotta Be Mobile.

Penultimate is still my favorite iPad Inking App and I’ve given (and will continue to give) most of them a try. I like the way Digital Ink lays down on the screen and the wrist protection. Penultimate just works for me and how I take Digital Ink Notes. It looks like the developers of Penultimate have now upped the ante and made some important new additions in version 3.3 that will keep Penultimate as my preferred iPad Inking App for some time.

Among other new features, Penultimate now has what it calls “serious Dropbox integration” and Evernote support.

You can now link your Penultimate notebooks to Dropbox, which provide a good way to automatically back up your notebooks and digital notes and also send notebooks directly to your Dropbox account.

The Evernote integration will come in handy for those who might like to search their digital notes. Linking Penultimate to Evernote through the App allows you to send the notes or notebooks to Evernote. Once there, Evernotes OCR takes over and you can search through those digital notes in Evernote.

You can also start new “workflows” by opening pages or notebooks in other Apps in other Apps on your iPad, as well as paste copied images into a Penultimate page. Copied Ink can also be pasted in as well.

If you’re a Penultimate user check out the update. If you haven’t given Penultimate a try yet, the Apps is $.99 and worth the buck to check it out.

iPad Inking App Penultimate Makes Some Important Additions in New Update is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

Skitch is a popular screen capture an annotation utility that I use all the time on my Mac. I like it quite a bit. Evernote recently bought Skitch and it looks like that acquisition is going to pay off for users of Skitch and Evernote in the long run.

Now Evernote has released Skitch as an iPad App that allows you to have essentially the same functionality on that device. It’s a free App. You can crop an image, dress it up with text, boxes, circles, arrows… you know the drill. There is also an Android version of Skitch available as well. It’s been available for some time.

If you’re looking to capture something off of a web page, you browse to the page you want from within the App, click the camera button and you have the visible portion of the web page to work with. You can then crop and annotate as you see fit. You can essentially do the same with your photos, maps, or screenshots you’ve taken from your iPad.

You can also share an image via Twitter, save it to your Camera Roll, send it via email, or send it to Evernote.

There are certainly plenty of photo annotation Apps out there for the iPad and iPhone (word is there will be an iPhone version in the future.) So, choosing one over the other is really matter of personal preference or which one has the right tools for you to accomplish the task at hand. For Evernote users, I think Skitch will prove one of the popular choices given its simplicity and even if you don’t have an Evernote account it is a handy simple tool for simple annotation.

Evernote Releases Skitch for iPad is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

The Amazon Kindle Fire flew off store shelves and Amazon’s warehouses since its launch last month, and should be one hot gift this holiday season. If you got a Fire or hope to be getting one for Christmas, then be sure to download these apps after you tear open the box.

Our staff came up with their favorite apps and then we checked to be sure they would work on the Kindle. The apps below include entertainment, social networking, games, reading productivity and utility apps. Many of these apps will not cost you a dime, one of them will cost you exactly a dime, and some will set you back a few bucks. They’re worth it. We think these are the best apps for the Amazon Kinde Fire right now.

Entertainment Apps

The built-in entertainment apps for watching Amazon Instant videos and listing to music in your cloud drive only go so far. These other entertainment apps fill in the gaps.

Pandora – Free

Listen to free streaming music on your Fire.

With Pandora you can stream free Internet music to your Kindle Fire, freeing up much-needed space, which is an important consideration thanks to the anemic 8GB of storage Amazon included. I like that I can create my own station of music based on my tastes. That way I get variety but still only the songs I want to hear. You can also upgrade to a paid service with no ads for $36/year.

hulu PLUS – Free with $7.99/month subscription

Watch recently aired TV shows and some movies.

Even though Hulu PLUS is a bit limited, I love the ability to catch up on an episode of The Office that you missed because you weren’t home, or your cable went out last Thursday. If only the other networks would get off their 20th century butts and either join the hulu party, or make an app like it.

With Hulu PLUS you don’t get some great shows that can be streamed via a computer, like The Simpsons. You do get enough to make it worth $8/month. You might even find a movie worth watching, but I doubt it. Still it’s a must have app if you’re a subscriber.

Netflix – Free with an existing Netflix subscription

Watch movies and TV shows from the large Netflix library of Instant Queue videos.

I’ve found some great shows that I never would have watched if it weren’t for Netflix, including Downton Abbey and Mad Men. Having access on the Fire means I’m not tied to a TV and don’t have to even turn on the set with only 14 snowy cable channels in the cheap hotel we stay at while visiting the in-laws. Plus you can discover something in the app and add it to your queue for later watching on the TV at home.

