Blame Andy Hunt.
Back in late 2001, I attended Jerry Weinberg’s Problem Solving Leadership workshop with Andy, and during a break we got around to talking about what apps we had on our Palm V organizers. Andy said that he wished somebody would write a wiki for the Palm.
“That’s a stupid idea,” I said. “Wikis are about sharing information. What would the point of a wiki be if the information were all locked up inside a single device?”
Andy shrugged and the conversation went elsewhere. But after a few months, the idea of a personal wiki started making more and more sense to me. It would be a relatively simple Palm OS application to write. So on a plane flight in August 2002 (ironically on the way to Jerry Weinberg’s Change Shop workshop), I wrote the initial version of WikiPad for the Palm. I still have the notes I took that week on WikiPad to this day.
I used WikiPad for Palm happily for many years, first on my Palm V, and then on a couple of Palm Treos. Once Apple released the iPhone SDK, I created an iPhone version of WikiPad for my own use almost immediately. And now, after much polishing, I present the first public release of WikiPad for iPhone. Use it in good health.
[Update 4/9/2010] WikiPad for iPad is coming soon.
It’s exactly what I was looking for.
One question – how do I delete pages?
For the iPhone version:
* Tap “Go To…”
* Scroll to the name of the page you want to delete.
* Tap “Edit”.
* Tap the circle-with-a-line-through-it icon next to the name of the page you want to delete.
* Tap the “Delete” button that appears.
* Confirm the delete one more time in the dialog box that pops up. (I wanted to make sure nobody loses a page accidentally.)
* The page is deleted.
(The Palm OS version doesn’t support deleting pages. The best you can do is delete the contents of the page.)
I bought wikipad, an excellent application. However, I bought it for my new iPad, assuming that it would be a full sized app. I was very disappointed to see it was iPhone sized.
Please upgrade this to iPad size. It will be a big hit.
WikiPad for iPad is currently in the Apple approval process. I’ll post a blog entry once it’s approved for sale. It’s a universal binary that will work on both iPhone and iPad, so you won’t need to buy a separate product.
Will we see an iPad version soon? Atleast full sized?
Thanks,
.
Yes, as mentioned above, an iPad version is in the works.
I should pay attention. duh!
This is just the app I’ve been looking for! I’m fanatically devoted to VoodooPad for Mac OS, and have been waiting for a similar wiki note app for iPhone. Can’t wait for Apple to approve the iPad version! I’ll be giving you a glowing review on my blog soon, so be sure to check it out.
One feature that would make it more robust would be some kind of export/sync mechanism, since Apple doesn’t back up app data while syncing. It’s unfortunate that they don’t provide better facilities for that in the APIs…
Check out the free VoodooPad for some feature ideas. They allow multi-word links: you just have to select text and then designate it as a link. So they don’t have separate view and edit modes. Not sure how easy that would be to do with native iPhone text editor controls…
Again, thanks for a great product! Let me know if you need an iPhone or iPad beta tester.
Just stumbled into WikiPad! This is going to be a killer app for me for sure. My most urgent wish is for an export function to html for easy backup and publishing…
Great work! I look forward to watching this grow…
Impressive, but as you noted when you first saw it, if you can’t get the info out/synced to a desktop/laptop of some kind, it’s not really a solution for me. Best of luck.
Desktop and cloud-based sync are coming soon.
Hi,
I love this app. This is the perfect companion in my ipad for brainstorming, taking notes etc.
Just one question. How do i create a new page with a new name, for example: “Notes from xyz”.
I cannot find it and any instructions anywhere, please help.
Kindest regards,
David
Im using wikidpad on my computer and a sync compatible with that app would be a blast!
keep up the good work!
David
To create a new page, you need to edit another page to create a like to it. For example, edit the home page, and add the text “NotesFromXYZ”. When you save the page, that text will become a link to the new page. Click on it, and link will let you create the new page.
Hmmm…. I was thinking of writing a desktop version, but I suppose WikidPad would probably suffice. The only hurdle is that it would add to the confusion between the two products.