Pin-a-note

This app was a candidate in the Apptivate.MS semi-finals. See how it did among the other candidates in the Work group.

Introduction

Do you wish you could stick a note to your start screen? NOW YOU CAN!

Pin-a-note, allows you to store your notes in this fantastic application, and then pin any to the start screen so you can easily seen them at any point!

Your notes will also travel from device to device, thanks to the power of the cloud!

Now supports double wide tiles too!

For Developers

This application makes use a XAML/C# development and implements the MVVM model using AtomicMVVM and most of it is fairly simply.

The most interesting part is using the roaming key/value store for the notes which enables them to sync from device to device.

The most complex problem was the secondary tiles - they need an image and all I have is text so that meant rendering an image at run time. I was able to reuse a lot of code from my Postal Codes app which has a similar requirement. The big difference there is the text on that is small and set in a specific template - for this I needed to implement my own version of text wrapping so that text would flow properly across lines no matter what is provided. I also spent a lot of time tweaking the text rendering (little spacing etc...) so I think it looks a lot better! You can read a bit about this process in a blog post I wrote on rendering the text.

The app icon comes from the fantastic (and free) Metro Studio 2!

Videos

Screenshots

Comments

Dinesh Nov 17 '12 at 9:32

This is great way remind my works!

Abhinandy Oct 28 '12 at 5:51

Thanks Robert for ur Contribution.........

Rinkalkumar Oct 23 '12 at 12:36

Is search functionality there in this application? Looking great and what if i want to change the color of note may be lighter yellow(opacity change)? One more thing which can be build is PA(Personal Assistant) where you can add reminder kind of stuff which will work as PA. Good Job.

Robert MacLean Oct 24 '12 at 18:43

Search: YES! Colours: Would you like all colours to be changed or on a per not basis? PA: Reminders as in adding a date/time to do a popup?

Rinkalkumar Oct 25 '12 at 5:16

Not all notes in different colors but at least i would like to change all the notes color, PA : yes adding date/time and do a pop up something like alarm it comes onto screen.

KevinM1 Oct 9 '12 at 16:10

As someone who uses Win 7 Sticky Notes fairly regularly, I think this app is a great idea.

Mamta Dalal Oct 9 '12 at 9:25

Robert Maclean seems to be everywhere in this contest! :D Keep it going, Robert, I like your enthusiasm. And I see that based on earlier comments, you have included screenshots + developer specs. I would like to know more about the "roaming key/value store".

Robert MacLean Oct 9 '12 at 11:27

The roaming key/value store is just the built in feature: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/…

Mamta Dalal Oct 9 '12 at 11:43

Great, thanks for that info!