AllRecipes.com Dinner Spinner – Free

Keep track of recipes and discover new cooking adventures.

Like most recipe apps, this one keeps all of your recipes and offers you some new ones to try. You can search by ingredients and cooking time. You can share them with others via Facebook, Twitter and email. One of the cool things is the discovery feature, which shows you a new recipe by shaking your Fire. Random ingredients will fall into place giving you an interesting way to find new combinations for meals.

Reading Apps

You could just settle for reading Kindle books or periodicals with the built-in reader, but then you’d be missing out on some great content with nice features.

Comixology – Free with in app comic book purchases

Read comic books on your Fire.

You can read many of your favorite comic books right on your Kindle Fire. The app handles the advancement from frame to frame really well. You can get 500+ free comic books or purchase others within the app. Publishers include Marvel, DC, Image, BOOM Studios and more.

Zinio – Free with subscriptions to magazines through the service

Access to hundreds of magazine subscriptions through the Zinio service.

Zinio had a bad start on the iPad. I really hated it and couldn’t wait till I could shed my reliance on the horrible app for magazine reading on the device. Since then the company improved it, making it faster, more stable and easier to pick up in your magazines where you last stopped reading. The Fire app works as well as the iPad app finally does. You can get a large selection of magazines through the Zinio app on your Fire.

ezPDF Reader – $2.99

Read and hear your PDFs in a more powerful app than what’s built into the Fire.

ezPDF Reader handles PDF files better than anything from Adobe. The organization screen is useful and the app looks nice. You get some cool additional features like the ability to play embedded multimedia content – video and audio – from within the app. If you want the app to read to you, you can save time by getting your reading done as you drive to work. For those documents that don’t really fit on the 7″ screen use the re-flow feature to reformat the PDF so it fits better.

Bible – Free

Read the best selling book of all time along with friends.

This piece of software offers not only the Bible but a social component as well. Read along with friends or even strangers. Record your thoughts and read theirs. Share verses on Facebook and Twitter and keep track of your reading progress using one of the dozens of simple reading plans.

Utilities

A tool like the Kindle sometimes needs some hand holding to work fluidly. These utilities will make your experience better.

Exchange by Touchdown – Free with $12.99 Premium version

Access your exchanger server email, contacts and calendar.

With this app you can access your exchange server content – email, contacts and calendar. The free version works for 30 days, after which you have to buy the Key (which you purchase in the App store as if it was a second app). Install it after installing the free version. With the app you can not only access email, contacts and calendar, but also remotely wipe the content if you every lose your Fire. It doesn’t work with POP3 or IMAP email, but you can use Google servers in exchange form.

Watchdog Task Manager  - Lite version and $3.49 Premium version

Keep track of running tasks and in order to keep the Fire running well.

Watchdog monitors the running tasks on your Fire. If things start to slow down, fire it up and see what’s eating up all of your memory and kill that app for a while. You don’t really need to just shut down everything unless a particular app is problematic. That’s why this task manager works better than the other task killers that just shut down everything.

ES File Explorer – Free

See what files are on your Fire and move them around to where you want them.

For most people the Fire handles your files well, but on occasion you want more control over things. Maybe you want to side load an app not in the app store or you want to better organize some images or music. ES File Manager lets you do all of that with ease. As you’d expect you can cut, copy and paste files. You can rename files and folders. You can also install APK files from within the app. The background can be skinned to show an image, just like the nice holiday picture in the screenshot above.

Calengoo – $2.99

Add a nice Google Calendar capable app for your Fire.

Calengoo gives you two things that Amazon won’t: a calendar app for the Fire and access to Google Calendar. You don’t have to use Google Calendar, but that’s kind of the main idea here. It has day, week and month view. You can color code calendars if you have more than one. Adding and managing appointments is pretty easy.

Games

Angry Birds – $4.99

Crush those horrible pigs by flinging angry birds at their fortresses, wasting hours with fun.

Just in case you’ve been hiding out on a deserted island for the last two years, the Angry Birds game involves using a sling shot to hurl these different birds at strange structures with pigs in them. The goal: knock down the structures popping those fat piggies. It’s loads of fun and one of the most addictive games you can buy for the Fire or any mobile device. Rovio, the app creator, made a killing and keeps releasing various themed versions of the app, including this one designed for the Fire.

Random Mahjongg – $1.99

Match Japanese themed tiles in  a timed game.

This version of Mahjongg is beautiful and soothing with some peaceful sounding music. You match the tiles which are stacked in various random patterns. Once finished you move on to another random pattern until you can’t clear any more tiles. You get some do-overs each game and a chance to shuffle the tiles if you get stuck but want to keep going. You can also play a version where you just go till you can’t match anymore revealed tiles and time yourself.

