Is anybody out these using a mobile application (smartphone or tablet) to track the wines they’re drinking at event, tastings rooms or home? I like the idea of having something more than the classic paper sheet, but I haven’t found any that seem to work well. In general, they all seem to have a few problems.
too difficult to enter a wine quickly
not enough room for notes
overly simple (or complex) rating systems
If someone’s using an application they love, I’d like to hear about it. If you’re not using one, why not?
At tasting events I prefer either paper (writing with one hand allows me to still hold the glass in the other hand) or my iPhone’s Voice Memo app to quickly record tasting notes.
I’ve also had trouble finding a note taking app that is real-time usable for iPhone/iPad. I’ve had every iteration of the iPhone, so I’ve been looking a long time!
I’ve given up lately, and just use the stock Apple “Notes” app. The closest I’ve gotten to finding one that works is Awesome Note, because it meets a basic criterion of mine to be able to associate a picture and notes. I still use AwesomeNote occasionally, but only at big trade fairs. It syncs with GoggleDocs, too, so I have the notes in a handy, editable, cut-n-pastable, format when I get home. Notes, of course, is very editable, too.
I’d love something with more functionality than Notes, but the same ease of use. Let’s hope something is out there!
What would be killer is a sound file to text converter. I’m an android user and they don’t have that, at least yet, but check the apple apps store.
Idea being you could just record a voice memo with the wine description. Get home and just have the phone convert them all to text and cut/paste/edit into tasting notes or wherever your final resting place.
Yeah, accurate transcription of a tasting note is well beyond the abilities of a stand-alone phone app, and probably human transcription services, for which there is at least one app that employs such.
Anyway, for my use, I’d not prefer to speak my notes in most circumstances.
I suppose that depends on what you drink; it’s decent on domestic wines with common names and varieties, but beyond that its useless. For example, “Sawyer Cellars Bradford Meritage Rutherford District” comes back great, with only cellars as sellers, but “Sangenis i Vaque Priorat Clos Monlleo” comes back utterly garbled and unintelligible.
For an app like that, I need dead-on accuracy for it to be of any use.
I met with Mr. CT one time about this. I have an idea for an app that would allow us to pre load flights with a note per wine per flight with tags for descriptors that could be tapped on to add to each note, etc. Then, we could export the whole thing to CT and Evernote and live happily ever after.