German scientists have developed a software for Google Glass to measure human emotions by analysing their facial expressions, in addition to gauging a person's age and detecting gender.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits adapted its SHORE real-time face detection and analysis software to work with Google Glass, the first app of its kind.
With the aid of Glass' integrated camera, the app detects people's faces and determines their emotions by analysing their facial expressions.
The so-called Glassware (Google Glass app) simultaneously gauges the person's age or detects their gender among other things, but it cannot determine their identity, researchers said.
All calculations are performed in real-time by the CPU integrated in the eye-wear. The image data never leaves the device.
The advance opens up an entire spectrum of new smart eye-wear applications, including communication aids for people with disorders such as autism, many of whom have difficulty interpreting emotions through facial expressions.
This missing information could be superimposed in the person's field of vision with data glasses.
Even the visually impaired can benefit from the new software by receiving supplementary audio information about people in their surroundings, researchers said.
By taking advantage of the additional capability to determine someone's gender or estimate their age, the software could be used in other applications such as interactive games or market research analyses.
Other than a new design, the iPhone 6 is expected to come with
support for near-field communication (NFC), which means mobile payments
could be a big part of the new phone's functionality. It also may come
with a special chip for measuring your health statistics.
We expect to get all the details at Apple's event on Sept. 9.
Apple's invitation to a press event Sept. 9 offers few clues.Shara Tibken/CNET
Apple on Thursday sent out invites for a press event on Sept. 9 in its hometown of Cupertino, Calif.
The company provided few hints about what will be announced beyond saying "Wish we could say more." That could indicate something related to Siri, Apple's digital voice assistant. Generally, Apple is expected to introduce its newest iPhone, dubbed the iPhone 6. The company also could show off awearable at the event.
Many market watchers expect Apple to introduce two newiPhone 6models with display sizes of 4.7 and 5.5 inches, though some recent reports speculate one device could be released at a later date. Analysts expect the iPhone 6 to be one of the largest product launches in Apple's history -- both in terms of device screen size and total sales. The companyreportedly has askedmanufacturing partners to produce about 30 percent to 40 percent more iPhones by the end of this year than it ordered for its initial run of last year's iPhone 5S and 5C.The event will come a year after Apple introduced the iPhone 5S and 5C and a week after arch rival Samsung is set to unveil its Galaxy Note 4 phone-tablet hybrid, or phablet. Apple has added a new iPhone every year since former CEO Steve Jobs introduced the smartphone line in 2007, and new iPhones have been unveiled in the fall since 2011.
For Apple, having a successful iPhone 6 launch is vital. Apple hosts only one phone event a year, and it generates more than half its revenue from its smartphone line. The iPhone serves as the linchpin to Apple's overall growth, particularly as the market awaits the widely speculated iWatch and as the iPad struggles against lower-cost rivals and larger phones.
Thursday's invite came earlier than many market watchers expected. Typically, Apple sends out invites to the event a week before the launch. This time around, it gave reporters more notice, possibly because the invites would go out right after Labor Day if following the typical schedule. But the invite also came the morning after rivals Samsung and LG unveiled new smartwatches, which likely caused Apple to overshadow the Korean companies' news.
Apple is building a new structure on the De Anza College campus for its event Sept. 9.Jason Leddy
The venue on the De Anza College campus also is a change for Apple. It has tended to hold most device launches at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco or on Apple's campus in Cupertino. But Apple also has some history with the Flint Center. Steve Jobs unveiled the first Mac there in 1984, and he also showed off iMacs at the location in 1998 and 1999. The Flint Center can accommodate a larger crowd than the recent venues Apple has used, indicating the event's importance to the company.
Apple already has started making the Flint Center its own. The company has been building a large structure on the college campus, which was earlier spotted by MacRumors.
Mobile payments could play a big role in the next iPhone.CNET
Mobile payments, or the notion that you can pay for goods and services at the checkout with your smartphone, may finally break into the mainstream if Apple and the iPhone 6 get involved.
