Notespark

Developer: Metaspark
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1

iPhone Integration [rating:4]
User Interface [rating:4]
Re-use / Replay Value [rating:4]

Overall Rating:

Notespark is a note taking app that syncs constantly with its web based counterpart. Notes can be added through the app or through the free web site and are kept in sync any time you are connected to the Internet. You can add tags to notes and flag them with stars, and the apps includes a search feature. You can also share notes or send them to others via e-mail.

Note taking apps are a dime a dozen on the iPhone nowadays, and they generally fall into two camps: Apps that act as a client and/or server and expect you to sync notes to your computer, and those that sync online to a web service of some sort. Notespark is firmly in the second camp, and advertises itself as an app that offers best of breed functionality.

Notespark's idea is to offer an app with less features and to make sure they are of the highest quality. If there were nothing but bloated and buggy note taking apps available, this would be a great argument, but with great ones like Evernote and Appigo Notepad available, it doesn't hold a lot of water.

Regardless, while Notespark doesn't offer the breadth of features of some of the other note taking apps available, it does give you a reasonable way to take notes. It's simple, with customizable tags and the ability to flag notes with stars. You can share notes with others, as well as e-mail them, and it has a number of user settings. The app also includes a search feature that shows results as you type.

What it lacks is customizable folders, though it can generate folders based on tags, which can make finding notes fairly easy to do. The online site, while free to use, is very bare bones but does at least give you an easy way to paste in things from a computer so you can create a library of information to reference offline. The continuous syncing also works best with an iPhone since it requires a constant connection to the Internet, but it at least silently fails to connect instead of popping up annoying error messages.

If you aren't satisfied with the iPhone's built-in note pad, and you are connected to the Internet most of the time, you can really benefit from Notespark's constant syncing. There are a myriad of apps to consider though, and many are far better than this one. This app doesn't do that much wrong, but it has a slim feature set and though what it offers works well, it's best for iPhone users who want something simple.