Kitting Out the iPAD for Writers–Part 4

Posted by Michelle in Blog, Technology, Writing | Comments Off

Jul 31, 11

The IPAD is a fantastic product for writers-on-the-go.  I have been busy kitting mine out for on-the-go (and garden) writing. Here, then, are my own top choices in apps and kit. In Part 1 of this series, I concentrated on my own picks for covers and keyboards, and in Part 2 I listed some serious writing apps. Part 3 saw me tackling some specific blogging apps, and now I will be looking at more general helper apps for note taking, researching and task management in Part 4.

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Note Taking, Researching and Brainstorming & Task Management.

iPAD Apps for Note Taking, Researching and Brainstorming & Task Management

Whether writing your country’s next greatest novel, writing for blogs or writing non-fiction, most writers require some helper apps for general note-taking, research and planning tasks and projects upfront. In terms of Productivity apps, the iPAD is well stocked. These are my favourite for writing.

Task Management

Task Management is important for writers, particularly those who write for multiple projects, or have daily deadlines. Here are a few apps which allow for this.

Things ($20)

Things is based on the Things for Mac task management software, but you can still use it on the iPad as a PC user should you wish. It has a hefty price-tag, but provides a GTD-like format with Today/Next/Scheduled/Someday management categories of your tasks, plus a projects area, and logbook.

Syncing wirelessly with the desktop version for Mac is also available. The interface for Things makes it a popular choice.

Link: Things at iTunes

Task PRO ($2)

I like Task PRO for task management, although there are so many other apps in this productivity area to look into. Task PRO contains a reasonably minimalist interface with List views, due, overdue, starred and priority items. You can tag each with ‘personal’, ‘work’ etc, and set reminders for the tasks.

Unlike many other task management checklist systems, Task Pro allows nested tasks so  you can set up a top-level project as a task, and add sub-tasks to these. Alphabetical, date and manual sorting of tasks also. Task Pro also integrates with the online Toodlelo system, and contains a built-in email app allowing you to email out your tasks. Really important tasks can be starred so that they appear on the home screen of your app.

Link: Task PRO

More Notes

I’ve listed several note-taker apps in Part 2 of this series, but the following are popular due to their synching facilities – to your computer desktops, and onto the cloud, and for their multiple note types, including taking images and text from websites you browse to; and sketching or handwriting your notes.

Evernote (Free)

Evernote is popular in general, and the iPAD app is free, allowing for you to synch notes from mobile, desktop and the web, categorise into notebooks, and even add hand-drawn notes and audio recordings to your notes database.

Note that currently the Evernote app hasn’t all the features of it’s desktop brother, due to the iPAD platform itself. Notes typed and edited on the desktop version can contain rich-text features whereas on the iPAD app, you can not edit these notes.

Synching between versions of Evernote is a premium feature also. This costs $5 per month / $45 per year.

Link: Evernote at iTunes

Penultimate ($2)

Penultimate is the creme-le-crop if you’re after an elegant handwriting note-taker. You can draw your quick notes on a photorealistic paper notebook, save into different notebooks. Good for quick sketches and the rendering of the ink is excellent.

Note that these notes can be exported only as image files meaning you can’t access them as text files for editing.

Link: Penultimate at iTunes

Brainstorming, Mindmapping and Outlining

Most writers require some outlining or planning before entering writing. In Part 2 of this series, I outlined a couple of writing apps which provide Index Cards – a good method for outlining and planning larger projects. I particularly like the app called Index Cards for this. Here are some more.

Corkulous

Corkulous is a fun app. You can have multiple corkboards – with nested corkboards inside of these, and through a filing cabinet you can choose labels, sticky-notes (with colour options), contacts,  simple to-do check lists and images to stick onto these corkboards.

Boards can be password locked, and exported as PDF files (an image only, sadly).  For brainstorming together a pinboard of writing thoughts and elements, Corkulous could have it’s place on your own toolset.

Link: Corkulous

iThoughtsHD ($10.49)

Although expensive, iThoughtsHD receives a lot of good feedback regarding the mindmaps you can create on this App. The interface is really nice, and actual map features are excellent – lovely branches, icons (90 built in) and images allowed, and easy to add to. Maps can be hyperlinked together.

iThoughts mindmaps can be exported to many popular desktop mindmap tools including MindManager, ConceptDraw and Freemind. There is also export to PDF or PNG format, and one-tap synchronisation via Dropbox.

Link: iThoughts HD

Read the other posts in this series -

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and  Brainstorming & Task Management

Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series

Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (listed in Part 5 table also).

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