While Apple doesn't talk about future products,Wired was the latest to report that the next iPhonewould include mobile-payment capabilitiespowered by a short-distance wireless technology called near-field communication, or NFC. Apple ishosting an event on Sept. 9 that's widely expected to be the debut of the next iPhone or iPhones.
Apple's embrace of mobile payments would represent a watershed moment for how people pay at drugstores, supermarkets, or for cabs. The technology and capability to pay with a tap of your mobile device has been around for years -- you can tap an NFC-enabled Samsung Galaxy S5 or NFC-enabled credit card at point-of-sale terminals found at many Walgreen drugstores -- but awareness and usage remain low. Apple's visibility and massive user base - it already holds credit card data for about 800 million iTunes account holders -- could change that.
"Apple has again the opportunity to transform, disrupt and reshape an entire business sector," said Roger Entner, a consultant at Recon Analytics. "It is hard to overestimate what impact Apple could have if it really wants to play in the payments market."
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
Apple won't be the first to enter the mobile-payments arena. Google introduced its Google Wallet service in May 2011. The wireless carriers formed their joint venture with the intent to create a platform for mobile payments. More traditional financial companies such as Visa and PayPal have also tinkered with marrying payments to the smartphone.
Apple tends to stay away from new technologies until it has had a chance to smooth out the kinks. It was two years behind some smartphones in offering an iPhone that could tap into the faster LTE wireless network. NFC was rumored to be included in at least the last two iPhones, and could finally make its appearance in the iPhone 6. The technology will be the linchpin to enabling transactions at the checkout.
Early struggles
The notion of turning smartphones into true digital wallets -- including the ability to pay at the register -- has been hyped up for years. But so far, it's been more promise than results.
There have been many technical hurdles to making mobile devices an alternative to cash, checks, and credit cards. NFC technology has to be included in both the smartphone and the point-of-sale terminal to work, and it's been a slow process getting NFC chips into more equipment. NFC has largely been relegated to a feature found on higher-end smartphones such as the Galaxy S5 or the Nexus 5.
There's also confusion on both sides -- the merchant and the customer -- on how the tech works, and why tapping your smartphone on a checkout machine is any faster, better or easier than swiping a card.
"There's a chicken-and-egg problem between lack of user adoption and lack of retailer adoption," said Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research.
Google Wallet has been around since 2011.Marguerite Reardon/CNET
It's one reason why even powerhouses such as Google have struggled. Despite a splashy launch of its digital wallet and payment service more than three years ago, Google hasn't won mainstream acceptance -- or even awareness -- for its mobile wallet. Google hasn't said how many people are using Google Wallet, but a look at its page on the Google Play store lists more than 47,000 reviews giving it an average of a four-star rating. Google declined to comment on usage.
Meanwhile, three of the big four US wireless carriers -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile -- formed a joint venture to offer a similar kind of NFC-powered mobile-payment service. After a year-long trial period, the service, named Isis, launched across the nation in November with help from high-profile partners such as Coke and Jamba Juice, which offered freebies for early adopters. In July, Isis had togo dark to change its name, which too closely resembled the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS. It has yet to emerge with a new name.
While online payment service PayPal can handle NFC-powered transactions, it also added other capabilities, such as ordering and paying on the phone ahead of picking up a product.
Pieces of the puzzle
Apple has quietly built the foundation to its mobile-payment service in Passbook, an app introduced two years ago in its iOS software and released as a feature with the iPhone 4S. Passbook has so far served as a repository for airline tickets, membership cards, and credit card statements. While it started out with just a handful of compatible apps, Passbook works with apps from Delta, Starbucks, Fandango, The Home Depot, and more. But it could potentially be more powerful.
"Apple's already made great inroads with Passbook," said Maribel Lopez, an analyst at Lopez Research. "It could totally crack open the mobile payments space in the US."