Cut the Rope – $.99

Slice through a rope holding candy so that it can drop into the mouth of your cute monster.

The story: a box shows up on your doorstop with a lovable little green monster named Om Nom.  Your job is to feed him, but all he wants is candy. The game: On each screen you have a piece of candy attached to ropes. You slice the ropes by swiping with your finger. At first it’s so easy you wonder why anyone would bother, but soon the obstacles and timing get harder and eventually you’re addicted.

Fruit Ninja – $.10

Slice fruit as fast as you can without cutting the bombs which blow you up.

A slew of fruit starts bouncing across the screen and your job as a ninja is to slice them before the fall off the screen. You get more points for slicing more than one fruit at a time. Simple enough, until the bombs start showing up. Cut one of those and you’re done for. You can play one of three fun modes: arcade, which is fast paced; classic, where precision is more important than speed; and Zen which is for those who want to calm down instead of getting all fired up.

Productivity

The Fire may not be the best tool for getting work done. If you have it with you, it might be useful to quickly change a few words in a document before you fire it off to your boss. You might need to keep track of your schedule or keep some quick notes. For these kinds of short tasks, the fire can be useful and these apps will help make you produce things in a quick instant.

QuickOffice Pro – $9.99

Quick edits of Office files on the go.

With QuickOffice Pro HD you can work with Microsoft Office 2010 files and save them to Evernote, Catch or share them online via Facebook, Twitter, or Scribd. Import documents from one of may file sharing/syncing services like DropBox and SugarSync. You can create or edit files. You can work with text or format some slides and spreadsheets. I’ve used a few different such apps on Android but this is by far the best.

Evernote – Free

Access your notes and create new ones which sync to the cloud and other devices.

For those of us who use Evernote extensively, it becomes an extension of our brains. I store all kinds of data in my Evernote account which I can access from my smartphone, my computer, and now my Fire. You can create and edit notes. You can access things you’ve done on other devices like snapshots of documents or audio recordings. Evernote has rich text formatting so you could use it to work with simple documents as well. All of your notes are organized into notebooks with tags for easy searching.

Social Networking

If you’re a social kind of person you can use your Fire. The tablet comes with Facebook built-in if you can call an icon that links to the Facebook website being built into a device. Here are a couple of other useful social networking apps.

TweetCaster Pro – $4.99

Tweet and read tweets with this useful and attractive Twitter client.

A bunch of Twitter clients populate the Amazon App Store, but I like Tweetcaster the best. It has all the basic features including automatically loading your feed and letting you retweet, reply, follow, block and report tweets or users. You can temporarily hide verbose tweeters, like you might want to do with me while I’m watching the Packers or NASCAR. You can color code your own tweets and replies to easily find them in the feed. Plus it handles not only Twitter but Facebook as well, letting you cross-post your updates to each service or just one of them.

FriendCaster Pro for Facebook – $4.99

Facebook for the Kindle Fire.

Since the built-in Facebook “app” really just takes you to the Facebook website, here’s an app that handles some of the most useful Facebook features within the app. Read your friends and refresh it by pulling down. In the pro version you won’t see ads and has Gmail integration. You can track messages, list of friends, check ins, events, pages and groups.

20 Must Have Apps for the Kindle Fire is a post by Kevin Purcell from Gotta Be Mobile.

If you’re anything like me, meeting a person for the second time can be a frustrating experience.

I love meeting people, but I am horrible with putting names and faces together. From tech writers at CES to the students I teach and even extended family, I can’t put names to faces.

Thankfully, there’s an app for that.

The new Evernote Hello app for the iPhone looks like the perfect solution to helping me remember everyone I meet. best of all, I can ask the person to enter their information, include context about our meeting and pull it all together with a photo.

Evernote believes that the Hello app will help you improve your memory of people because it focuses on the three ways our minds remember the people we meet.

• Faces: What do you look like?
• Time: When did we meet?
• Context: Why did we meet and who else was there?

Look over to the right. Do you see the nice layout of faces in this app? This is perhaps the biggest reason I want to use it. If i see someone I know I should know, I can quickly scroll through a collection of faces to find out who is across the room.

Thanks to the acceptance of checking email at events, even while around others, I can even look someone up mid conversation if I need to.

All of these people sync to Evernote, and you can search people inside the standard Evernote app.

But, what looks to be really cool is the fact that the Evernote Hello App, the new Evernote Food app and the notes you enter into Evernote can come together to show more context based on the times and locations you entered food, people and notes.

