As a followup to my participation in Operation Vote at San Antonio, I was invited to participate in FVAP sponsored UOCAVA Solutions Workshop in San Francisco over the weekend. I used that opportunity to test out my new iPad application called ThinkBook.
Keeping notes during a workshop is not always easy thanks to the interaction between members. Using a simple word processor may all one needs. However, I have always be intrigued by innovative organizers.
ThinkBook is a very flexible note-taking app with some unique features. You can keep meeting notes, add questions and todos. Use ThinkBook’s unique finder notes to create a live dashboard views of your data, showing unanswered questions and outstanding todos for each meeting. ThinkBook can be used to record meeting minutes and keep project notes. By being very flexible, ThinkBook adapts to its users, not the other way around.
Users who like keeping pages of plain notes are well served, they can put pages into notebooks and create a library. Users who like outlines and hierarchy can use ThinkBook’s indentation gestures to add structure to their notes, then collapse whole sections to see only the headings.
ThinkBook’s most distinctive feature however, is the slider. The developer has used some unique tricks to help manage tasks via the slider which is the hub of the whole system; you can create notes with the slider, reorganize them and do almost everything else you want to do.
Tags are automatically inherited, which means your projects and assorted tasks are neatly organized before you even start working. And the Dropbox integration, super-fast search, and custom keyboard (complete with word-jump, note-jump and New Item buttons) let you find things quickly, build outlines fast, and keep it all in sync.
I really enjoyed using ThinkBook during the workshop, especially the slider allowing me to jump around quickly and insert notes, questions and/or todos. The special keyboard keys are also a great help to insert notes, questions and/todos when entering text without the need to use the slider.
Overall, I love ThinkPad, but I wish it had a Mac version and Print option. There are “send text to Dropbox” and “email this page” options, both can be used to “export” a book or page, but it is in plain text with no real formatting. There is however a positive to the “text” export, as it allows simple text editing to make quick changes on a desktop or laptop running any OS, and “import”it back in using the “get text from Dropbox” option. Yes, it requires the use of a Dropbox account.