Passbook stores movie or baseball tickets that can be scanned at the theater or stadium.Apple
Apple could make up a fifth of the share of the mobile-payment transactions in a short few months after the launch, according to Lopez, who based her math on the assumption that half of iPhone users try the feature and the company's 35 percent market share among US smartphones.
The company also has the credit or debit card information for virtually all of its customers thanks to its iTunes service, so it doesn't have to go the extra step of asking people to sign up for a new service. That takes away one of the biggest hurdles to adoption.
The last piece of the mobile-payments puzzle with the iPhone is the fingerprint recognition sensor Apple added into last year's iPhone 5S. That sensor will almost certainly make its way to the upcoming iPhone 6. The fingerprint sensor, which Apple obtained through its acquisition of Authentec in 2012, could serve as a quick and secure way of verifying purchases, not just through online purchases, but large transactions made at big-box retailers such as Best Buy. Today, you can use the fingerprint sensor to quickly buy content from Apple's iTunes, App and iBooks stores.
The bigger win for Apple is the services and features it could add on to a simple transaction -- if it's successful in raising the awareness of a form of payment that has been quietly lingering for years. Google had previously seen mobile payments as the optimal location for targeted advertisements and offers.
It's those services and features that ultimately matter; in the end, replacing a simple credit card swipe isn't that big of a deal.
and Donna Tam Interface designer Todd Hamilton released an iWatch mock-up in January 2014, showing the world what an Apple watch-wristband combo might look like.Todd Hamilton
If the rumors are true, Apple may unveil a wearable device along with its new iPhone at an event on Sept. 9.
But will that wearable be the long-rumored "iWatch," a wrist-based smartwatch built off Apple's iOS mobile operating system that aims to take on challengers from Google, LG, Motorola and Samsung? If it isn't the iWatch, just what will Apple CEO Tim Cook and his team introduce in the wearables market?
So will it be a smartwatch or a fitness band, especially given the favorable and widely circulatedmock-ups from designers like Todd Hamilton? Or will it be a device unlike any we've never seen before. Whatever it is, Apple, which hasn't introduced a product in a new category since theiPadtablet in 2010, needs to impress.Recode reported Wednesday that Apple's first wearable might make debut with the iPhone 6 -- rather than at a product event expected in October. But Recode carefully avoided calling the wearable the iWatch and didn't make any mention of a smartwatch. That suggests Apple's wearable plans may still be too cryptic to decipher.
"Apple has kind of lost its mojo," says James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. "But, Apple is a unique company, it's capable of making that kind of radical social change, not only possible, but desirable. And that's how it will get its mojo back."
But figuring out how to get people, now accustomed to carrying around a smartphone, to buy into a new mobile device can be a challenge. Samsung, which has led the charge by releasing more than half a dozen wearables in the last two years, has tried everything from round and square watches, to color LCD-equipped wristbands, to a headset that drapes around your neck. Other device makers like LG and Motorola have stuck to wrist-worn time pieces, for now.
Even Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak said this week that wearables may be "a hard sell," though he thinks if anyone can convince consumers to covet a wearable, it's Apple. "Apple works very hard to produce exceptionally great products and doesn't quickly release things like a wearable," Woz told CNET News. "So if one is introduced I expect it to have a chance to set the direction and make the product category finally viable."
Apple doesn't comment on rumors or speculation and hasn't ever acknowledged it's working on wearable development -- though CEO Tim Cook has been promising "amazing" new products since last year and said at a May 2013 conference that the wearables market is "ripe for exploration." "I think from a mainstream point of view [glasses as wearable computing devices] are difficult to see," he said. "I think the wrist is interesting. The wrist is natural."
If Cook doesn't unveil a smartwatch in September, company watchers say there are at least four other ways Apple can get into the wearables game.
1. A plain ol' fitness tracker
Fitness and health will undoubtedly play a role in whatever wearable Apple delivers.
