My favorite part about this app is the fact that it comes from a giant in personal computing, who, after 30+ years in the business, is still motivated enough to pick up a book, learn a new platform, and release software. Bricklin explains:

Over the last couple of months I've been working on learning a different medium and a different business environment. In mid-September I purchased a shiny new 24" Apple iMac and an iPhone 3GS. I signed up for the Apple iPhone Developer Program. I bought some books and started doing the tutorials, step by step. I came up with the idea for an app I needed and built a prototype, then plunged in and started creating a full app that would be good for others, too. A few days before Thanksgiving I submitted my completed app for inclusion in the App Store. It's now just been approved and you can try it. 30 years after VisiCalc shipped: Another app from me that starts out on Apple hardware.

If you get the application, be prepared to work through the initial "Try It" mode. The multi-page tutorial may frustrate ADD-types, but it's totally worth it to get a handle on the interface. Here's a screencast of Note Taker in action:

The full version of Note Taker is $1.99 in the iTunes Store and Note Taker Lite is free (with a four-page limit). Bricklin says an Android version is underway.

Note Taker [iTunes Store]
Dan Bricklin's Note Taker for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch [Dan's Log]

Update: Several readers point out that if you email notes from Note Taker to Evernote, the text becomes searchable. Here's what it looked like in Evernote when I sent my cookie ingredients list in, and then searched for the word "Sugar."

Label Placement

Folder-loving users will now find labels right underneath their Inbox, Starred, Sent Mail, and Drafts items, where folders would typically go in a desktop email program like Outlook. Labels you use the most will show in the list, the rest will collapse into a drop-down menu. You can show or hide any label by clicking on the down arrow next to it and choosing the option from the list. (As someone who names my folders things like _FOLLOWUP to get them alphabetized at the top of my list, this smart ordering makes me happy as well as the people who never use labels.)

Here's what it looks like.

Drag and Drop Conversations into Labels

Another slick web-as-desktop feature is the ability to drag and drop conversations into a label. Personally I prefer the keyboard shortcuts, but this is really nice for mouse-lovers.

What About Subfolders?

Given the popularity of the excellent Folders4Gmail Greasemonkey user script (included in my Better Gmail 2 extension), I had to ask Jackson about subfolders. He said that the Gmail team is committed to labels, but that they have been asked about and discussed subfolders before. In general they want to keep the interface as clean and simple as possible. He also said that user requests for subfolders have declined over time, which means users are getting more comfortable and having their needs fulfilled with straight-up labels. (Of course, Gmail's IMAP implementation still creates subfolders for labels that contain slashes.)

I'm not sure what the fate of Folders4Gmail is in light of these new Gmail changes. Either way, you should see them in both your Google Apps and vanilla Gmail account by the end of the day.

Labels: drag and drop, hiding, and more [Official Gmail Blog]

While you're using Google Reader to peruse your feeds, with Inline Preview (click) enabled, you can click the article headline to load it within the Google Reader frame, no new tab required. This is especially useful for news articles that don't include the full text inside their feed items. Thanks to scripter Bryan Tsai, this new version also lets you Ctrl+Click a headline if you do want to open it in a new tab. See it and a few other Better GReader features in action in the video below. Or just download Better GReader here, or ask questions on the mailing list here.

This video clip demonstrates the inline preview feature, but I've got three other options enabled that might make my Google Reader look different than yours: Show Feed Favicons, Colorful List View and the Minimalistic skin.

Thanks to all the developers whose user scripts make Better GReader possible. Here's the full list.

• Absolutely Compact
  Maximizes the area for displaying articles.
  By DJBullwinkle
• Air Skin
  Cleaner font.
  By hebbet
• Auto Add to Reader (Bypass iGoogle Choice)
  Bypasses choice between iGoogle and Reader when subscribing to feeds.
  By Simon Lieschke
• Colorful List View
  Colorizes the item headers in Google Reader list view. (Doesn't work with Google Gears enabled.)
  By kepp
• Hide Unread Item Count
  Removes all unread numbers from Google Reader (except the window title count).
  By rcphq
• Mark Until Current As Read (Shift+Y)
  Mark all entries up to the current entry as read (Shift+Y), marks all items below the current item as read (Shift+I).
  By Gautham Pai
• Minimalistic
  Tap W key to toggle the top bar.
  By Scott Cowan
• Optimized
  Maximize viewing area, cleaner font.
  By paikia
• Preview Item (Automatically)
  Replaces Google Reader's article summary with a frame containing the actual blog's web page.
  By Itai Lahan
• Preview Item (Click button)
  Adds a "Preview button" that allows you to view actual article in a frame. Clicking again on that button goes back to RSS view. Does work both in List view and expanded view.
  By Julien CAROSI and bryantsai
• Show Feed Favicons (Firefox 3.1+ only)
  Displays site favicons for each feed inside Reader. (Not compatible with OS X skin.)
  By henrah
• Smart Subscribe
  Two-click subscription to feeds encountered on any web page.
  By Jasper de Vries and Mihai Parparita

Better GReader 0.6.2 [Mozilla Add-ons]