"Scrawl Finger" Memos, Notes, Floor Plans On Your iPhone

[Brian Davis]

Why bother with the iPhone's on-screen keyboard when you can scrawl quick notes with your index finger? Aesthology has released Finger Memo 2.0, a handwriting app for the iPhone and iPod touch that supports unlimited canvas sizes and unlimited undo and redo.

The app lets you scroll back and forth across the canvas with finger touches, and also includes a fast scrolling feature that speeds up the process.

In addition, the app includes three color pens, an eraser, support for pinch zoom and landscape mode, a shake function that acts as Undo All, thumbnail previews of all memos, and the ability to export them to Photo Library. Many of these features are new in version 2.0.

This COULD be a usable app for appraisers?! I've loaded the application and it has promise but some of the features are a little hard to find. For example, I couldn't find the "Settings" feature at all. I finally fingured out that I needed to click on the iPhone's [Settings] icon from the "desktop" and then tap on the Finger Memo application. I was expecting to find it right from the app.

I did send a message to the company to see if they could tell me where a demo or tutorial was located on using the software. For example - How do I invoke the keypad?

My suggested features were:

1. Add a "straight line" feature
2. Allow for the use of a "stylus" to do detailed drawings

The app costs $1.99 and is currently available in Apple's App Store.

[Bill Cobb]

Wow! Thank you so much for this tip! It's still difficult for me not to want to pull out a stylus for these devices. Bill

[Brian Davis]

Here are the ANSWERS to some of my questions to Finger Memo support:

Hi,

Thank you for using Finger Memo!

> The "settings" function

Please go to the "Settings" on the home screen. The "home screen" refers to the black screen that contains application icons such as "Mail" and "Safari". There, you will find an icon labeled "Settings", so please open it and scroll down the list until you find the settings for Finger Memo.

> The "keyboard" function
> I'd like to see a "straight line" option - drawing walls

Finger Memo, as the name suggests, is a tool designed to hand-write your memo and sketches and therefore it does not support keyboard (nor does it support various colors and shapes, such as lines, rectangles or circles).

We would like the tool to be used for a quick note taking and thus, we made sure that the app launches quickly.

> Is there a HELP or Tutorial section?

There is no help for Finger Memo. All the tools are accessible from the toolbar, and there are couple of gestures you can use (such as two-finger scroll for fast-scroll, touch-and-hold the edges of the screen for auto-scroll, pinch gesture for zoom in/out, device rotation to use wider screen, and shake gesture to clear the screen by undo all).

> I'd like to see a "zoom" function to allow portions of a note that are
> scolled off the screen.

You can use the pinch gesture to zoom in and out.

> Is there a way to use a stylus rather than a one finger to draw?

Any stylus that work with iPhone will work for Finger Memo. However, we designed the app to be used by fingers and that's why you see features such as unlimited canvas size (because your handwriting letters and drawing tend to be big) and auto-scrolling/fast-scrolling to be able to navigate the large canvas quickly and efficiently.

>It's hard to believe that the Eiffel Tower sample doodle was done with
a finger tip!!!?

We drew it using fingers. The trick is to use zoom in/out, drawing the basic shape with zoom out and filling in the details with zoom in.

Thank you and best regards,

Kazushi

--------------------------
Aesthology Inc.

[Philip Marler]

Brian,
Check out YouNote in the App Store. It is free and lets you draw free form, or straight lines, it also lets you create text notes, voice notes and picture notes (take a photo then type a caption). It even has a desktop application so you can back up your notes on your computer. Setting up the backup process is a little tricky, but their web site has good instructions. The saved notes are .zip files, so you can unzip them on your computer and edit them. It even has a feature that lets you capture a web page as a note. I have been using it since I got my iPhone. It is one of the first apps I downloaded.
Here is the link http://appshopper.com/productivity/younote
Phil

[Bill Cobb]

Thank you so much, Phillip! I got it.