Fitness trackers, like Fitbit's Flex, Jawbone's Up, and Nike's Fuelband, have had the best track record for wearables among consumers, capturing the lion's share of the market, according to the NPD Group. So it makes sense that Apple may want to ease its loyal fans into a wearable that's easy to use and serves a specific purpose. Healthkit, Apple's platform for tracking users' health data, would likely come into play here along with Apple's new HomeKit platform for connected home devices like thermostats and smart locks.
When CNET reported that Nike abandoned its popular Nike Fuelband wearable fitness tracker, there was speculation the sportsmaker was making room on the market for an Apple device. The two companies have had a close relationship; Cook has served on Nike's board since 2005. When Nike CEO Mark Parker was pressed for details on an Apple wearable partnership, the executive dropped telling hints. "I will say that the relationship between Nike and Apple will continue," Parker said. "And I am personally, as we all are at Nike, very excited about what's to come."
That said, Apple is arriving late to the party and a standalone fitness tracker would be a letdown unless the company can produce something with more functionality than what's already on the market. That may mean something more in line with what Hamilton designed, meaning a fitness band, yet one with cellular connectivity separate from a smartphone and a color screen. "If Apple comes out with a Fitbit copy, that's going to be extremely disappointing," NPD analyst Weston Henderek said.
2. iPod Nano refresh
Apple's 2010 iPod Nano had a 1.5-inch multi-touch display and a clip on its back that allowed it to snap onto a shirt collar or belt loop. Yet after some DIY bracelet attachments and more polished Nano cases designed for the wrist came to the market, Apple got the hint: the Nano could double as an early smartwatch. Apple updated the Nano firmware to support watchfaces, yet the device always remained a kind of geek fashion symbol, a far cry from the stylish and powerful smartwatches of 2014.
iPod Nano: a flexible iPod, watch, and also a fitness device...and that was 2011.Sarah Tew/CNET
Fast forward four years and the iPod line has been pushed to the periphery, with iPod shipments dropping 36 percent year over year in the quarter ending in June, with sales dropping 40 percent. The Nano now looks like a mini iPod Touch, running a stripped down version of the iOS software and supporting fitness and music.
A comeback for the dedicated MP3 player is unlikely any time soon -- unless Apple's wearable is branded under the iPod line.
Whether an iPod-branded wearable would resemble the 2010 Nano and contain a clip for wrists, shirt collars, and belt loops depends on how Apple wants consumers to use it. A multi-purpose wearable may be easier to use, yet a dedicated smartwatch would strike the most compelling and sought-after market in the space. Either way, the iPod line is in need of a refresh -- if Apple wants to keep it alive -- and a wearable could do the trick.
3. Siri-connected headset or ear buds
The 2013 movie "Her," directed by Spike Jonze, envisioned Los Angeles in a near-future with smartphones that really haven't undergone any radical visual changes. Instead, the film imagines that the software and hardware that powers our devices has advanced to the point of ubiquity, where the technology becomes a seamless part of our daily life.
The protagonist Theo Twombly perpetually wears an earbud connected to an artificial intelligence program that interacts with him through the camera on his phone. Over time, Theo falls in love with her, the AI operating system that plays him music, organizes his calendar, and asks him what it's like to be human. Apple very well could go the route of "Her"-style earbuds or perhaps a headset wearable -- think a Glass-less Google Glass -- connected to its virtual personal assistant Siri.
Spike Jonze's "Her" envisioned a future wearable earbud that communicates with an advanced artificial intelligence program.Warner Bros. Pictures
"Rather than trying to compete with Google Glass, which has not captured the imagination of the public, put a speaker next to your ear," says James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. "Have Siri whisper in your ear."
The digital assistant would have to do more than let people access apps -- maybe work off of contextual clues that serve relevant information designed for quick consumption, as Google's Android Wear operating system does now for smartwatches like the Motorola Moto 360. McQuivey also envisions a headset a with sensors for sensing body rhythms and heartbeats to anticipate a consumer's needs.
