Daily iPad App: Ghostwriter Notes

Ghostwriter Notes for the iPad is a note-taking solution that'll let you scribble your thoughts or jot down the highlights of a lecture on your tablet device. The app uses the idea of a virtual notebook to store your writings and lets you create an unlimited number of these notebooks. You can customize these notebooks and the pages within by naming them and changing the backgrounds with paper templates or background images.

Writing on each page is simple and easy - all you need is your finger or a stylus. The text is predictably large when you use your finger, but it can be scaled down to normal size using a magnification view (shown above) for writing. When you choose a pen, a box appears at the top of the page and a magnified view of that region appears at the bottom of your display. You can write in this zoomed-in region and the text appears at the top.

It's a little awkward but it does help you write more clearly and lets you use the entire page of the notes. This magnified view only works with the pen. If you choose the text box, markers or highlighters for writing, then you will write on the full page without any magnification.

Ghostwriter also supports PDF files, so you can easily annotate and save these files. When you are done writing or editing, you can sync your notes to Dropbox or Evernote. You can also send them via email or print them wirelessly.

Ghostwriter Notes is a great replacement for the traditional notebook. It would work well for students, work meetings or conferences. The magnification view is helpful for writing and its nice to have a variety of tools to use for writing, highlighting and drawing.

The only negative is the interface which is good, but could be better. You get used to the controls quickly but I had to search to find the eraser under the "Pens" menu and was surprised when the up/down arrows at the top let you import and export your notebooks. I expected to jump to the top or the bottom of the page.

There's also no support for the swipe gesture to turn the page. There's a little slider to move back and forth through pages, but it's not as natural of a motion as swiping. These few drawbacks take away from the experience but they don't diminish my enthusiasm for the app. The developer has a support page and is very responsive to customers so hopefully these quirks will be addressed in future versions. This responsiveness, in my opinion, means the developer is serious about the app and will work hard to improve any deficiencies and add new features. Ghostwriter Notes is available for US$4.99 from the App Store.