Last week, I shared some of the applications I use regularly that have found a permanent home on my Motorola Q9h and my thoughts about them.
SmartphoneNotes was one of my personal early discoveries that doesn't get a lot of attention but should be a staple of every Windows Mobile 6 Standard device.
The issue with Windows Mobile 6 Standard edition is the lack of complete integration with Outlook, meaning the Standard (Smartphone) edition does not sync your Outlook Notes.
I'm guessing Microsoft thought only Windows Mobile 6 Professional users needed complete Outlook sync and not everyone using Windows Mobile.
Whatever.
Syncdata comes to the rescue with SmartphoneNotes 2.1.
SmartphoneNotes primarily allows for the syncing of any notes you have created in Outlook to be transferred to your Smartphone. Now it is not just your Calendar, Tasks and Contacts but your full Outlook suite on your device. Anyone who rely's on Outlook knows how important having access to your notes can be.
After installing SmartphoneNotes 2.1, you can then create Notes on your Smartphone that will sync back to Outlook the next time you sync your device.
There are other solutions for note taking on Smartphones, but SmartphoneNotes is the only one that I found that offered rock solid integration back to Outlook.
You have a choice of colors and can use or create categories for all of your notes that are then synced back to Outlook.
Creating a new note is as easy as opening up the application and hitting "New". You can start typing away safe in the knowledge that your nugget of inspiration will be captured and available when you get back to Outlook.
You then choose Properties to store it to a category (or not) and hit save.
And that's it. Simple.
SmartphoneNotes is one of those little ideas that executes flawlessly with it's simplicity. Even if you aren't an Outlook user (and why not?), SmartphoneNotes will help you organize and track any myriad of information that will always be at your finger tips.
The standard Sort / Filter options are on board if you only want to see Notes under a specific category. And you have the option of creating an Appointment or Task right from your created or stored Note. You can also dial a number right from a Note stored on your phone.
My only quibble with the application is it is clearly written with a Outlook 2003 design scheme.
Remember in Outlook '03 you only had a few basic color choices for your category, no matter how many categories you had?
Yeah, that's true in SmartphoneNotes as well. Which means you end up having to double and triple up on the colors for different categories so you can't actually view your Notes by category.
Slight bummer.
Outlook 2007 users know we have a larger variety of colors available but SmartphoneNotes only gives 5. And they are all of the pastel (girly-girl) variety. Sorry, I just can't do Pink notes for any reason.
But, that is my only quibble and certainly nothing that would make me give the application any less credence in my mobile arsenal. And I would think (read: really hope) the color palette will be increased to better reflect Outlook 2007 and just plain ol' visual organization at the next release.
SmartphoneNotes 2.1 is one application I don't think any Windows Mobile 6 Standard device should be with out. It's now a "Must-have" app on my phone.
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