In the original post I also promised to let everybody know once I found something that looked interesting and close to what I wanted out of a note application on the iPad. I think this application comes really close to something that I”d love to use in my daily work.

CourseNotes looks like the application that I”ve been waiting for. It has a lot of great features combined with an awesome UI, that seems really intuitive. Check the promotion video after the jump:

Organize your course notes into multiple subjects and note sessions

Export note sessions via email and send them to yourself or your friends

Transfer note sessions peer-to-peer with other CourseNotes users

Track assignments and ToDo lists for each subject

Define new terms and build a lexicon of definitions for each subject

Check out the application’’s website for more information: [www.coursenotesapp.com]

I just wrote an email to the developer and I”ll keep you updated if I hear something new.

Update:

I just received an email from Jon Klein from CourseNotes and here is something very interesting:

“We are actively working on “plain” drawing, and would like to include diagrams in the future, but have not yet begun any work on it.

Exporting to PDF is also on the TODO list, but not sure on the timeline for that either.  Exporting notes in general is something we want to take a careful look at.  We currently offer email and Bluetooth export, but we know that users will be wanting more in the future, like online sharing or desktop syncing.”

The 3 winners of 3 promocodes each are:

• @sevel3 “Hi. I’m am a boy from the country Denmark and i like tennis, drama and gadgets. I want to be a journalist”
• @stkhlm “http://asn24.dk“
• @mochaSync “Beginning iPhone and OS X developer, help me!”

I’ve have just sent an DM to all three of them.

Congratutalations and I hope you’ll all comeback for the next giveaway right here at iSingers.info. I hope we get more entries next time and I’m sure the giveaway will be even bigger next time!

Stay tuned!

So today we are giving out 3 applications to 3 awesome readers. Three winners, who will each win promocodes to “Darkness“, “Consume” and “MoneyBook“. Who wouldn’t want to win all of these applications?

I did a review on MoneyBook yesterday and today I’m giving the great application away. Not only are we giving away this application but also 2 applications from Bjango – Darkness & Consume. I’ll be doing a review/post on these two applications as soon as possible, so stay tuned for those.

How do you participate:

Twitter entry:

1. Follow me on Twitter: @matiassingers http://twitter.com/matiassingers
2. You must tweet the following:
   “RT for a chance to win: 3 iPhone application giveaway – Join the fun over at http://bit.ly/afIDCQ @matiassingers”
3. You can tweet the message as many times as you like but it’ll only be counted once ;)

Comment entry:

1. Make a comment below. If want to then you could tell me why you want this app.
2. Make sure to include your valid e-mail address
3. Subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to receive news about great giveaways and articles in the future.

Rules:

• The giveaway is open to all residents worldwide. Please be aware that a US iTunes Store account is required in order to redeem the promo code.
• Winners will be contacted by e-mail/Direct Message(Twitter)
• 3 Winners
• Winners will be selected in a random drawing – random.org
• Prize: each winner will win 3 promocodes for “MoneyBook”, “Darkness” and “Consume”
• Two entries per contestant: 1 comment entry and 1 Twitter entry using the provided code.
• The comment must be left before Tuesday 9th February at 11:59 EST, 8:59 PST or 17:59 GMT+1(DK)
• If you have any questions regarding this giveaway please use the contact form or @matiassingers at Twitter.

I’d been looking for an app of this kind for a while and I just wanted something that was really simple, but with the necessary features that I required. It’s recommended for everybody to manage their spendings and see where they can cut down and thereby have more money at the end of the month.

The graphical interface of the application is terrific and easy to understand. It couldn’t have been more simple than pushing “New Transaction” and then enter the amount and what category, and if you want to you can add a little note or change the date of the spending.

Overview:

When you first open the application you enter your monthly budget and you are now ready to use the application. From the Overview tab of the application you can see what your spending level is on and your top categories and how much you spend on those. It also shows you a little statistics about your average spending per day, below the statistics box is a button named “New transaction”.

It’s set up with Danish kr but you can choose between a bunch of different currencies. When you press on “New transaction”  it brings you to the Transaction tab -> New transaction. You can then enter the amount of money and what category you want it in. There are two pages of expenses categories and a single page with Incomings categories – all the icons have a name under them, so it shouldn’t be a problem recognizing the category you want. Besides categories you can also add a sticky note or add a date of the expense.

You may have noticed the big and very easy to use num-pad in the new transaction windows and that is great feature with the quick subtraction/addition. In the transactions tab there is also some great eye-candy and a visual representation of you transactions divided into the different categories.

In addition to the ability to add expenses/incomings just seconds after they happened, you can also add recuring transactions that will happen in the beginning of each month. The application also lets you view your transaction history from the months before. You might want to be able to export your transactions if you do your personal budget in a spreadsheet on your computer, so of course MoneyBook gives you the ability to send yourself an email with an .csv file.

