Review: noteskinery+

Overview The noteskinery+ app markets itself toward organization and GTDers. With a pretty impressive array of options that include creating folders, notes, filing photos, and voice-recordings, it seeks to fill a niche in the app world that is highly competitive.

Functionality Your first screen will be completely blank. You'll also be a little confused as the screen title says "moleskinery+" rather than "noteskinery+." The author responded as to the name change:

I have opted for a name change. The new name will give justify one of the main function of the app, which is ability to skin your notes. More icons will be released.

After you press the edit button, you are presented with an option to add a note or a folder. And that's where the filing fun begins. It's all pretty self-explanatory from there. You'll need to have some idea of what you're wanting to accomplish from the beginning. The promo image on the iTunes site gives you a good idea of how to proceed, but from there, you'll obviously want to customize. An extremely nice feature is the ability to add voice-recordings. This alone is a huge plus, considering the price of the program. Consider adding an "On the Road" folder for quick voice notes and reflections to organize your projects and thoughts later. You can also backup and restore text notes to a Google spreadsheet which is a must-have feature due to the content-heavy nature of organization.

Review This app has a lot of merits and seems to be pitted head-to-head against GTD giant Omnifocus (reviewed here), which has many of the same features and the ability to sync with its desktop counterpart. The customization ability is near limitless since it's a never-ending nest of folders, notes, etc. If you're not careful, you'll have to find another app to organize your noteskinery+ excess. With the ability to add so much to the app, the lack of a printing or text/email export is extremely frustrating. While you do have the ability to backup to Google spreadsheets, a simple "Mail to" feature would have been nice to be able to email myself my day's To-Dos. There is also an alternative version of the app for $4.99 simply called noteskinery (no "+"). It doesn't have voice recording or photo features. There are no performance issues with the app that I discovered. It does everything it promises to do very smoothly. Summary For $12.99, I am struggling to justify the purchase of the app for end-users. It's extremely nice, but the lack of printing and certain export functions just about pulls the kill switch for me. I don't use Google spreadsheets at all, and I suspect that for many users, having to go through Google to get to your organization docs is just one more unnecessary step. In addition, an average user can go cross-eyed quickly when one realizes that all the app entails is entering information. Do you really want to do all that on your iPhone? On the tiny tap-pad? I would recommend going with Omnifocus in which you can enter your information either on your desktop or your iPhone and cross sync them. It is $7 more ($19.99), but if you're going to spend $13, you might as well splurge for the functionality. However, if you don't own an organization app, and you desperately need one that allows complex, nested folders and notes for your business or personal use, noteskinery+ (or moleskinery+?) or whatever, may be just what you've been looking for.

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