Apple purchased the headphone maker Beats in February for $3 billion, bringing in music industry veterans Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. With one of the most popular earpiece companies under its wing, Apple could develop a screen-less wearable that sits in our ear at all times. Of course, the technological challenges there are vast -- Her was a blend of Sci-fi and romantic comedy after all.
4. Smart jewelry
Several small companies have already started selling jewelry that connects to a smartphone in the hopes of proving consumers want more than just a connected watch. This includes rings, necklaces and bracelets.
Ringly, a smart ring, connects a fashion statement with your smartphone.Ringly
Apple is definitely a fashion-focused company, so it's not too much of a leap to see it develop a smart bauble.
Apple made its commitment to fashion clear this year by hiring Burberry's CEO to head its retail efforts, and by snatching up Beats. While not a traditional fashion company, Beats headphones have become a fashion statement thanks to design and their popularity with celebrities.
Another reason to think Apple is thinking about bling: reports earlier this year that the companyexpanded its trademark coverage to include clocks, watches and jewelry.
Google's drone deliveries will for now focus on disaster relief.Google
Google is working on a delivery system called Project Wing that will use what it's calling "self-flying" drones to bring goods to people.
The search giant has been working on the service for two years, and it's the latest project announced by Google X, the division of the company that works on Google's most ambitious projects. Other X initiatives include self-driving cars and the connected headset Google Glass.
Google has been testing the vehicles in Queensland, Australia, and has already made deliveries to locals -- including shipments of candy bars, dog treats, cattle vaccines, water, and radios. Similar to the company's self-driving car project, the drones will be able to fly a preprogrammed route at the push of a button. The company said that it will be a few more years before the system is ready for commercial use.
Google isn't the only tech giant experimenting with drones. Facebook has been working with drones through an effort called Connectivity Lab, announced in March. In December, Amazon announced it is developing a drone system that will bring products to customers. But while Amazon's efforts seem to be more focused on consumers, Google's early development of the system has been around disaster relief. For example, one early mission for the project in 2012 was delivering defibrillators to heart attack victims.
"Even just a few of these, being able to shuttle nearly continuously, could service a very large number of people in an emergency situation," Astro Teller, head of Google X, told the BBC.
Aside from the drone project, the rivalry between Google and Amazon has been heating up. Google has stepped up its focus on e-commerce, while Amazon is said to be building out anad network platform, which has long been Google's bread and butter. On Monday, Amazonannouncedthe nearly $1 billion acquisition of game-streaming service Twitch, after Google had reportedly been in late-stage talks to snap up the company. And Amazon uses its own variation of Google'sAndroidoperating system for its phones and tablets, along with a separate app store.The vehicles have a wingspan of about 5 feet, and have four electrically driven propellers, according to the BBC. The aircraft itself weighs almost 19 pounds, but with a package in hand, weighs 22 pounds.
Google's experimental projects division, Google X, has become a hotbed of curiosities and "moon shots," to use CEO Larry Page's term, of ambitious but secretive skunkworks projects that could change the world -- or fail.
The first Google X project burst into the news before Google X itself had been publicly named. TheSelf-Driving Car project was born out of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and now is expected to be road-ready sometime between 2017 and 2020.
The company also toyed with a number of projects that it concluded were duds, including a space elevator, jetpack, teleportation, and hoverboard -- think "Back to the Future II."
Most recently, Google announced that it had purchased Gecko Design to help bolster the look and feel of Google X projects.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is taking the gaming market more seriously with the largest acquisition in the e-commerce company's history. James Martin/CNET
Amazon, in its efforts to increase its video-streaming offerings, plans to buy live-streaming video game site Twitch for about $970 million in cash, the two companies announced Monday.