The developers of this great application is also listening a lot to their users and if you request a feature I’m sure they’ll respond to you. You can contact them on twitter or their own website – I would also like to recommend that you subscribe to their blog.

Conclusion:

It’s a great little application with a user interface that is easy and fun to use. The ability to quickly enter information into the app is priceless and makes the whole process of tracking your spendings a lot more fun. The guys did a great job with keeping the application simple but still include some core features that gives it this extra feel. Over all I think it is the perfect application for people who would like to track and make sure they’ll have enough money at the end of the month. I’m sticking with application for personal finance tracking on the go and then importing it to my personal budget on my laptop.

I think it would be great if the application had somekind of sync/backup to a cloud server, where you would be able to track and add transactions in any browser, anywhere. I think some people would want a quick way to share a months expenses on email, facebook or twitter – instead of sending the .csv file.

Review recap:
Application name: MoneyBook
Rating: 3,5
Reviewer: Matias Singers
Summary: “I would like to see some way to sync with an online service of somekind + a share feature”
Price: $2,99
Reviewed on: 2010-02-04

Stay tuned for promocode giveaway tomorrow – be sure to come back and check them out.

Apples tablet the iPad is announced and the whole world is waiting for its release in March 2010. The iPad is running a modified version of the iPhone OS 3.2 and the iPad SDK has been released to developers around the world. The usual fight between people who like the product and others who doesn’t see any future in the product, has begun. It has always been like that with Apple products and it was exactly the same back when the iPod was first introduced. Something is missing in the iPad though.

History

I’ve always thought about getting a tablet or some kind of touchscreen device for taking notes at school. I like to have all my notes stored digitally so I can easily search and reorder them, but one of the downsides of digital notes is when you need to draw figures – it’s just not the same as drawing them by hand. I personally think OneNote does a pretty great job as a note-taking/storing application but it’s only for Windows and I have no plans to install Windows 7 just so I can run OneNote. I’ve tried quite a few drawing applications for Mac OS X but just haven’t found one that I really like yet. So what do I do when I have to draw a figures – well it depends on the situation but I would do one these things:

1. Draw them on a piece of paper and then make a reference to the paper, put it in a folder where they are all ordered. This kind of works but it’s annoying that you have to switch from MacBook to folder to MacBook and so on.
2. Draw them as good as I can in some kind of drawing/painting application.
3. Get a screendump from a Windows user with OneNote – they usually look okay
4. I guess I could take a picture of the presentation/figure.
5. Draw it on a piece of paper and then scan it into my notes program on my MacBook – takes a lot of time

There is some solutions to this problem, Livescribe for example is a great little product. It’s a pen which records what you draw and write and then you can download the content onto you computer with the Livescribe application. Sounds pretty great but a little expensive and there is some limitations.
I’ve had a little drawing app on my iPhone 2G(Silverback) since I first bought it back in 2007 and I’m really impressed by how sensitive and precise the touchscreen really is. Clearly the iPhone screen is way too small for serious note-taking and handwriting recognition.

Touchscreen enabled device

I really love using touchscreen devices because most of them are so intuitive and easy to use. As Scott Forstall states:

“If you see something[on a website], you just reach out and tap it. It’s completely natural, you don’t even think about it. You just do!”

It’s so true and I feel exactly the same way about multitouch-screens, you really just do what comes natural to you. If you want to zoom you pinch; if you want to move a picture you move your finger around, just like you would do with physical objects.

Now just for a moment imagine you are in a class or a meeting and someone presents you with a figure and you would like the have this jotted down on your computerm but you don’t have any applications that does this the way you would like to. Now with a multitouch-screen tablet computer, like the iPad, it would be so easy and intuitive. Just look at how Apple made a iPad version of their iWork suite, they fitted it for multitouch control/navigation. As you probably saw in Apple Keynote January 27th the iWork apps were so easy to use and probably even a small kid could use the applications successfully.

I still can’t understand why Apple didn’t “redesign, reimagine, rebuild” the Notes.app – that application is not even doing a good job on the iPhone and this was the perfect change to upgrade it. They could have implemented handwriting recognition and a bunch of other things, it wouldn’t even be that hard to do. They didn’t and that’s why I want you developers out there to start developing a great note-taking application for the iPad.

iPad application mockup/sketch/concept/idea

I was saddened that this doesn’t already exist because if it did I would imagine that every student around the world would want it on their iPads. The first developer that deciphers the code of note-taking applications and makes an awesome iPad note taking application is going to be a very successful iPhone OS developer. For me this application just comes by as natural and I’m still surprised Apple didn’t do this themselves.

