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Daily iPad App: Rich Notes is another snazzy note-taking solution for your iPad
There are a ton of great note-taking apps out there for the iPad at this point (one of my favorites is Penultimate), and because there are so many available, choosing one is really up to personal preference at this point. Rich Notes is a relatively new entry to the pantheon, but it's free (which is always nice), and will let you take fully formatted notes on your iPad you like. The app is simple and clean, and features full text formatting (bold, italic, and underline to start), iCloud compatibility, the ability to share your notes out via email or copy them to the clipboard, and a nice wide landscape orientation editor for typing into. The one real issue I have with Rich Notes is the fact that much of the app's really shiny formatting options (like the ability to use strikethrough text, change the text's color, or use highlighting) are hidden behind in-app purchases. That you have to buy these features isn't so bad (obviously the app's developer worked hard, and deserves to be paid for his work), but the buttons for these features are permanently in the interface, and you are only reminded that you need to purchase them once you've gone through, selected your text, and then hit the "highlight" button, for example. That can be frustrating, especially when you're in the middle of taking notes fast and want to highlight something without remembering that you haven't made the in-app purchase yet. So it would be nice if the IAP features were a little more well-thought out. Obviously, buying the features means you won't have any problems, but the model is just a little weird (especially because, from what I've seen, many purchasers of productivity apps are more than happy to pay for a well-made experience). At any rate, if you want another notes app to try out, Rich Notes is currently available as a free download on the App Store. I doubt it will sway you away from a solution if you've already found something you love, but again, finding a notes app you like at this point is mostly a matter of personal taste. So in that light, it's probably worth a try.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Byword
To a writer a decent text editor is worth its weight in gold. Unlike Word or Pages, Byword is a text editor that gives you just enough to get the job done, while getting out of your way. In its most basic form it's a plain text editor, but it can also produce and edit rich-text files and MultiMarkdown support, meaning that for the most part, you can get almost any sort of creative writing done within its minimalist writing interface. When windowed, Byword gives you a svelte borderless writing experience, but when full-screen it removes all distractions with a blank off-white background that fills the screen with just a single column of text with some great typography in the center. Various tools like a file type indicator or word and character counters are available at the bottom of the screen in faint text, while search and full-screen buttons are hidden in the top right hand corner. The font size, color, column width and typography can all be customized, even allowing white text on a black background if required. Byword also includes a "focus" mode, which highlights a portion of the text (shown above), fading out the rest. You can choose from one to nine lines or just one paragraph to include in the highlight, which allows you to concentrate on just the text needed at the time. For US$9.99 Byword is a great text editor, providing just enough functionality while getting out of your way.
Diamond, the rich text editor that thinks different
Diamond is a free rich text editor with a difference. Lots of differences, actually, which combine to make it quite appealing. Developer Geoffrey Alexander has recently released Diamond 3, which makes this an excellent time for you to download and give it a try. How is Diamond different? Diamond windows look different. Sometimes they're hardly there. They may or may not have title bars. They may or may not hover above a background (flat color, or photographic, it's up to you) that in turn hovers over everything else on your desktop. Text inside Diamond documents flows in columns. Word and character counts float unobtrusively below the windows, as if hanging in space. If you want them to. Aspects of Diamond's differentness are yours to tweak in the prefs, of course, so you can de-weird things if you feel the need. But that takes all the fun out of it. If I'm not making much sense here, I encourage you to take a look at the Diamond gallery or download the app to try it for yourselves. As Geoffrey himself once said: "Diamond isn't for everyone, and may not even be for anyone." But I rather like it, if only because it takes the mundanity of editing text and adds a bit of life that you don't find in other rich text editors.
Mailplane update uses latest WebKit to enable rich text editing
Since we last mentioned Mailplane, the Gmail client that integrates with Mac OS X, it's received a series of minor updates that have fixed bugs and added a few features. The most recent update, however, has added some significant new features such as a 'Mail PDF with Mailplane' print dialog plugin, customizable toolbar, clickable Growl notifications that take you to the specific message and - to my personal delight - simple instructions for enabling rich text editing when composing messages. This is big news because Mailplane uses WebKit - the same open source web rendering engine Safari is based on - to interact with Gmail, which means Mailplane is also limited by WebKit's inability to provide rich text editing features like bold, justification, colors, etc. Fortunately, turning on rich text editing is as simple as downloading the latest nightly app build of WebKit and telling Mailplane where you put it. This won't overwrite Safari or interfere with it in any other way, so this process is pretty low-risk for gaining rich text editing, but seemingly only in Gmail (either in Mailplane or using WebKit itself as a browser). I tried surfing to a few other sites and couldn't get rich text widgets to appear in any of them.Either way, this is great news for Mailplane users who want to join the rest of the internet in using some text formatting goodness when composing their messages. If you need a refresher on what Mailplane is all about, check our previous post and photo gallery for a brief tour, or head over to the Mailplane site to read more and sign up for the private beta.