The deal, the largest cash buy in the e-tailer's history, helps Amazon expand its video-streaming service, as it pits its fledgling Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming service against streaming giant Netflix. CEO Jeff Bezos has made it clear that it is committed to growing its video offerings, includingthe development of original content.
Twitch is a video platform that streams content geared toward gamers, including live gaming footage, commentary, and online shows. The company said Monday it counts more than 1.1 million unique broadcasters per month, up from 600,000 in November last year. Their videos are reaching more than 55 million gamers, up from 45 million before. On average, Twitch said, users watch 106 minutes per day.
"Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon," Bezos said in a statement. "Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month -- from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3."
Twitch, launched in June 2011 by Justin.tv co-founders Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, made headlines this year for the live streams of a crowdsourced game of Pokemon and goldfish playing classic video games. Videos on the site can also be streamed on Microsoft Xbox and PlayStation 4 game consoles. In the last year, one of Twitch's biggest catalysts for growth was its inclusion in the two devices.
"Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming," Shear said in a statement. "Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community. We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently. This change will mean great things for our community, and will let us bring Twitch to even more people around the world."
Google was reportedly in talks to buy the streaming site earlier this year. The acquisition would have expanded the scope of YouTube's video ambitions. Neither company commented on the reports at the time.
The deal ultimately fell through, an unnamed source told Recode, and Amazon stepped in to pursue the streaming site. Details of Amazon's purchase were first reported by The Information and the Wall Street Journal.
Mobile game developer Dong Nguyen has learned the limits of difficulty.
Swing Copters, his follow-up to the maddening mobile game Flappy Bird, was just too hard. On Monday, Nguyen pushed out an update to tune the gameplay and make it far more accessible to players who, since its release Wednesday, have been trying to wrap their heads around a game designed around punishing failure.
The update now makes the character's previously near-uncontrollable movements far more subtle, reducing the chances of an early defeat. The game is still quite difficult, though achieving scores upward of 10 points can be done on a first or second play through this time around, whereas doing so in the initial Swing Copters release was an impossibly challenging feat.
CNET has reached out to Nguyen through his company, DotGears Studios, about why he felt compelled to dial down the difficulty of Swing Copters. We will update this story if we hear back.
When Swing Copters launched on iOS and Android devices last week, the game was universally lauded not for its quality, but for being one of the most difficult mobile games ever created. Within its first few days, it rose to the top five of the iOS App Store rankings and earned scores of cheeky reviews from lamenting players. The challenge was not so much a matter of time consumption or puzzle solving. Rather, the singular task of flying Swing Copters' one and only character skyward was so constrained by the in-game physics -- and with a margin of error so slim -- that the game had a suffocated element that rendered players helpless.
Smartphone gamers were dumbfounded, many of whom found it challenging to score even a single point. Still, some persisted against all odds, achieving ungodly scores upwards of 75 points. The game's level of difficulty, built on the foundation Nguyen laid with Flappy Bird in February, gave it an instant boost in popularity.
"By making something really difficult of course people will go on online and say, 'This is really impossible, you have to go check it out,'" Joost van Dreunen, the co-founder and CEO of SuperData Research, told CNET last week. "That becomes the story around it. The difficulty level and the necessary level of masochism required to play this game becomes a topic of conversation -- and a vehicle to promote this game directly."
Van Dreunen thinks Nguyen doesn't do this on purpose, but that it has proved beneficial to his career as a mobile-gaming mad genius of sorts. Yet Nguyen, who pulled his first viral creation Flappy Bird from smartphone app stores in February because of how the phenomenon had affected his daily life, has expressed concern in the past about disrupting the lives of gamers. To this day, Flappy Bird exists officially only as a split-screen mobile game for Amazon's Fire TV set-top box, redesigned for family play.