Evernote Hello is available free for the iPhone (iTunes), no word on an Android version just yet, but I would be surprised if Evernote isn’t working on it.

Remember the People You Meet With Evernote Hello is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

Did I mention already how sexy apps that have actually made it to the Windows Phone Marketplace look? I complain about the amount of apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace but when they do get there, they look awesome most of the time. Well, a very popular app that has been around in the Marketplace for quite some time has a new update that adds some awesome features.

Evernote is a wildly popular franchise of note taking apps and services that geeks have been using for years. For Windows Mobile users, it goes way back. Evernote has sync services that allow you to sync your notes in the cloud and share notes across devices. Pretty much every OS, mobile or not, has Evernote support.

New to Windows Phone 7.5 are better social integration, search integration, background synchronization, and pinning of notes, notebooks, tags, searches, maps, and “new note” shortcuts audio, text and photo).

The following are the major additions with 2.1

• Pin anything to the home screen:  Now you can pin the things you need right to your home screen.
• Template notes: You can create templates for commonly created notes. Awesome feature!
• Improved text editing:  You can edit notes in the same format as when they were initially created.
• New language support: There is now language support for Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, and Polish.
• Background sync: The app will complete a sync when the device is on a WIFI connection, even if the phone is locked.
• Search integration: Evernote is integrated with the Windows Phone search. If you swipe across on a search result, you will see notes in Evernote related to that search.
• More social: You can now share a note to Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live.

I will get a video up of this app in the next couple days. Stay Tuned. Very excited for this update.

Grab Evernote 2.1 from the Windows Phone Marketplace! For more info, head to Evernote’s Blog.

Evernote for Windows Phone Updated: Adds Note Pinning, Templates, Etc is a post by Chris Leckness from Gotta Be Mobile.

If you hate the clutter that comes with most online reading, you should check out the new tool from Evernote called Clearly.

Clearly works similar to the mobiel Webzine and Reader options in Dolphin and Safari, but on your big screen. Clearly is a Chrome browser extension which turns your online reading into a well laid out book style page.

In short, it makes reading long articles online a more pleasant experience, even bringing multiple page articles together into one page. Check out the Clearly from Evernote video below to see how it works.

You can install Clearly in your Chrome browser for free and start using it today. I have found that it works best on longer articles that I want to focus in on while I read, more so than short news articles. The nice thing is, you click the button to launch Clearly, so you only get it when you want it.

You can also clip the article right to Evernote from Clearly, if you can’t finish reading it. Below is an example of how a page looks after being loaded into Clearly. This is huge for me, especially when reading longreads and other longform content on the computer. If only this worked on my eTextbooks, which are some odd PDF format…

Evernote Clearly makes reading cleaner in your Chrome browser.

Clearly also allows you to customize the look of your reading screen with several options including night mode and text size.

I really hope there is some type of iPad and Android tablet integration of this soon, as it is a natural next step.

Clearly from Evernote Streamlines Online Reading is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

It’s pretty clear that we are big fans of Evernote around here, and I have personally been using it for over two years to make sure I don’t forget ideas, dreams, cool gadgets I want and much more.

I’ve been using the free version of Evernote, but today I couldn’t resist and bought Evernote Premium, which brings a number of extras to the table. This deal was even more enticing, because it included a free Evernote t-shirt.

The shirts come in small through XL and are available in mens and women’s sizes.

The deal is available for a limited time at Fab.com, where shirt and year of Evernote Premium are normally $45 (the same price as Evernote Premium alone).

Because Fab.com hit 1 million users, you can follow this link to get a free $10 credit that knocks your price down to $35 plus $5 handling.

After you enter your email address and create a password, click on Today’s Sales and look for Evernote towards the bottom of the list.

You can click this link to go direct to the Evernote Premium deal, but if you don’t see the $10 credit you’ll need to try the above link. The deal is only good through tomorrow at 9:59 AM Eastern. We normally try to avoid posting flash deals, but this is too nice to pass up.

Why get Evernote premium?

Evernote lists 10 reasons you should get Evernote Premium on their website, many of which I have shares below.

• Monthly upload allowance increased to 1GB
• Maximum note size upgraded to 50MB
• Access previous copies of notes
• For Android, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, access your notebooks offline
• PIN Lock on mobile apps
• Search within PDFs
• Priority image recognition
• Premium support
• No ads

My personal favorite features are the priority image recognition, ability to search within PDFs, offline note access and increased monthly uploads.

I use the Evernote clipper to save important articles I find online, text and all, in case the link dies. It’s also where i keep software key codes, important notes, recorded audio interviews, meeting notes and much more.

