iJot is both a fun and practical application that allows you to compose handwritten notes and send them to people through email or MMS. The entire experience is smooth and enjoyable, making it one of the best note apps in the appstore.
The opening screen lists all of your notes, with the most recent at the top. From here you can edit a previous note or compose a new one. What makes iJot stand out from other similar apps is the way in which you write your notes. As soon as you start using your finger to write, the screen starts scrolling from right to left, and at whatever pace you set. If you write slowly, the screen will scroll slowly. If you write fast, the screen will scroll faster so you always have empty space to write. You can navigate your writing with a two-finger swipe and pause the scrolling whenever you need to. If you make a mistake, the undo button will correct your last stroke. There is also a line to guide your writing so everything stays nice and neat. The entire writing process is fluid and intuitive. Everything feels completely natural and the scrolling feature allows you to write in the size you normally write in, instead of having to fit your words into a cramped, static screen.
The ability to hand write notes and send them to people wouldn’t be nearly as exciting without having the options to make them look great. iJot comes with a ton of customizable options to make each note look exactly the way you want it to look. Let’s start with your actual words. You can resize your font, change the color, add a font border and change the thickness. Next, you can add a background, which can be as simple as a color, or as complex as a photograph with an applied filter such as x-ray or fisheye. There are also several border options to frame your note in. Even though there are plenty of options here, there seems to be a lack of backgrounds and borders. I’m hoping that the developer keeps adding more items in each update. This will keep the app fresh and useable for a longer period of time.
Sending your note is easy, with built-in email support and the ability to insert your saved note into an MMS message. After sending a few notes through email and MMS, it really started to become fun, sending handwritten messages to my friends and family. Plus, the notes look great on the receiving end.
Even though iJot really has some great features, it also has some flaws. For one, when resizing the font or background, you need to use a slider, which usually works very well. However, when you slide the bar to the right to make things bigger, it takes a second for the app to think before the resize is applied. It would be so much nicer if the resize happened instantly as you slide the bar. It just gets a bit annoying having to wait for your newly resized image to appear. Also, there are no options for sharing your notes to Twitter or Facebook. Sharing to these social networks is becoming a standard in many applications, and iJot should be no different.
I was a little doubtful when I first started using this application. There are no tutorials to help you understand how all the features work, so you’ll just have to play around with it to figure things out. But, after you get the hang if it, the app really begins to shine and you’ll start to figure out all the great uses for it. If you have some patience to get past the learning curve, you’ll find out how great this app really is. I think this one has earned a spot on my iPhone, for now. Let’s hope the developer continues to expand on this already wonderful application. Go check it out.
