Complicated itinerary planning just got a lot easier with the Anchornote app, which gives users to ability to make and organize location-based notes.
Organizing trips can be an informational nightmare. There’s often complicated logistical information like plane tickets, transportation and hotel stays to organize, as well as itineraries to plan and manage.
And then there’s a whole other layer of information to manage: remembering that this boutique has a coupon code you can use for a discount, this museum has an exhibition you want to see, or simply a family member you’re visiting has cats and you’ll need to remember to bring your allergy medicine.
Anchornote offers a solution to keeping all these bits of information organized by taking a different approach to taking notes â€" the app lets users attach notes to geographic locations, making it especially useful for travelers, but also anyone with a complex errand and to-do list.
What’s the App All About?
Anchornote, available for iOS for $2 and developed by Leon Johnstone, lets users “anchor†notes to physical locations. Users can add text, voice and photo notes to any place on a map.
Taking advantage of smartphones’ abilities to sense location, the app also alerts you to the notes when you’re near the locations you’ve attached notes to, and also reminds you to visit a place when you’re entering its vicinity or before you leave the area altogether. Beyond the note taking and location features, users can share text notes with friends, and Anchornote also syncs with Evernote and Dropbox.
The app’s interface is clean and intuitive, and the functionality is solid and reliable, although I did test the app before updating my Apple device to iOS 6. Accessing your notes in multiple views â€" by location, on a map or organized by distance from current location â€" is especially useful. The app’s real magic and utility lies in its “geo-fencing†capabilities, however. Getting alerts of what exactly you need at the grocery store while actually at the store, for example, proved incredibly helpful, though this feature depends on the accuracy and ability of the phone to pinpoint your exact location.
You’ll Want It If…
Travelers will especially gravitate to an app like Anchornote, since it organizes notes by the most urgent criteria structuring their itineraries, schedules and lists. The geo-fencing features and location-based alerts can also prove especially useful for globe-trotters as they manage navigating new location, helping them to keep and act upon information in situations where they may be too harried or overwhelmed to remember.
Beyond travelers, though, anyone with a particularly complex to-do list may find a place for Anchornote on their iPhones. If your to-do lists have you spanning schools, grocery stores, offices, homes, post offices, Target, soccer fields, in-laws’ homes and oh, yes, maybe sometimes even the gym â€" Anchornote is a wonderfully useful solution for on-the-go people whose whirlwind schedules often keep them fraying at the edges.
If you’ve ever smacked your forehead in annoyance because you forgot to pick up stamps at the post office while you were at the grocery store getting milk around the corner, Anchornote can help.
It’s Not My Thing â€" What Else Ya Got?
Anchornote requires location services to work, and there’s a small but significant subset of privacy-minded users who are leery of letting their movements be tracked by their smartphones. They still require list-making and information-organizing apps that can handle a degree of complexity, however.
The much-lauded Omnifocus app also provides the ability to organize lists by locations, but the app’s complexity could be overkill for those who just want a simple app to keep information organized. Those looking for something simpler will like Any.Do, a free app that manages complex to-do lists with a clean, elegant interface.
The “folder†feature is handy as it allows the user to organize items by place as well as by schedule and priority. However, it doesn’t have the useful geo-fencing capabilities that make Anchornote so useful.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Yinghai
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