Now I’m not a graphic designer at all so that’s why this mockup isn’t a graphic beauty but more like a sketch or a jot down of my idea and thoughts. I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this but as far as I know no one has a ready application or anything so.

Now if any of you Graphic Designers out there feel like doing a great concept mockup then please feel free to do it. If you do make a mockup then please contact me and I’ll show it here – as it will probably represent the idea a lot better than the thing of horror that I did.

Think of the application as a iPad version of OneNote but of course with a lot better design and features. I like how intuitive and easy OneNote is to use and this application should be the same. Ability to place text and figures wherever you want to, it doesn’t have to include handwriting recognition but it would be a great feature. It seems that Apple have been working on some kind of handwriting recognition but that might just be for their Chinese users. The Newton even used handwriting as input so we know they have somekind of technology – but why aren’t they using it?

The demo of Brushes[iTunes] at the Apple Keynote a couple of days ago was fantastic and this just shows what developers are able to do on this new product. An application that uses some of the same features and techniques would be really cool.

So what does Sleep Cycle do exactly?

It uses the iPhone/iPod Touch built-in accelerometer to measure what sleep-stage you are in. It measures how much you move around and then translates that into sleep-stages. It works because , when you go into “Deep Sleep” your brain sends a command to your spine that shuts down all your muscles and you are basically paralysed. The reason people sometimes just suddenly wake up with the feeling that they are falling and that is caused because your brain sends the command before you are actually ready to go into “Deep Sleep”. So you place your iPhone at the top of your bed with the display down and it registers all your movements. Right before you go to bed you set the alarm in the application and then it”ll wake you up as close to that time but also when you are in the lightest sleep phase.

It’’s easier to explain how it works with a some screenshots from the application itself:

As you can see, they are recommending placing it at top of the bed just under the bed sheet.

All my experiences with the application has been really great and way better than I expected. I got to admit that my sleep routines/patterns are pretty messed up right now. But here is some screenshots from the application which shows how my sleep pattern looks.

Developers website: Sleep Cycle

Applications Twitter: @sleepcycle

Review recap:

So you are thinking “oh yet another fanboy writing down the things he wants in the iPhone” but boy are you wrong. I’ll list some things I would like to see implemented into the iPhone OS(4.0). Some of these features can be archived by jailbreaking and I will cover this too. TUAW wrote an article about things that their readers would like to see in the iPhone OS 4.0 but I’m not going be nice about this or make any statistics. I’m not going to comment on the standard request for multitasking/background applications because so many other sites and blogs have already been there.

22 things Apple should to implement in the iPhone OS:

