Moe Knows Notes

Moe's Notes, an application from San Francisco App Studio, is available for US$3.99 at the App Store.

The idea behind Moe's Notes is simple enough that I doubt it's the first application of its kind. It's a note-taking app that can bundle all sorts of information into a single package. Text, photos, audio notes, location data, tags, timer alerts and video (if you have a 3GS) all get saved into the same file and can be sent as a neatly wrapped multimedia package to anyone via email.

All these things are possible to do on an iPhone without a third-party app involved; Moe's just provides all the features in a single app and can tie them together for a single email. Convenient, sure, but with well over 100,000 wares in the App Store, odds are high that this has been tried before.

What makes Moe's Notes worth consideration is its great design, intuitive interfaces, and generous selection of in-app editing tools.

Design Capable

The first thing Moe's Notes does is ask for push and location permission. These two features -- geolocating and timed alerts -- are two main features in this app, so I suggest OKing them both.

Then you're taken to a screen where an example note has been left for you. I found its message rather odd. A deep, soulful voice called me "baby," and the photograph was a vaguely romantic image of a sunset. Perhaps this is Moe himself, and maybe he meant for this to go to someone else. The main thing this message taught me was how to delete a note, which is very easy (trashcan in the lower right corner).

On to creating your own notes: Moe's Notes has come up with an interface that's very simple and intuitive, despite all the different kinds of media and information you can pack into a single note. I've used some note applications that send you through a forest of complex trees and page-turns just to get to the act of writing and saving a new note -- and these didn't even include options like adding photos and sound recordings.

With Moe's, you're either in your note library or the Edit New Note screen. If you're in the library and you want to make a new note, hit the "+" in the upper right corner; you can get back by hitting the OK button in the upper left of the edit screen.

Once you're in the Edit New Note screen, you simply select which element you'd like to add first -- a photo, a sound recording, text, tags or a timed alert. The icons are arranged exactly as they'll appear on the note you eventually create. The notes you make need not include all the different types of media Moe's Notes is capable of -- you can create a new note with nothing more than a single letter of text or a split-second of audio if you want. If you're in a rush, you can save it without even naming it -- Moe's will just stamp the date, time and location automatically.

Internal Editor

Expect the quality of the photos and sound recordings in Moe's Notes to match those made with the iPhone's built-in camera and voice recorder apps. In Moe's, however, both functions include a few simple in-app editing tools.

The sound recorder gives you a wave graph, allowing you to trim out sections of the audio. You can also adjust pitch, reverse the recording and "strip silence," which eliminates long stretches of little to no sound. A Revert button will undo things if you make an ill-advised edit. Turn the iPhone sideways, and you'll also get Replace, Insert and Mix In functions.

The only thing that makes the sound editing features a little tough to use sometimes is the apparent lack of a zoom function. Moe's crams the entire wave graph onto a single frame -- no panning left or right -- and when you make an especially long recording, finding the exact spot at which you want to trim takes some very steady fingers if you don't have the benefit of zooming in.

In the photo panel, you can snap a shot with the in-app camera function or select one from your Camera Roll. Options include cropping, resizing and adjusting brightness.

The Tags window will let you affix your note with any number of tags for fast reference. It comes with a set of about a dozen common tags, and you can make your own through the Edit Tags window. Over in the Edit Alert window, you can tell Moe's Notes to give you a push-style reminder on this note at any date and time.

To button for sending your note in an email is located in the lower left corner. This will bundle everything -- photo, audio, text, location, etc. -- into an email and send it off to the recipients you name.

Notes are also saved in your library, which can be searched by name, tags, date and geographic location (by opening a map and placing a square over a general area). You can also batch select to send multiple notes in an email.

In the library, you can also access the settings menu. This covers dozens of app behaviors, including where you're taken each time you start it, audio quality adjustments, text filters, and a whole lot more deep settings.

Bottom Line

The simple interface in Moe's Notes makes it a great quick-draw app for when you want to grab a photo, take an audio recording, and jot down a few words without wasting time navigating around the software. The editing features will easily let you add a little polish to your missives before shipping them off, and all your information on this [event/person/place/thing-you-saw-lying-in-the-street/whatever] comes through all tied together in a neat package, complete with longitude and latitude.

Another thing Moe's Notes gets right is in offering a free version that's crippled in just the right place. A lot of app makers don't want to clutter up their interfaces by making income through ads, so they charge a few bucks for the download. But even three simoleons is often too great a leap of faith in the App Store, so they come up with a free version that offers a taste of all the good stuff but is limited in some way that renders it inconvenient for frequent use.

The trick is to figure where to place that limiter without preventing the buyer from seeing first-hand everything the app offers. With the free version of Moe's Notes, you're simply limited to saving five notes at a time. You could probably get around this by habitually emailing your leftovers to yourself, but if you're really using it that much, you should probably just shake $3 out of the couch cushions and go for it.