Hasta La Gadget!

Hog Bay Software, maker of the cult-favorite distraction-free text-editor Writeroom, has released its long-awaited iPad app, PlainText. When it was first announced, I was very excited to see a Dropbox-syncing, Textexpander-expanding writing app for the iPad. Now, though, it launches into a crowded field.

PlainText has two tricks. It has folders, which apps like Elements don’t support, and it looks gorgeous. The developer, Jesse Grosjean, has clearly spent a lot of time polishing the UI. From the wide margins to the minimalist black-on-gray interface, it looks classy, and makes you want to write. Navigating is easy once you have learned a few tricks: you rename a document by opening it and editing the name in the title bar, for example, and swipe-to-delete files and folders as you’d expect.

After that, though, PlainText falls behind. A recent update to Elements has added a feature that searches within your files, and it already has a word-count and the excellent scratchpad we love here at Gadget Lab. And the newly released iA Writer, profiled last week by our own Tim, wins for its extra row of writing-specific keys and its easy-to-edit typeface.

Plaintext scores big points by being free, and it also lets you specify which folder in your Dropbox it will sync to (choose this before logging into Dropbox from the app), so you can share documents with other iPad apps. It’s certainly worth a look, and we’ll be keeping an eye on updates, but for now, most iPad writing needs are covered elsewhere.

PlainText [Hog Bay / iTunes]

See Also:

• Elements for iPad, a Dropbox-Syncing Text Editor
• Simplenote and Notational Velocity Bring Document Syncing to iPad …
• Ten Things Missing From the iPad
• Writer for iPad Aims For Focus, Beauty, Simplicity

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Tablet startup Kno has created a single screen slate specifically for students in the hopes of making electronic textbooks a widespread reality on college campuses.

The tablet will have a 14.1-inch screen, making it the biggest slate to become available. It will have a touchscreen and a stylus to take notes on the device.

In June, Kno showed off a dual-screen device that would have two 14-inch LCD touchscreens that fold in like a book. The idea behind the device was to make textbook pages fit perfectly across the screen and flow from one digital page to another.

The company plans to ship both the single and dual-screen tablet by the end of the year. However, it hasn’t announced pricing for either of the products. The dual-screen version was expected to cost “under a $1000.”

“Our new tablet will be absolutely cheaper than the dual screen version,” Osman Rashid, co-founder and CEO of Kno said at the TechCrunch Disrupt event where the device was introduced.

Detailed specs for the single screen tablet are not yet available. But it is expected to be powered by a Nvidia Tegra processor. The tablet will also have a stylus for handwriting recognition, a full browser and support Flash.

Apple’s iPad has led to renewed interest in tablets. Companies such as Dell and Samsung have released tablets in the last few months. But most of those devices are targeted at general consumers. Kno bills itself as the first tablet created exclusively for students.

But Kno’s competition is likely to come from iPad apps. For instance, a startup calledInkling has created a rich, beautifully designed iPad app that delivers textbooks to students. Inkling is working with publishers to offer coursework and texbooks in areas such as biology, management and engineering. Users can pay for just a chapter of a book or buy an entire textbook through the app.

The Kno tablet, says Rashid, will help students do more. The device lets users draw, take notes, create stickies on it, highlight text and collaborate with other students.

Kno, which was started in September last year and now has more than 90 employees, says it has written its own software that will “normalize” books in the PDF format. It will also add interactive elements to the books and allow students to make notes and annotate the margins of an electronic textbooks.

Similar to Amazon’s Kindle, Kno hopes to have its own bookstore.

The company has inked deals with four major textbook publishers, including McGraw Hill, Pearson and Wiley.

Check out more photos of the Kno:

Kno tablet has a touchscreen and a stylus

Students can take notes and highlight text on the tablet.

See Also:

• Dual-Screen Tablet Maker Hopes to Reinvent the Textbook
• Kno Releases Details and Video of Multi-Screen Reading Tablet …
• Toshiba Dual Screen PC Folds Like a Book
• Startup Gives Digital Textbooks the Ol’ College Try
• Startup Plans Pocketable Dual-Screen E-Reader

Photos: Kno

While you’re stocking up on toilet paper and sweat pants at Target, you’ll be able to stroll to the electronics section to grab an iPad.

Target will begin carrying Apple’s iPad on Oct. 3, according to an Associated Press report, at its normal retail price starting at $500. Shoppers with Target credit cards will be eligible for a 5-percent discount on the device.

The store will offer both the Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models with capacities ranging from 16 GB to 64 GB.

Other than the Apple stores, the iPad is currently available at Best Buy. Retail giant Walmart also announced plans to sell the iPad sometime this year.

Target in June also began selling the Amazon Kindle; the retailer is the only brick-and-mortar store where you can purchase the reader.

See Also:

• Best Buy to Sell iPad in Reportedly Limited Quantity
• Best Buy Chief: iPad Cuts Laptop Sales in Half
• Official: Target to Stock Kindle from Sunday

Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com

If you play the guitar, and you have an iPad, you should buy TabToolkit. Short of having a teacher with you all the time, it’s probably the best way I have seen to learn new music.