• Edit the dictionary: We need a way to edit the dictionary, this could be done through iTunes or another app on the computer. I’m tired of Messages.app correcting the same words all the time and it doesn’t seem to learn the word that I always choose. There is some workarounds such as:
  • type the word in the Google search bar in Safari.app,
  • add it to a contact in your address book
  • type it multiple times in Notes.app
  • keep correcting it
• Application folders: This have been available to jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touches for ages and it’s even a good way to do it: [Categories.app] This shouldn’t be hard to implement and even easier to do this through iTunes where you already reorder and move your apps around.
• Text Delivery Reports: A standard feature which all networks around the world supports and could just be implemented as an option under Settings.app. There is a ton of alternative SMS/Text/MMS application in the jailbreak world. Another way to do this now is to write network specific commands before the message. Network code delivery reports look for your networks code here: [iPhones Talk]
• Character Count: Like the Delivery Reports this have been available in all the alternative text applications. Applications like biteSMS does this plus a ton of more features.
• Custom tones for SMS/MMS/Mail: You can already do this for ringtones and alarms so it just seems odd that you aren’t able to do it with these. You can do this if you jailbreak in multiple ways.
  • SSH into you iPhone and fix it that way
  • Download custom tones from Cydia or other apps.
  • Themes with WinterBoard
• Wireless Sync with Mac: This is possible on a lot of standalone apps but not the core ones. I’m suspecting Apple of doing this so people are forced to buy MobileMe which is really sad. I don’t want sync of videos, music and so on because it would drain battery and take a long time – just data like calendar, contacts, notes and maybe Voice Memos.
• Better Group-SMS with support for contact groups: I can’t believe Apple didn’t already do it this way because their Address Book works so good with contact groups yet you still can’t send a SMS to a contact group. This is also available through the alternative SMS/MMS applications.
• TV-Out of the whole OS and all applications: As it is right now you can only do this of videos and photos but I want to be able to show some applications and games on my screen. You can do this with the jailbreak application:
  • ScreenSplitr is one great way to it output the display. Check the developer out on twitter: @c0diq
  • The iPhone TV-Out project is another great tool to do this. Erica Sadun is a part of this project.
• Ability to hide Core applications: Come on, this can’t be hard to do – gimme a toggle in Settings.app or iTunes.app to hide/show Core apps. I don’t think everybody is interested in Stocks or Weather and maybe they found an alternative and doesn’t want to look at the Core app anymore. Of course this is possible in the jailbreak world too check out: Poof;
• Unified Mailbox: A way to show multiple Mailbox accounts in one Inbox. I’m sure you can do this with some jailbreak application.
• Turn off auto-rotate/landscape mode: Some way to toggle this in certain apps or situations. Sometimes you just don’t want your iPhone to rotate the video or photo you are looking at. This is possible with a jailbreak solution called SBSettings
• Save contacts to SIM: Right now it’s only possible to import contacts from SIM, let’s get this function implemented so it’s easier to switch SIM cards and/or phones. You can do this with the jailbreak app iSIM
• Panorama mode for Camera.app: This is possible with a ton of applications from the App Store but, come on Apple, implement it in the original Camera.app
• Custom toggle icons: Who wouldn’t like to be able to turn WIFI on/off from the SpringBoard just with a click on a icon/app.
• Automatic sync of podcasts: You can already download music and applications over 3G and WIFI so why can’t you check for new podcasts from you iPhone?
• Ability for some apps/you to disable incoming calls: Imagine you are playing a game, without an auto-save function, and you’ve just gotten to the finale boss and suddenly your girlfriend calls you. Wouldn’t you like to be able to block incoming calls in certain games/apps? Think of it as “Airplane mode” kicking in when you opened Awesome Game.app Update: “Ability to quick reply to text messages so you don’t have to quit games etc.” [Thanks for the comment mnmminies]
• Themes: The jailbreak application WinterBoard have had this function for a long time and with a wide support for themes and customs fonts. I know for a fact that a lot of people are getting tired of the iPhone UI, they want to see something new and I think themes are a great way to change things up a little bit. Apple could even control which themes to let through the needle hole.
• Better file sharing over BlueTooth: There is some apps in the App Store where you can share images and contact info but lets get some more filetypes enabled. The iBluetooth project which is now known as iBlueNova will allow this.
• Landscape mode for Calendar.app: Ability to rotate Calendar.app and see more info or something like that. I’m sure Apple could implement this in a great way.
• Show pictures of contacts in Address Book: Why not just make a small thumbnail with the picture that is in their contact information. You can buy the application Cyntact from Cydia.

Features requiring a little more developing and coding:

• Speech Recognition: Why not add more languages to this feature? This is probably coming over time or at least that’s what I’m hoping. With the [intlink id="85" type="post"]Google Nexus One[/intlink] having the Speech-To-Text why not give the Messages.app the same ability?
• FM Radio: This one requires a little more explanation. It was reported that the iPhone 3G(S) has a chip that enables it to both receive and broadcast a FM signal and Apple is reported on working to implement someway for the Radio.app to connect with iTunes Music Store so you could buy the music you are listening to. More about the iPhone Radio.app at 9to5mac.

Hope you liked my run-through of things I would like to see implemented in to iPhone OS in a near future. I still think the iPhone is the greatest phone that I’ve ever owned because even though these things are missing Apple have perfected the features that the iPhone have.

Please comment below if you have any more ideas for things that should be implemented or a way to fix the problems with the current OS and iPhone.

CitySourced is basically an app for the normal citizen in every american city* who wants to help the local government/city council with problems around the city. This sounds really great and the way CitySourced executes this idea of citizen reporting is just brilliant. The easiest way to understand this app is to see it or understand how it works for the person wanting to report something.

So let’s say you are driving down a road in San Jose, CA and suddenly you see a pothole in the middle of the road so you park your car at the side of the road goes out and with CitySourced snaps a photo of the pothole. Then the apps reads your GPS coordinates and sends it to the city council of the city you are in. At the city council they have a program running on a computer that sees all of these reporting tick in and they can then review them and fix them. The developers are planning on implement some features requested by Kevin Rose at TechCrunch50, some of these features are:

• Be able to subscribe to your own neighborhood.
• See events close to you, that you can take action on right now.
• Implement a Digg like system where you can vote up reports to give them higher priorities.

Besides these new features they are also planning to implement the app with other data sources and for the city council to gather all this real time data at a central point.

Take a look at this video fra TechCrunch50 with the company presenting the application:

I think this is a really great application for the iPhone and they are developing an app for the Palm Pre with Android support coming soon. This really should be in every city around the world, just think about all the problems we meet every single day these would be easier to fix.

Website: CitySourced.com

Twitter: @CitySourced

*I hope this expands to the rest of the world soon.

Review recap: