Every user of iOS devices would do well to have at least one dedicated advanced notebook or journal on their device. Springpad, as well as Evernote, is one such notebook that I recommend.
I’ve already written about the advantages of the visual orientation of Springpad, and if you’re looking to use the service on your iPhone or iPad, Springpad‘s iOS cross-platform is well designed and straightforward to use. For the most part, it mirrors the user interface of its popular web browser platform.
Basic Layout
Springpad is highly useful for saving recipes, scanning barcodes to create wishlists of products, bookmarking articles and documents for reading later, developing personal to-do lists, collaborating with coworkers on a project with notes, planning your vacation, and much more.
It’s best to get started with Springpad using its online platform. All of your content of course will sync to the Springpad app on your iPhone or other iOS device. Springpad’s mobile app has a simple two column interface, with the left side listing all of your notebooks, and the right sliding column displays the content of selected notebooks.
You can view content as a List or a Gallery. I personally think the Gallery listing has always been the advantage of Springpad’s user interface. Most people are visual readers, and the Gallery listing typically helps you to locate specific content faster.
Adding Content
The nice size circled + button at the bottom of an opened notebook is what you tap to add new content to a selected notebook. In addition to regular text notes, Springpad can handle photos, audio files, task lists and checklists, bar scans, and event and contact listings.
Springpad also has special listings for movies, TV shows, music, books, products, wine, recipes, and of course bookmarks. For example, tapping on the Movies icon will get you a listing of the most recent popular movies released. You can select a movie and “Spring It!” to a new or existing notebook, as well as post that listing to Facebook and/or Twitter.
The Place icon will show you a list of nearby restaurants, and you can also do custom searches. The Contact listing is useful for adding contacts that you don’t want to go into your default iOS contact list. And Springpad’s Reminder feature also includes an alarm.
Other Features
From within the Springpad app you can share links to individual notebooks, as well as items within. And like Evernote you can share entire notebooks with other Springpad users.
The Explore feature allows you to view spotlighted Springpad notebooks, new “Springs” (new content added to Springpad), as well as the ability to search for particular topics. All of the public content added to Springpad can in turn be added to your own notebooks. You can also subscribe to the notebooks of other users, similar to how it is done in Pinterest.
The advantage of Springpad over Evernote is that Springpad offers a way to share notebooks publicly so they can easily be found and followed.
The Settings in Springpad includes a way for you to add the Safari Web Clipper that allows you to save things to Springpad directly from websites in the Safari browser of your iPhone. You can also install a Quick Add Shortcut that places a button on your device’s homescreen so you can quickly add new items to Springpad.
The settings for each notebook allows you to customize the color, theme, and accent of each notebook, as well as select privacy settings, and category and tags.
I use both Springpad and Evernote, and personally I find the user interface of Springpad easier to navigate. However, Springpad does not have the popular third-party support given to Evernote. In other words, you can directly share selected content from many other iOS apps, as well as the web, to your Evernote account. Such direct sharing is not widely available to Springpad.
Let us know what you think of Springpad and how you’re using it.
The post Springpad’s User Interface Makes It an Awesome iPhone Cross-Platform Notebook appeared first on MakeUseOf.
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