Tue, May 3, 2011 at 11:05 AM ;)
We use Penultimate by Cocoa Box a lot, primarily for taking meeting, seminar or training notes and sending them to Evernote for archiving. Evernote's handwriting recognition engine also makes our notes searchable on all our devices/computers.
With version 3.0 of Penultimate a whole new feature-set is introduced - importing paper templates and the Paper Shop (in app purchases of templates).
The video below explains the new features, but we think one of the more powerful aspects is going to be the template sharing for different creative fields like the storyboard template in the video, or teaching templates, photographer field notes, model release forms, etc.
The pages can be printed/exported complete with the template too. As you will see in the video, you can create templates from any file in your Photo Library, so the possibilities are endless!
iPad Creative
Well, user feedback works when a Developer is serious about providing a product that people really want. Ben from Cocoa Box has written an honest post on his blog, explaining what his intentions were for the Paper Shop (aimed at a minority of users) in Penultimate 3.0 and importantly how he did not communicate that so well.
In response to the feedback he has received Ben has released 3.0.1 of Penultimate and:
We think this is a great result, both for us as users of Penultimate, and for Cocoa Box, who themselves have learnt a lot about how the app is used over the last few weeks and made real efforts to address their customers' concerns.
If you have Penultimate installed on your iPad be sure to get the latest update and your free paper collection.
Coca Box, Evernote, Handwriting, Notes, Penultimate, Phil, Templates, update | in Art, News, Productivity 
Reader Comments (9)
I was really disappointed in Penultimate's 3.0 add-on pricing. As a musician who has e-mailed the company in the past, requesting staff paper, I was very happy to see the availability of staff paper--and then suddenly very disappointed to see the $4.99 (US) cost for 10 different types of sheet paper. I do realize that you can try to import your own created paper. It is difficult to believe that their custom paper requires a larger investment than the original program itself. I'd be okay if all the additional paper backgrounds were $4.99.
I've used the app called Noteshelf in place of Penultimate for some time, as of their last major update (I saw the app on TUAW.com). Noteshelf allows the user to import (and thus annotate) pictures from the photo album, and it comes with a number of additional paper backgrounds, including music staff paper. It also has a great zom feature, making note-taking a lot easier.
Noteshelf's "inking" is comparable to Penultimate (Penulitmate may have a slight edge), and ultimately, you have more choices in line thickness (Penultimate has 3, which simplifies the process) with Noteshelf.
With the wonderful addition of new backgrounds--but terrible pricing--Noteshelf is probably the better option for a note taking app at this time.
A scan of Penultimate's reviews in the App Store shows that I'm not the only person who has been disappointed by the new pricing structure for these additional page styles.
@Doctor - thank you for those comments - we did have a look at Noteshelf in the early days before settling on Penultimate, but the inking didn't seem as good as Penultimate. We agree the pricing seems a little steep for the paid versions of templates. That is why we are hopeful for the sharing function to be a better source of new templates, but that will depend on the user community of course.
I like the feature and am disappointed by the price as well. Since any image can be turned into a template, who's the first to start a penultimate paper template website?
How about the iPadcreative team?
Here we go:
http://www.diyplanner.com/templates/directory
@Harga - thanks for the link, that will prove useful, but as we hoped, Cocoa Box are planning a central repository themselves for Penultimate users, here's the update from their blog post we linked to in the article:
UPDATE: If you do create papers and would like to share with the community, we’re cooking up a centralized place for people to go do that. It’s still under development, but send me an email (contact@cocoabox.com) if you have papers you’d like to share.
Enjoy!
(Hint: when building your own templates, try 718x865 as the image resolution.)
3 fantastic templates that I found:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7591265/staff%20paper.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7591265/storyboard%202x2.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7591265/storyboard%202x3.png
Check out the DIY Hipster pda forms for all your GTD needs:
http://www.diyplanner.com/templates/official/hpda
Make sure you donwload the graphic version.
And check this site out for some ideas and examples:
http://www.printablepaper.net/
@Papa.Coen - great links, thank you for posting them!