Live Notes for iPad : Audio-Visual Sketch Pad

Live Notes iPad5

Live Notes iPad5

Live Notes [rating: 3.5/5]

Live Notes is a colourful sketch pad, with a refreshing User Interface and a neat twist. Rather like the Live Scribe pen it allows you to take notes and record audio at the same time (There is no relationship between the two companies who make the pen and the app, by the way).

So, how does Live Notes stack up as an iPad productivity tool?

When you first launch Live Notes you are presented with a view similar to that which Pages uses, and giving you access to your documents so that you can administer them by scrolling between them. One of those documents is a kind of tutorial sheet, which is a nice informal introduction to the app.

Live Notes iPadIcons for drawing, writing, and so forth are unobtrusive and clear. Tool palettes are presented in rather pleasing looking windows which appear to be based on brown notebook back cardboard. The bright tool colors, brown popups and lined white paper all work towards making the app feel quite wholesome. Yeah, I liked that about it!

The ability to have an audio recording made alongside your typing or scribbling has many applications. The first that springs to mind is grabbing sound bytes in a lecture – but you’ll need to be close to the sound source to get a good recording. This is perhaps partly a problem with the iPad – but the app makers could have tried to boost the audio.

Another possibility, other than simply amusing yourself, is entertaining a child with a visual story. What this app does is give your iPad the functionality of a Live Scribe pen. But with the ability to draw shapes and hand-drawn notes, as well as typed text with various fonts, all in lots of bright colors.

Live Notes iPad 75Undo is more like working in a print layout program. Rather than undoing, you target sketch elements by holding them for a few seconds to bring up a trash option. This is fine, but it would be nice to have a more traditional linear undo option too.

In a similar fashion to Live Note’s undo, you can also tap parts of the sketch to hear audio from that point during the sketching / note taking process. Which is neat.

You cannot however, export your drawing and audio as one cohesive file. You can replay it on the device with audio and notes synced. But export options are only for PDF with no audio.

Overall though Live Notesli is a neat little app. Looks nice, and works well. If the developers at Humble Gaming Limited augment it by addressing the little niggles I have outlined it will then be a great little app.

Pros

  • Overall app style.
  • Colorful sketching and note taking with appealing GUI.
  • Live Recording of audio alongside note taking.
  • Ability to place markers in documents.

Cons

  • No voice export with drawings.
  • Undo is not very intuitive.
  • Recording can be quiet.

Price: $5.99 (App Store)
Category: Productivity
Updated:Aug 19, 2010
Reviewed Version:1.01
Size: 3.1 MB
Language:English
Seller:Humble Gaming Limited
© Humble Gaming Limited
Requirements:Compatible with iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.2 or later.

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2 Comments on “Live Notes for iPad : Audio-Visual Sketch Pad”

  1. Gwrite

    I’d love to have this be my favorite…right now that is SoundNote, which also does ink or typed notes along with synced audio. It allows you to export as a PDF and the audio file (s). I am actually getting rid of my Livescribe pen in favor of this. I’ll keep an eye on Live Notes also. Hope to see some improvements from you guys.

  2. Gustavo

    As one of the developers for Live Notes I can tell you that the audio export and Undo are coming with version 1.1 very soon. We’ll also boost the audio volume in a later version. AND we’re gonna have a lot of new features to make this app your favorite.

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