Sunday, December 23, 2012

The original idea

Ok so every app starts with an idea and an iPad (or an iPhone).
I bought my first iPad in January 2011, I already had an iPhone 3G which I found nice but nothing really thrilling. The iPad was somewhat different.
As any modern consultant, I have been living with a laptop for the last 15 years. Laptops are nice, especially since they have been improving so much: weight, performance, connections and so on. But even though they have improved, they still take long to start up especially if you have a windows OS. Also they heat up on your knees when you are surfing on the net and checking your emails in front of your TV (did that ever happen to you?) and they are still pretty heavy.
With the iPad, my laptop suddenly got really old. I can surf on the web, check my mails, turn it on and off quickly enough and yes, watch a TV program.
I started to wander around with my iPad and I started taking it at work. I found good use of it especially in meetings where I found it
- more discreet and efficient than the laptop to check emails
- less annoying than the iphone/smartphone (but that's a personal view)
While in meetings I started taking notes with it because it was really a pain to show up both with the iPad and my notebook.
Which device should I use to take notes?

But how do you take notes with the iPad?
There are only 2 choices on the iPad: email or Apple Notes.
-  email gives you little room for template but you can recover your notes by sending them to yourself and then take your good old laptop to re-work it.
 - Apple Notes are not very intuitive: you cannot structure them the way you want, you still need to work a meeting report out of them and so on.
Taking notes directly on your iPad or your notebook have also one big drawback: it is hard to talk while typing or taking notes. So all in all taking notes on your iPad is not so much of an improvement since you still have to work a meeting report after your meeting and it is always hard to be sure you have taken good note of what has been said.
And if you have been in business meetings long enough, you know how it is long and painful to write down meeting reports afterwards, especially when you get 3 to 4 meetings a day.
There. That's how I got it.
So now I have an idea: If there was an app able to help you take notes on your iPad, record everything which is said and generate a meeting report ready to be emailed, there would be added value.
When I looked on the appstore, I got comforted that at that time there was no such app.

Having an idea is great. So I wrote it down: the concept and the user case.
And now what? I figured I just need to find myself developers to get it done.


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