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Gadget Lab's favorite note-taking app, Simplenote, has just seen a major new update. But don't worry. If you love Simplenote because it is so, well, simple, then you can keep on using it as if nothing had changed.
Here's a list of what's new:
Let's start with the last item first. Premium users (the app is free, but you can pay a yearly subscription to go pro) can now sync their notes with Dropbox. Once done (at the Simplenote website, not in the app), your notes are mirrored as plain text files in the Dropbox directory of your choice. The default name is Simplenote, but you can change it to whatever you like.
This means that you can sync Simplenote with any other Dropbox-friendly app. For instance, you can make quick notes about your novel in Simplenote and then refine and extend them in a purpose-built text-editor like Plain Text or Writings. It also means you can sync with any app on a desktop machine which can read plain text files.
Next up is lists, also a premium feature. You can turn a note into a list by tapping the "i" button in a note on your iOS device and flipping the "View As List" switch. Items now get lines between them, as well as the familiar three-line iOS grab-handle for re-ordering list items. Swiping across an item marks it done, striking it through and graying it out.
Lists are still stored as plain text, and the syntax of these plain text versions is very similar to that used by the TaskPaper to-do app (pro tip for TaskPaper users: the @done tag isn't supported).
The next big fix-up is tags. These now auto-complete as you type. You can also tag notes with a person's email address and it will be shared with them, automatically. If they have a Simplenote account, the note will show up in their Simplenote. If not, they get a link to the note on the web. Any changes they make, from either of these places, are reflected in your note immediately.
Further, you can make "group tags". These are just like groups in your mail client. In the tagging section of the note, hit the blue plus-sign and then hit the other plus-sign at the bottom of the resulting window. Give your group a title and pick the people you want to put in it. All email addresses are auto-completed from your contacts.
Now, when you tag a note with this group name, it is shared with everyone in that group. I can see this being very useful for the Gadget Lab team at next year's CES, to keep track of which bars we will be meeting in.
And that's about it. You can now password-protect your notes. A little polish has been added to the web-app, and premium subscriptions have gone up to $2 per month, or $20 per year. That's up from a dollar a month and $12 per year, which will doubtless cause many cheapskates to screech into their watery, 50-cent cup of coffee.
If you don't already have Simplenote, then shame on you. Its free. Go get it now.
New premium features: Dropbox syncing and list [Simplenote blog]
iOS update: sharing, passcode lock, fixes and more [Simplenote blog]
Easy note sharing using tags [Simplenote blog]
Simplenote download [iTunes]
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