Grab Evernote Premium and a Sweet Evernote T-Shirt for $40 is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

Nothing lasts forever. Including things we wish would indeed last forever. Accidents happen, things get misplaced. Technology fails. But in the digital age there are ways to give yourself some piece of mind when it comes to storing content that contains memories and things you’d like to hang on to.

I’ve always been a pack rat. I read things, view things, listen to things, and hang on to that which I find curious and worth keeping. Somewhere in storage I have boxes of notes on legal pads from shows I’ve directed, as well as newspaper and magazine articles that I clipped along the way. When the web came around I had a gazillion bookmarks of things I found interesting, as well as boxes of paper from articles that I found worth saving and printed out. There was a time when I was the best friend of the printer ink business. When Tablet PCs came along I was able to keep my theatre notes in digital files and I thought that was a revolution. At least for me. Actually it was the beginning of a change in my pack rat habits.

I also hoard books, full magazines and periodicals, and used to have a vinyl record collection that took a small army to move. Photos? Yep. Tons of them in boxes, never organized. In fact, I’ve changed the containers for those photos over the years more than I’ve ever looked at most of them. But I still hoard.

That mini-revolution that is the digital age has changed quite a bit of that. Sure I still have the books, photos, newspaper clippings, and some of the other things stored away physically. But I’ve cut back on that as I do my hunting and gathering through digital sources.

I use a variety of tools in my digital pack ratting and this is a rundown of what is working for me now as well as some tools of days gone by. I’ve broken it down into categories.

Research

I do a lot of research as I’m working on plays, grant writing, and other things. I like to save things and go back to them when I need them. I was a big del.icio.us fan for a long time as it was a quick and easy way to bookmark something for later use. I also used print quite a bit of material into OneNote. While I still use OneNote for that, my habits have shifted quite a bit as I mostly use Apple products these days.

I actually have a three step system at the moment for saving research. It is sort of a prioritization scheme. But there’s another reason for the redundancy. The three tools I’m using the most are Evernote, Instapaper, and Read It Later. If something is a high priority it gets clipped or saved to all three. If an article or bit of info is something I plan on using in the immediate future it will go to just Read It Later and Evernote. If the material is long form and something that I will get to at my leisure it will only go to Instapaper and occasionally Evernote.

That redundancy I mentioned speaks to my pack rat gene. The three services I mentioned all store what I save in their respective clouds. Those clouds may be stable and operating these days, but just like with any business there’s no guarantee that they will be their forever. In fact there’s no guarantee that anything stored digitally or physically will last forever no matter how many steps you take to persevere them. But having info I deem important stored across three clouds gives me some piece of mind.

News Articles

Whether it be reviews, or articles I want to keep for whatever reason I use the same tools I mentioned above. I have boxes of old reviews of plays that I’ve done over the years. I also have tons of articles saved digitally in OneNote, Evernote, Instapaper, and Read It Later. Keep in mind as you store things from the web, that occasionally links and bookmarks change just like old newspapers fade in time. You might think you have that link preserved, but at some point when you need it, well, the link doesn’t work anymore. This is why I like to use Evernote and OneNote because they allow me to save articles in a PDF or a printed format. Using Evernote in Safari (about the only think I use Safari for on the Mac platform) is the easiest and best looking way to do this. By holding down the Shift key when I go to clip something I get the web page or document in the exact way it appears on my screen. I’m sure Evernote users have clipped web pages before and seen the lovely three column effect where you get the left column, followed on the page with the body of the article, followed by the right column. I find that annoying.

I also use Printopia to print articles directly into Evernote. That works reasonably well for this kind of archiving, but it is also subject to the three column effect.

Photos

Again, with redundancy as an priority here (you never know when a service will be sold or change its ways), I store photos on Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, and also locally on hard drives. More on that option later in the post.

When my mother passed away just over a year ago, I became the family custodian of the collection of pictures she had saved over the years. I have boxes (now protected) of these photos. But as I was exploring through them (many my sisters and I had never seen) I found one collection of photos that had gotten destroyed by moisture of some sort. Those photos are gone forever, but the rest are preserved. Redundancy is possible in the digital pack rat age and I recommend we take advantage of that fact when it comes to our photographic memories. Having my photos duplicated across multiple services gives me a sense of redundant comfort.

Music

At the moment I’m largely tied into Apple’s iTunes ecosystem, although I use Amazon’s MP3 service to buy most of my music. I also have a range of music and sound effects from past shows that I keep archived in addition to purchased or ripped music. I’m anxious to see how iTunes Match works since that won’t require massive amounts of uploading to the iTunes servers in the way that Amazon and Google’s music services do. I also keep my music library backed up locally as well. We’re about to go through some evolution in the next few years as Apple, Amazon, and Google compete for our music collection storage. That’s a good thing as it might allow for a redundancy option. But I also keep my music backed up locally in addition to any Cloud service I may contemplate using.

