We are close to start beta testing of the first version of MobileNoter and I wanted shed some light on application functionality. It is important for us to build right expectations of our customers. First version of MobileNoter solves several significant use cases, that we think are most important for most of you. At the same time, its a first step and this means that it may miss functionality that someone is probably looking for. If that is the case for you, please help us drive development in the right way, vote for the features you need on this blog, tell us what you think. We promise to listen everyone, as we believe this is the way to build a great product.
So, what will you see in MobileNoter 1.0?
First of all, integration with Microsoft OneNote. Microsoft OneNote is a great application, more and more people start using it on the daily basis. It is natural that they want to take their digital notebooks away from their desktop just as they would do this with paper notebook. Some use TabletPC for this. But the latest generation of mobile device like iPhone provides great technical capabilities that allow to build reach applications, that is coupled with small size and weight that makes them much more mobile.
Returning to MobileNoter, v 1.0 allows you to view Microsoft OneNote notebooks that you created inside OneNote on your iPhone. It is not possible to edit data in existing Notebooks (except one special notebook, see below). But viewing capabilities are quite rich. You are able to switch between notebooks, see pages and sections (including section color!) and see page content just as it is in your OneNote. Layout of elements, text formatting and images are preserved in MobileNoter. Finally, you are able to zoom and scroll page content like a web page in Safari. We plan to make it possible to edit data in OneNote notebooks on iPhone in one of the next versions.
In addition to view OneNote notebooks, it is possible to create simple notes (we call them QuickNotes in MobileNoter) on iPhone and sync them two-way with OneNote. They are synced into special notebook called MobileNoter that is created automatically. QuickNotes are added into first section, each note in its own separate page. The idea is that you create simple notes on the fly when you are away from your OneNote, then sync them into OneNote and use OneNote to organize them in the better way (add better formatting, perhaps some more info and move to other notebooks where you usually store notes of this type). There is no formatting support in QuickNotes in MobileNoter yet. It will be added in one of the next versions.
UPDATE: Features listed here were part of 0.8 release. We decided to release this version as public beta to reach higher level of stability and implement more features to be part of v1.0