NotateIt is a new application from Blade Software that allows for easy presentation and organization of your thoughts and ideas. It also has features that allow you to use it as a "personal whiteboard". I've been using it for the past couple of days, and in this review I will outline what I have found out about it, both good and bad.

Installation is really very straight forward and easy, no problems whatsoever. Once you get it installed and start it up for the first time you come to the screen seen below in figure 1. The interface will be familiar to those who use Microsoft Office on a regular basis, at first glance NotateIt looks very similar.

From this main screen you have a wide variety of tools available to you. Point to point lines (as shown by blue lines in figure 2), freehand lines (shown by red lines in figure 2), highlighter (as shown by yellow highlight on blue line in figure 2), text (as shown by the TabletPCBuzz.com text in figure 2), hollow square (shown brown box in figure 2), filled square (as shown by green box in figure 2) and finally both hollow and filled circles (shown by pink and blue circles in figure 2).

Now you may be saying, this is all great, but I don't need another art tool. Well let me tell you this, NotateIt is more than another art tool, it is the way it utilizes the art functionality that makes it unique. Shown in Figure 3 is NotateIt in flipchart mode with a map of a computer network. This can all be drawn using NotateIt and the Tablet PC pen input functionality.

NotateIt supports multiple pages in one file, to help with clumping together related drawings, charts and maps. It also includes a handy page sorting tool that will give you a thumbnail view of each page in your current file, I found this quite useful. Pictures from outside NotateIt can be imported in, as well as made the background for your file. This is useful for those whose profession requires things such as grid paper. (Note: Blade has made available for download several backgrounds such as grid paper; check the NotateIt web-site for details).

One of the best features of NotateIt are the various views you have available to you. The default and the flip-chart full screen view allow for general editing of your file, while the other views have special functionality associated with them. The Whiteboard mode allows you a blank screen to write on, and then gives you the ability to take "snapshots" of that board and add them to your file. This is seen below in figure 4.

One of other two views, the presentation mode, actually takes your current file and creates a copy of it for annotation. So when you go into a presentation, you can draw directly on your file to illustrate things, but without having to worry about removing them for the next time you use that file. You can also save the copied file just in case you do want to save those annotations. See this view in Figure 5 below.

The last view, the annotation view, works in a similar way to Microsoft's Snipping Tool. It provides a full screen view of whatever application you are running (besides NotateIt), and allows you to write on it with various pen colors. Once you have drawn up your screen you can take snapshots of the entire screen or just parts of it, those snapshots are then added to your main file as separate pages. Figure 6 below shows what this view looks like while using Macromedia Fireworks. The toolbar circled by the red line shows the NotateIt toolbar in this view.

Conclusion

In conclusion I must say that NotateIt is a very well put together piece of software. It is a great utility for knowledge workers, just the type of people Microsoft has targeted the Tablet PC towards. I've had no problems in using this software the past day or two, it works very well not tying up to many system resources. The only thing I really find my self wishing for would be the ability to draw more shapes using pre-made tools (not having to draw each line myself). Overall however, it definitely gets my thumbs up! Congratulations to Blade Software on a well written piece of software.

Pros: Great "view mode" functionality, Easy to use
Cons: No ability to easily draw shapes besides circles, ovals, squares and rectangles

Buzz meter - 3.5 out of 5

NotateIt can be purchased for £29.99 from Blade Software at
http://www.bladesoftware.co.uk/notate/default.htm