Video

My wife and I have a constant running battle about my DVD collection that rivals anything I ever had with vinyl music. She’d love for me to get rid of it, but I don’t see that happening. While I’ve been moving more towards streaming or purchasing video content digitally (see I can compromise), I don’t see myself ever taking the time to rip the physical disks I have over to digital format. That said, I do have quite a bit of digital video that I keep stored on local hard drives. And that leads to this:

Pack Rat in the Cloud? Or on the desk? Or both?

Yes, I have a lot of stuff archived in the Cloud. But I also have most of it backed up locally on hard disks. If it is important to me, I’ll actually have it on two hard disks. Am I paranoid? Probably. But just like I don’t trust Cloud services to be available forever, I also don’t trust physical media to last forever. Once a year or so, I’ll go through the process of purchasing new portable hard drives for use with my machines. I’ll copy over the archived stuff for use on the new machine to the newer equipment. The older drive will get unplugged and stored in a secure location in case I need it. The device it is replacing will then come back to my house or office as a back up to the back up. This rotation gives me some piece of mind that I always have copies of the content I think is worth keeping available in three locations, plus on whatever Cloud service I’m using at the moment.

So, what about you? If you are a digital pack rat what are your strategies for saving and archiving your content in the digital age? There are obviously other methods, Apps, and strategies beyond those I use. We’d love to hear about any you use.

Tools for the Digital Pack Rat is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

Hardware-wise, the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet is similar to other Honeycomb tablets on the surface — same CPU, RAM, display resolution, and basic functionality — which is why there’s so much intense interest in one of the features that makes it stand out: the stylus.

This isn’t the first Android tablet to come with a pen, but is the first on a Honeycomb model in the U.S. It costs an extra $30, so is it worth adding to the ThinkPad experience? Read on to find out.

Stylus Design

If you’ve ever used one of Lenovo’s convertible Windows-based ThinkPad tablet notebooks, the design of the stylus should be familiar. Given that Lenovo is an old hand at this, it’s no surprise that the metal stylus is comfortable to hold and use. It’s solid and just weighty enough to feel substantive and not like a toy. The red tip unscrews for inserting or replacing the AAAA (yep, they make them that small) battery and also has a notch for the included loop.

The reason for the battery is that the stylus and display actively communicate with each other. This technology, powered by NTrig, is superior to many capacitive stylus devices I’ve tried. Not just for the responsiveness, but also because you get a fine tip. Most other styli that work with these displays have a rounded, rubbery tip like this Kensington model. They’re a fine replacement for a fingertip, but don’t give as much precision as a narrow tip can.

Though the stylus isn’t standard with the tablet, there’s a port for it on the lower back. It slides in and locks securely but is easy to get out without looking. Just above the port is the notch for the loop, in case you fear losing the pen if it’s not attached.

Basic Functionality

With the stylus you can do anything on the ThinkPad that you can do with a finger — tap, drag, flick, etc. Due to the way the screen and the pen work together, users get all the benefit of a capacitive display (responsiveness, smooth scrolling, tapping, etc.) plus the benefits that come with pen input (drawing, precision tapping, handwriting). Plus, using the stylus keeps the finger smudges away.

Whenever I pulled out the stylus to work with the notes app I usually just kept it in my hand when I moved on to other things. It’s not at all cumbersome and I never noticed a difference between it and using my finger. The ease of tapping on links in web pages without having to be really precise or zoom in alone makes it a worthwhile accessory to me.

You can’t zoom or pull off other multitouch gestures with the stylus, unfortunately. Though it would be nice if you could using the button on the side.

Near the tip of the stylus is the Active button, which triggers functions you’d normally get if you tap and hold. For instance, if you press the button then tap on the Home screen, you’ll immediately go into the edit Home screens mode. This doesn’t work in every app, though.

MyScript Notes Mobile

To take best advantage of the stylus, Lenovo bundles the ThinkPad Tablet with MyScript Notes Mobile by VisionObjects. The idea here is that users can replace their paper notebook with this app, and this is reflected in the GUI. Thus you have spiral notebooks that open up on to blue-lined pages (yes, this is the only background). You don’t have to stay in the lines for the app to work, but I found myself doing so, anyway.

