What is InkThink?

InkThink is a stylus-first productivity suite designed for thinkers, creators, and note-takers who prefer ink over keyboard. InkThink features unique intelligent ink where you handwrite tasks, notes and calendar entries, and these individual entries can have associated dates and other data.     It's like if you merged a normal to-do list or calendar with handwriting.

What does this mean in practice? It means your handwritten task list items can be checked off, reordered, re-edited and even have labels attached to them.  Your handwritten calendar entries will reflow dynamically in day, week and month views.  Your To-Do's can have due dates and appear on your calendar.  Hence we call it 'Intelligent Ink'.

Why did we build the app?

As the creator of NoteDex Index Cards app, we love capturing information and using pen.  NoteDex was one of the first apps to allow you to create handwritten index cards on any device.   

But sometimes I just needed to write down a to-do list for my day and have that handy on my desk. Sometimes I would want to sketch out a calendar for the coming month, and doing it on computer felt slow and not had a lot of friction in the process that interrupted my flow.  I also have an e-ink device and once the novelty wore off it just sits on my desk and the notes and to-dos I take sort of get lost there.  

What I wanted was basically a digital version of a planner - but one that was actually intelligent - not like what you find today where people try to sell you a pre-formatted yearly planner PDF that you just sketch on ('dumb').  I needed a more intelligent app to combine ink handwriting with data (tasks, notes, calendar etc.) - to actually help me think and plan with minimal mental friction: Hence InkThink was created.  It's what you actually expect when you see an app like this - your ink entries will move around with you as you move views, and no need to redraw your tasks or calendar for the next day - finally!

How does it work?

The app has a main home-screen which is like your overall digital diary summary.  It shows  a few sections with your tasks, notes, calendar entries and an ink-pad (a scribble pad for quick notes). Then there are main sections where you add and manipulate entries:

• Tasks - handwrite tasks quickly into a list. Rearrange tasks up and down. Add labels and due dates
• Notes - handwrite quick notes as you follow along in a meeting. Create groups of notes/projects.  Convert a note into a task.
• Calendar - handwrite a calendar item for a day. See in Day/Week or Month views.  Supports Multi-Day events also.
• Canvas - Brainstorm quick ideas onto a canvas where you re-arrange them to help think spatially. Can also change the outline color of each card and even save and share the canvas as an image!

Here are some visual examples of what the different sections of the app look like.