Idea Organizer is a handy little app for catching your brilliant ideas in the most convenient way.

In my experience “notes apps” or thought-catcher apps like Idea Organizer fall into two categories: too many features or too few. Give me too many features, and I can’t be bothered. Why spend 5 minutes fussing around with “extras” like color-coding and cutesy icons when I can whip out a pen and paper in 2.3 seconds. However, apps with too few features aren’t any better. I’m simply not going to spend money on an app that is basically a text editor with a fancy background.

Idea Organizer manages to balance that fine line with ease. The app is designed to make taking notes quick and convenient. Nanaimo Studio knows this can mean different things to different people. So, Idea Organizer lets the user decide how to capture their ideas: text, voice or visual.

Text is a very simple editor with a space for the “Idea Title” and a description. The voice recorder is the same way, record a quick message, give it a title and you’re done. Ditto with the visual notes, which can use the built-in camera or access your photo library.

Once you’ve got your basic idea in place, you can use Idea Organizer to attach additional photos or voice notes and flesh out each individual thought. Yeah, it’s definitely pushing the line towards “extra features,” but since it doesn’t interfere with my initial note-taking process I’m going to let it slide.

At any point in the process you can email your ideas to a friend or to yourself for safekeeping. Single ideas can be sent from their Idea page, or send all your ideas as a package from the Settings Menu.

So, is Idea Organizer the productivity app that will finally make this finicky Goldilocks jump up and say “This app is just right!”?

* Idea Organizer is on sale and you can download it now for just $0.99.

Almost. I love the convenience of being able to “take notes” using the voice recorder or the camera. It’s perfect for those times when typing isn’t an option — such as on the freeway — or when the ideas are flowing faster than my fingers can fly.

Unfortunately, the home screen of the app only has room for three major icons: two for taking notes and one for viewing notes. The notepad and the view notes icons are always on, which means that third space can only be used for the voice notes or the visual notes icons. Voice notes is the default, turn on visual notes by tapping the settings button at the bottom of the screen.

Ideally, all four icons would be accessible at all times from Idea Organizer’s main menu. But, barring that I would at least like to choose which icons are present. For me, it would be visual and voice because I’m less likely to use the notepad.

I still really like Idea Organizer. In most ways, it’s the perfect example of what a productivity app should be. It allows the user to complete tasks in the way that works best for them. The technology in Idea Organizer works without issue and most importantly without getting in my way when my good ideas start streaming.

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app category: Business, Productivity