MyScript is pretty robust and one of the best examples of this kind of app I’ve seen. It can translate your handwriting into text as you go along (it will wait until you pause to do the translation), or you can switch modes and just scribble, then choose to translate the text later. When in scribble mode you can also do freehand drawing. You don’t have to translate your writing into text if you don’t want to — the app will save the page as an image.

If the app doesn’t quite get the words right when translating, you can cross out whole words or letters, add in, and even divide up words and sentences. It supports up to 27 languages and dialects and works with non-Western characters in languages like Japanese and Chinese.

With my handwriting — which is somewhat messy but not a tragedy — the app correctly translated my scribbles about 75% of the time. Even when I wrote more deliberately/carefully the system wasn’t perfect. Writing quickly didn’t decrease the accuracy very much. How well this app works will depend on the individual. If you’ve got very messy handwriting, it might not be very useful for you.

One big issue with writing on a tablet like it’s a notebook is how to hold your hand. MyScript has built-in Palm Rejection for both left and right-handed users that is supposed to detect when you’ve got a palm, or edge of a palm, on the display, and ignore it. This didn’t always work.

After writing I often noticed small marks at the bottom of the page under my palm. And if I put my hand on the screen before the stylus, the app took a few seconds to figure out which it should pay attention to. Also, the app can’t control what happens if your palm brushes something at the bottom of the screen, like the Notifications tray or the quick launch icon.

Two major things bugged me about this app beyond the palm thing. First, it only works in portrait mode, not landscape. Even though this does mimic a paper notebook, I would rather have the choice. Besides, using it in landscape mode would make it easier to avoid putting my palm on the actual screen and rest it on the tablet’s edge.

Also, I’d like the option of continuous scrolling on note pages. Since the farther down you move your hand the closer you are to activating something on the lower bar, I want to keep the blank space in my notebook in the center or near the top.

Exporting notes is easy, but you can only do so a page at a time and not a whole notebook. Pages with scribbles can only export as images. Pages with text can either export as text or as an image. Notes Mobile will send the image or text to any compatible application, including Gmail, messaging, printer share, etc. I exported both image and text to SpringPad and Evernote easily, though the text had some funky line breaks in it.

I could see using this app in situations where I really need write — such as taking notes — or when I need freeform drawings. Taking notes quickly works quite well, especially if you turn off the automatic translation and just go for scribbles. There’s no lag and the pen tip is almost as responsive as an ink pen. However, I’m not ready to give up my LiveScribe pen and paper for this just yet.

FlexT9 Keyboard

With the inclusion of the FlexT9 keyboard Lenovo tried to bring handwriting recognition to other apps as well. By default, the keyboard shows normal keys with the functionality you’d expect. I like that there’s easy access to numbers and symbols via tap and hold. And, like Swype, users can drag a finger or the stylus from letter to letter to form words.

On the lower right side is a Stylus icon. Tap that and now you have a free form space to write your words instead of typing. If you’re at all familiar with Graffiti on the old Palm OS or the handwriting area on the old Windows Mobile platform you’ll be comfortable with this. However, it works more like Windows Mobile than Graffiti in that you don’t always need to create letters in one specific way.

I found this mode frustrating and difficult to use. Though I was careful to print clearly, the engine often misinterpreted my words badly. Many times it wouldn’t even get close. And the behavior wasn’t consistent. Sometimes I could write a whole sentence and only see one mistake. Then the next sentence there would be tons of mistakes, rendering it unreadable. And no matter how often I wrote, deleted, and rewrote a word, the engine didn’t seem to learn.

The keyboard does come with extensive documentation that offers some advice on best ways to write tricky letters like t. That didn’t solve all of the issues, but it’s good that the help file exists.

Though you have plenty of space to write out words, users can also write letters on top of each other to minimize hand movement. The accuracy here was about the same as writing letters next to each other.

I wondered whether it was the pen or the keyboard causing the problem, so I downloaded the Graffiti for Android keyboard. Using that, I saw more accuracy and it was rare for the keyboard to interpret the wrong letter or word. So the pen is working just fine, it’s FlexT9 that needs some tweaks.

Stylus Use With Other Apps

As I said, the stylus works anywhere in Android, so it will work with other apps. However, what you can do with the stylus depends on the features of the app in question.

For instance, in DocumentsToGo there’s no function that allows users to draw or scribble on documents, so you can’t do that even with the stylus. However, ezPDF Reader does give users the ability to draw on a document, make annotations, add notes, etc. Then pen works very well for that.

If you download Evernote and Skitch, you can create handwritten notes and drawings, which are saved as images. Evernote doesn’t do handwriting recognition, but you can export text from MyScript Notes to Evernote, as I said.