Guitar Tab is a way of writing down music specifically for the guitar. It’s not as information-rich as standard musical notation, but it’s a lot easier to follow. At its core, TabToolkit will display tabs for you, just like they’d look on paper. But if you use Power Tab or Guitar Pro files, both designed to be read on by computer, then TabToolkit goes into overdrive.

Load in a song (from your computer or via the built-in web-browser) and you’ll see the tab along with musical notation, and below that there is a picture of a guitar’s fretboard and strings. Press play and things really get going. A line runs along the notation to show you where you are in the song, and red dots appear on the fretboard to show you where your fingers should be. Better still, the app actually plays the song thanks to a built-in multi-track synthesizer. That’s right, you get a whole band to play along with, only they never get tired and they never drink all your beer.

There are various controls and options. The best is the speed-dial: spin the wheel and you can slow the music down (or speed it up, should you really hate yourself). you can also choose which instrument you want to learn. Tabs default to the main guitar track, but you can choose to see any instrument for which a sequencer track has been included. You can also switch off the standard musical notation, change the size of the display, switch to left-handed mode (try that with printed tabs) and have a keyboard instead of a fretboard shown at the bottom.

There are some problems with this iPad version (launched in April – there’s an older iPhone version). While you can tap-to-stop the music, doing so skips the “playhead” to wherever you touch on-screen. Further, you need to hit the tiny play-button to resume. But that’s about it. As I said, if you’re learning the guitar, you owe it to yourself to spend $10 on this app. My favorite part? Take a look at the screenshot at the top: You can choose to have the metronome sound as a cow-bell. Just where might that be useful?

I played the guitar a lot when I was younger. Back then, there was no internet. Songs came in books, or on pieces of paper scribbled by friends. If something like TabToolkit had existed back then, I wouldn’t be such a terrible player today.

TabToolkit product page [Agile]

See Also:

• iPad Sheet-Music Foot-Switch is a Real Page-Turner
• Headstock Guitar Tuner Picks Up Vibes
• Turn Your iPhone Into an Electric Guitar With iShred
• Mobile Phone Guitar Makes Sweet Music

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Just seven months after unveiling the Entourage eDGe, a device that somewhat awkwardly combined an e-reader and a LCD screen, Entourage is gearing up to launch a pocket-sized version.

The original dual-screen eDGe has a 9.7-inch E Ink screen on the left half and a 10-inch touchscreen LCD on the right. That means you could use it as an e-reader, a notepad or as a netbook–or all at the same time. In practice, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The Pocket Edge will have folding, book-like body with a six-inch black-and-white E Ink screen on one side and a seven-inch color LCD touchscreen. It will still run the Android operating system, says The Digital Reader.

Entourage is planning a 3G edition of the Pocket Edge for Verizon and a separate, Wi-Fi-only model.

The original Entourage eDGe made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Then, e-readers and netbooks were two of the hottest consumer electronics products. Entourage tried to combine the two and birth the eDGe. But the Frankensteinish device suffered from some major problems.

For starters, the eDGe was just too big and heavy. The 10-inch screen size meant that it couldn’t easily be whipped out and used to read e-books on the train or browse web pages on the road. The device’s weight, about twice that of the iPad, put a strain on the arms if it was held up for more than 15 minutes.

The eDGe ended up as a device too big to be an e-reader and, without a keyboard, too uncomfortable to be just a netbook.

The Pocket Edge hopes to correct some of those problems. In terms of tech specs, it will have features similar to the bigger version. It will come with a USB port, a micro SD card slot, a  camera and a non-removable battery.

Along with the smaller screen, the changes mean that the Pocket Edge will be lighter, about one pound, compared to the three pounds of the original.

What’s disappointing to hear though is that the Pocket Edge will use the older Vizplex version of the E Ink screen and not the new Pearl E Ink display that’s in the latest Kindle and Sony e-readers. The Pearl has a much better contrast and for e-reader enthusiasts the older technology in the Pocket Edge is likely to be a disappointment.

It’s also indicative of why the eDGe didn’t become a hit the first time around. If the device is mediocre e-reader and a passable netbook, consumers have little incentive to buy a half-baked device that’s doesn’t offer the best of either worlds. Instead, they are better off getting a Kindle or a Nook that does one thing very well and using a netbook or a tablet for their other computing needs.

Entourage hasn’t said how much the Pocket Edge will cost but the device is expected to ship in late October. So far, the word is it will be cheaper than the $500 original model.

Check out more photos of the new Pocket Edge below.

The Pocket Edge Combines an E Ink and LCD Screen.

The Pocket Edge has a USB port and a micro SD card slot.

See Also:

• Hands-On: Twin Screens Pack Potential in eDGe Netbook, E-Reader
• Entourage E-Reader/Netbook Hybrid to Start Shipping
• Gallery: E-Readers Push Boundaries of Books

Photos: Nate Hoffelder/The Digital Reader