I love writing, making lists, recording events, and scribbling down ideas. I have at least three notebooks on the go at any one time, and I love technology too. Because of these things I decided to try out Paper, by FiftyThree for the iPad. I was pretty excited when I discovered this app. Paper lets me keep a dozen digital notebooks on my iPad. I can label them, customise the cover art and add new pages if I need to.
I can also share the contents to my blog, social media accounts, or as a PDF via email, which is a great feature for taking notes in a meeting, and saves me writing them up later. It’s smart. Paper is a very simple idea, done very well, and has no unnecessary features clogging up the GUI – like location services for example. It is just a bunch of digital notebooks, a digital pencil case, and that’s about it.
That said the iPad’s capacitive touchscreen technology is a big problem. You don’t get the same precision writing on screen as you do on the real thing. I can’t write accurately enough with my finger, or any traditional stylus, to truly replace my real notebook fascination.
The above was written using a Classic Jot Stylus and the Paper app. Writing with the Jot takes a bit of getting used to because you can’t lean on the screen as you would on a notebook, but a couple of days into it I got the hang of it. My handwriting can be a bit hard to read at times, I call it ‘creative’, others call it illegible, but it says a lot about me. With less opportunity to write these days I hope that this combination of new meets old might help keep the art of handwriting going for a little bit longer.
Paper by Fifty Three is available to download from iTunes for free, and the Jot Stylus is available from Amazon. The Jot Stylus is compatible with all capacitive touch screens: iPads, iPhones, MacBook Trackpads, Magic Trackpads, HTC, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry but check the Adonit UK website for a list of incompatible screen protectors.
I’ve been using this app myself for a while, but for sketches rather than notes. I use a Studio Neat Cosmonaut; it has just the right feel to it.
Hi Gareth. Lots of people seem to use it for sketching. Thanks for the tip though, i’ll check it out
It looks pretty neat but i’m not sure it will work for writing. I wish I could draw 🙁
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