If you’d like to be notified when it’s available, just drop us a line at feedback@notespark.com

Thanks for your patience.

I don’t know if this was the cause of the AppStore issues, but it turns out that the build of Notespark that we submitted to the store doesn’t launch on 3.0 and 3.1 devices. I don’t know if this is why it stopped being downloadable from the store (it could be that someone at the store decided to pull it, or it could be something totally unrelated) but in either case, we’ve decided to pull Notespark from the store until we can fix the issue.

Once the issue is resolved, we’ll resubmit. For those of you who were incovenienced by the 3.0 / 3.1 issue, please send email to us at bugs@notespark.com and we’ll sort you out.

There is also a new version of the website to go along with the new iPhone app, which you can use starting today. The new website uses ajax for just about everything, so it should be much snappier. Also, you no longer have to explicitly save a note. It just syncs up as you type.

The new website also supports the following keyboard shortcuts:

1. up and down arrow keys to navigate around the note index
2. return to start editing a note
3. ctrl-s to save the note
4. ctrl-shift-n to create a new note
5. ctrl-shift-f to find a note
6. ctrl-delete to delete a note
7. delete (or backspace) to delete a note

Try it out! Send all feedback (good, bad, or ugly) to feedback@notespark.com

Enjoy!

[update: the ctrl-delete keyboard shortcut is a standard shortcut for "delete word" on windows, so we got rid of it. Instead, we use the delete key by itself. This keyboard shortcut (like the up and down arrows) only works when you are not in the middle of editing a note.]

He did a writeup of what the design challenges were and how he approached the problem. Check it out.

Mike and I have been working for the past year on a new startup, called Phile. We’re opening it up as a public beta starting today. We’d love for you to check it out!

Phile continues our obsession with making better use of information, but it takes it to a whole new level. Phile gives groups of people a permanent place to share information with each other in a better way – like a wiki, but more social and more structured.

The easiest way to get a sense of how Phile works is to watch the video.

You can find out more about how it works by reading our learn more page and you can get some background on why we thought this was an interesting project for us to do by reading our about page.

For an outside perspective, you can read the VentureBeat article on us.

As you can imagine, we are very excited about this. We hope you check it out, and we’d love to hear your feedback.

[obligatory Notespark news] As for an update on our last post, it turns out that our launch week for Phile was kind of quiet, so Mike is putting the finishing touches on the iPad version today. If all goes well and we don’t find any more bugs, we should be able to submit it to the AppStore in a few days.

In the meantime, we have been spending a bit of time on Notespark as well. There is a brand new version of the website ready to go, and there is an iPad version that is 95% done. We’re just fixing a few bugs, but it has been hard finding time to fix that last 5%, given that we are spending every waking hour trying to finish up our other project. Ack!

We also have a beautiful new icon, courtesy of our good friend Ryan Hicks:

As for the future, we plan on supporting Notespark indefinitely. It still sells a good number of copies every week, and our customers seem to really love it. While it’s true that most of our energy is going into our next venture, Notespark remains a labor of love for us. To this day, we try to respond to every customer question within 24 hours, and often much more quickly (usually within 2 hours).

And I predict that one day, we’ll feel compelled to revisit it again and add a feature or two. Speaking of which, is anyone interested in whipping up a desktop version? We’d be happy to give anyone access to our API. Just let us know.

Thanks! And stay tuned.

-Sho

First, the bugs.

On the phone, iPhone OS 3.0 introduced an annoying bug where you often find yourself unable to see the bottom of a note, which is covered up by the keyboard. This has been fixed in version 1.2, but until it is available on the iTunes Store, you can use the following steps to avoid the bug:

1. Quit and restart Notespark
2. When viewing a note, be sure to hide the keyboard (using the ‘done’ button) before using the ‘back’ button.
3. If you ever forget, and get into the state where the keyboard is hiding part of the note, quit and restart Notespark again.

There were a handful of server bugs, but we think all of them have been fixed. Let us know if you see any more.

Now, for the changes. You may have noticed that all your notes on notespark.com are now protected by https. This, again, is in preparation for v1.2, where all communication between the iPhone and the website are done securely through https.

Version 1.2 contains other features, such as push notifications and clickable links. Stay tuned!

Hooray! We’re famous! Uh…

To be honest, we knew that Apple would introduce note synchronization at some point. It would have been stupid for us not to anticipate it, right? The big question was what form the note synchronization would take.

We had four basic guesses as to how Apple’s note sync would work:
1) Cloud sync to MobileMe
2) IMAP sync to Mail.app / Outlook
3) Wireless sync through Bonjour
4) Wired sync through iTunes -> Mail.app, or possibly Dashboard notes app

As far as I can tell, it looks like Apple chose option 4. That’s not to say that they won’t also add 1-3. Also, I’m not real clear on how their solution will work for Windows.

While we recognize that Apple’s sync solution will be good enough for many, we’re betting that cloud sync + sharing will be attractive in its own right. Sales so far have not slowed down, although we expect them to temporarily slow down once iPhone 3.0 ships.

Meanwhile, we have a few tricks up our sleeves for Notespark, and we’re also busy working on something else… Stay tuned.