In the future, there may be more apps that specifically take advantage of the stylus in the same way as MyScript. Lenovo’s App Shop is the likeliest place to find them, as the company says that all apps you find there have been tested to ensure that they work on the ThinkPad and IdeaPad K1 tablets.

Conclusion

The stylus is definitely a worthy addition to the ThinkPad. Since it doesn’t cost too much extra, it’s worth getting from the start. Though the FlexT9 keyboard isn’t as useful as it could be in the handwriting department, MyScript Notes goes a long way to making the ThinkPad a viable replacement for the notepad in your briefcase. And more apps that take advantage of the functionality are surely on the way.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet Review: Working With The Stylus is a post by K. T. Bradford from Gotta Be Mobile.

Switching to a smartphone is a big deal, not only are there new things to learn, but there’s the added cost of a data plan to factor into the decision.

Currently Verizon is offering a $100 gift card to customers who upgrade from a dumbphone to a smartphone, which has led to a lot of people thinking of switching to a smartphone.

In talking with many of these users, and the writers here at GottaBeMobile, I have identified many areas where having a smartphone is a major convenience and can deliver enough real savings to cover your data plan each month.

Whether you use it for work, play or just keeping things running smoothly at home there are many benefits to smartphones.

10 Reasons to Get a Smartphone

Save Money – Having a smartphone on hand while you shop can help you save on everyday purchases, and save big on larger purchases like appliances. Not only can you read product reviews while you are in the store, you can also compare prices by scanning barcodes to make sure that you are getting the best deal.

While talking with a potential smartphone buyer recently, she shared that if she had a smartphone she would have been able to find out the features on an appliance at Sears and save $50 too.

Without a smartphone, she had to drive home after employees couldn’t provide any information about the appliance, and there she found that Sears.com had it available for $50 less. She ordered online and picked up in store. If she had a smartphone that whole process could have happened without the extra time and gas.

Savings like this add up, and could cover your data plan over time.

Finding Directions – With an iPhone or a Droid, you can get driving, walking and public transit directions on your phone without asking a stranger or pestering your family every time you go somewhere. Android phones have free built in turn by turn GPS directions, so you don’t need to bring your GPS unit out anymore. Google Maps for Android even includes real time traffic information.

Organization – No more forgetting about important events or being unorganized. The calendar and to do apps for smartphones beat those on regular cell phones easily, and thanks to app stores, you can find a solution that fits your needs. There are many which will allow you to add items and calendar entries from your computer too.

Instant Access to Business Information - No more wondering if a restaurant is good, just search reviews on your smartphone. Need to find the hours of the local hardware store? No problem. The list of places and information you can find is endless, and quicker to access than turning on your computer.

Weather at a Glance – Instead of waiting around for weather on the 8′s, or booting up your computer, just glance at a weather widget on your smartphone. You can get your current and forecast weather as well as severe weather alerts.

Settle Arguments - Need to end an argument about how many seasons of Happy Days there were before it jumped the shark? Or how many completions Michael Vick had last season? Instead of going back and forth, look up the answer on your smartphone.

Read Email Faster – Instead of deleting junk email for the first 10 minutes when you open up your inbox, you can easily tap and delete spam and unwanted emails from your phone while you wait in line.

Books, Magazines and Movies For Less – Instead of driving to the bookstore to get the newest release for $25, you can open up the Kindle, Nook or iBooks apps on your smartphone and download the latest books for less. You can do this anywhere you have a cell phone signal.

You can also purchase magazines, movies and TV shows on your smartphone. If you are concerned about reading on a smaller screen, opt for a phone like the Droid Bionic with a 4.3″ qHD display that is easy to read outdoors and allows you to read more on the screen at once than similar devices.

Deposit Checks and Make Payments – Instead of going to the bank or writing a check, you can use your smartphone to handle many of your banking needs. There are a number of apps that allow you to use your iPhone or Android camera to deposit a check from home, and any ways to send money to a friend for a group gift or a split lunch bill. See – iPhone Banking apps and deposit checks on Android with Paypal.

Don’t Ever Forget – Instead of keeping all of your receipts and other important bits of information, take a picture of them with your smartphone as soon as you get it. Then upload it to Evernote or Springpad and you’ll always be able to find the info. You can use this to remember a location, a favorite beer or wine, gift ideas and much more.

Smartphone Upgrade advice

If you want these benefits, but don’t want email to constantly be popping up and tempting you to read it, you can turn off auto sync, so that you only get new email when you want it. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you have a discount through work or as a veteran it will often carry over to the data plan, and sometimes will be bigger than your main line discount.

Money image via Flickr AMagill

10 Ways Smartphones Save You Time and Money is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.