7notes Converts Your Handwritten iPad Notes
At the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo today, Japanese company Metamoji gave a short presentation about its recently launched 7notes app. It’s a handwriting conversion application that despite still being very young has already reached a number of significant milestones.
The iPad version was the top paid application in the Japanese App Store for a month. It’s now in the fifth spot. And the iPhone version was the second top-grossing app in the app store at one point. The new English version ranked in the top ten in 21 countries, with downloads from over 80 countries.
iPad用手書きメモ変換アプリ「7notes」
本日東京で開催された外国人記者クラブにおいて、日本の企業、株式会社MetaMoJiは先日ローンチした「7notes」というアプリについて短いプレゼンテーションを行った。「7notes」はまだ市場に出て間もないが、既に目覚ましい結果を残している手書き変換アプリだ。
iPad版「7notes」は日本のAppStoreの有料アプリランキングで１ヶ月トップ、今は５位となっている。そしてiPhone版はAppStoreの売り上げランキングで２位に入ったことがある。英語版は２１カ国のランキングでトップ点入りを果たし、８０カ国でダウンロードされている。
Metamoji cited a huge gap between computers and human devices. The company’s CEO, Mr Ukigawa, explained that when the iPad came along they decided to change their application development to focus on the iPad. He referred to the poor user experience of the iPad’s software keyboard, which many feel is not the best way to input text. Many find it hard to type fast. The company’s 7knowledge subsidiary for smartphone and tablet apps then developed this 7notes application.
メタモジはコンピューターと人間による入力の間の大きなギャップに取り組んだ。CEOウキガワ氏によると、iPadが発表された時に、同社はアプリ開発をiPadに絞ることを決めたという。彼は、使い慣れていないために多くのユーザーが文字入力に不便さを感じているソフトウェアキーボードに言及した。多くの人が、素早くタイプするのは難しいと感じている。それゆえ、スマートフォン・タブレット向けアプリ開発を行う子会社の7knowledgeが、この7notesアプリを開発した。
Handwriting conversion can be handy in certain situations, and the 7notes app appears to work very well. The demos that I saw this afternoon showed quick conversions, with great accuracy too. Even when the user has no time for conversion, they can just keep writing and come back for ‘post-processing’ conversion later on.
There are free versions in the App Store (iPad | iPhone), but it does not include the handwriting conversion feature. A natural question to ask here is what good is the free app without the conversion feature? The answer lies in the prediction engine.
When writing on the software keyboard, the app gives suggested words that you can tap before it finishes. You don’t have to write out the entire word. Of course, in the premium version, the predictive engine is especially useful. It remembers the previous input, so if you start writing a sentence you’ve written before, it will present that as a clickable option.
Interestingly, the handwriting can be manipulated like digital font, with editing and features like wrap, font size, color, bold, and underline. You can mix text and images, and you can do what the company describes as ‘social doodling’ by writing and sharing. Users can send notes to Twitter, Facebook, or email. And like any good note-taking app, you can also store your notes in Dropbox or Evernote.
Overall I think that the app has a lot of very cool innovations. Would it fit anywhere into my own personal workflow? Maybe not right now. But this software is completely new, and I’m sure that once there’s more feedback from users, then future iterations will be significantly improved. The company is working on a Chinese prototype as well, so we can watch out for that in the future too.
Here’s a short video demo of the app below (apologies in advance for the occasional camera shake). If you’d like to try out 7notes for yourself, please check it out in the iTunes store (iPad | iPhone).
全体として、このアプリは多くの非常に素晴らしい革新を行っていると思う。自分自身の個人的なワークフローのどこかに合わないだろうか？恐らく今すぐにではない。だが、このソフトウェアは全く新しいもので、ユーザーからの評価がさらにあれば、今後また現れるものは著しく改善されるに違いない。同社は中国語の試作品にも取り組んでいるので、今後その成り行きにも注意を向けられるだろう。
下にこのアプリの短い実演動画がある（カメラが時々揺れているので申し訳ないが）。もし7notesを実際に使ってみたいのであれば、iTuneストア（iPad/iPhone)でチェックしてほしい。