Nguyen cares about players having fun -- and not feeling overwhelmed by his creations. "At first I thought they were just joking," Nguyen told Rolling Stone in March about players who blamed Flappy Bird for distractions. "But I realize they really hurt themselves," he added. Nguyen, in his high school years, was an obsessive player of the multiplayer first-person shooter Counter-Strike and understood what the heart of a love-hate relationship with games looks like.
That may be why, only five days after its release, Nguyen decided to bring Swing Copters down to earth.
The GoodPiano Tiles has simple controls, a charming soundtrack, and incredibly addictive gameplay.
The Bad The piano sounds can be distracting while playing.
The Bottom LinePiano Tiles is the perfect mix of simplicity and addictive gameplay that's easy to learn, but incredibly challenging to get high scores.
Piano Tiles (iOS) or Don't Tap the White Tile (Android) are different names for the same game on the two major smartphone platforms. Having different names for the same app is a bit confusing, especially for a such a simple, but incredibly addictive touch game that requires lightning fast reflexes.
Piano Tiles is another runaway hit in the vein of popular games like Flappy Bird in that it came out a little while ago, but suddenly shot to the top of the App Store charts. After a couple of rounds, I quickly saw why, because it's so easy to learn, but getting high scores becomes something of a mini-obsession.
Whether you're a student taking notes for class this fall or your workday requires that you take notes in meetings, a handy app that makes it easy to jot things down and organize them can be incredibly useful. Even better, with the right note-taking app, you can access your notes on any device so the notes you took on your tablet are easily accessible on your desktop at work and even your smartphone.
There have been plenty of great note-taking apps in the App Store from the beginning, but as time went on, old favorites of mine have been updated to make them even more useful. I've also come across new ones that are perfect for either the classroom or meetings.
Evernote is just one part of an excellent, access-from-anywhere note-taking system. In addition to Evernote on your smartphone, you can create and get to your notes from a variety of devices (including apps for both desktops and tablets) and any Web browser on any computer. A free Evernote account links all your notes together.
Evernote is a mature and popular app, with an impressively streamlined interface that shares similarities across its multiple platforms and gives you many different ways to create notes and collections of notes called notebooks. Your notes can be text, images, and Web clippings and it has neat features for capturing documents and business cards using your smartphone camera.
Evernote is free, but you have the option to get the premium subscription for $5 per month that offers better search tools and offline notes on mobile. There's also a business subscription for $10 per month per user so your whole team at work can collaborate on shared projects.
Google Keep is another great note taker for Android devices that lets you write notes, add photos record audio and more.
You can color code your notes making it perfect for finding all your notes from a particular class. But even just browsing notes is intuitive, because each note is represented as a thumbnail giving you a good idea of what's inside.
Once signed in with your Google account, you can access your notes from anywhere. Though there isn't an iOS version of Google Keep, you can login and access your notes using Safari at keep.google.com.
Awesome Note lets you manage messages, memos, and ideas in several unique ways. An intuitive interface lets you use themes to help categorize information the way you want and get to the information you need quickly.
Awesome Note includes a few demo categories (shown as folder tabs) that you can use to see how your notes and info will be laid out. You can create new folders by selecting your preferred color, and adding a title. Opening a folder displays your notes for that category laid out as thumbnails so you can quickly find the specific note you want. You can also configure the program to display to-dos as a running list or as a separated list with completed items on top.
Awesome note has been around since 2011, but it has received numerous upgrades and a complete interface redesign since then.
Notability has tons of useful features that are easily accessed through the app's intuitive interface. Perfect for students or really anyone who needs to gather and organize information, Notability lets you use your onscreen keyboard (or a compatible Bluetooth keyboard) to keep track of information by grouping your notes into categories by subject.
Along with notes you can add images and other media, and Notability even offers an area to draw your own diagrams, make charts, and crop your images to make them fit to your particular project. Unlimited undo and redo is also available, so there's plenty of room to experiment.
Notability was formerly only for iPad, but now works on your iPhone as well with a reworked interface that works well on the smaller screen.
