Thursday 28 April 2016

Mapboard lite milestone 1 : Reached 1000 downloads




Thank you, everyone.

Mapboard lite : the map drawing app has got 1000 downloads on Google Play!
And our new Noted! the notes app, has started out well, too.

Mapboard is our first app, and we never were biggies in the field. We never had resources to promote it, either. All the same, here we are : We survived the initial sluggish rate( nearly zero) of downloads on Google Play, and in 4 months we were able to reach at least 1000 out of a million possible users who might benefit from our app. That gives us a tiny sense of success...


 We are extremely happy that you people are finding Mapboard lite useful. Our team is grateful to you all for your encouragement and support. ( And we regret that we couldn't provide more updates in the past few months. Small developers... Ideas, passion, enthusiasm are the stuff we have in plenty, but money and time are not. )

Let the joy of learning prevail. Cheers!!!

Good day to all.

-

Scholastic Appster

Friday 15 April 2016

How to make notes for civil services exams with Noted!?


                                                     Hi, Me Scholastic Appster here!

Would you please take a moment to look at me?
Can you guess what am I upto?
 You might guess it right : I too am preparing for civil services. So many notebooks, magazines, newspapers to be studied... How am I gonna keep them all in my tiny head.

You know, what Mr. Einstein said? He said we shouldn't memorize anything that we can look up in books ( or internet). I agree with him. He is a genius, after all. But.... Reading a hundred books, scribbling small notes on a hundred sheets... What's the point of it, if I need to spend 30 minutes shuffling through them when I want cross-check a small fact? Or googling the same thing again and again?

Okay, okay. I'm telling it straight. Why Noted! is a perfect app for me and how I use it for making notes of my studies?

1. For making small notes of facts, abbreviations, vocabulary, countries, cities, capitals etc

In the 'keyword' box I enter the keyword or a question or a  phrase, then I enter facts I just learned in 'Your notes' box; Then touch the appropriate category check-box, from the table containing categories . Hit submit. It is saved. Yes, it can be looked up later. All I need to do is 'Pick a Note' (by touching the icon next to about on the top, or the one below 'your notes' box) Or, say, if I want to revise all the new words I learned in the last week, I will check the box before 'vocabulary'. Then 'By Subject'. That'll list all words and their meanings I had added under that category.
  Noted! : A study notes app- screenshot thumbnail      


2. Saving unknown terms so that I can look them up later.
All I do is enter a keyword, select a category and add it to my notes. Later, when I finish all immediate tasks in hand, I would pick the keyword, and hit 'Google Search' button. Neat, isn't it? :)
One more thing. Whenever I get a question while studying ( I happen to be very inquisitive fellow), this app is the first thing I reach out for. I save the question after picking a category to which it belongs. Then, I can surf for an answer later. I believe this will ensure I don't miss any opportunity in gaining more conceptual clarity.


( You see the question marks? Those are the unknown terms on which I wanted more info at the time of studying. The terms are automatically saved with question marks. Later you could look up only the notes with "?" so that you can clear the mess on one go :)

3. Saving, sharing and backing up of notes

'More..' icon. Here I find all those options. Once I wanted to view my notes saved in my tablet on my phone. Then I saved the file, sent it to my phone, transfered it to Noted folder in my phone. Then loaded the new notes from within Noted! app. Well, I could have directly shared it too...


   Noted! : A study notes app- screenshot
Also, there are four cool themes, among them I love the white one-- and dark grey one the best.


4. Smart search bar


   Noted! : A study notes app- screenshot     Noted! : A study notes app- screenshot

The first one is the 'Pick a note' menu, in 'Keyword only' mode, displaying only keywords and dates.
I prefer this mode when editing notes I saved for a topic or when I am referring to a difficult new word the meaning of which I am not able to recall.
In the 'Keyword only' mode, I would type the date or the month to see the notes made on the specified day or month.
The second screenshot is the same menu in 'Entire notes' mode. Handy when I am desperately hunting for a term in my whole notes.

5. The new feature : bookmarks
Quick links to some very very useful and informative websites added with the latest update. Can't wait to explore them all.

6. No ads. A specially curated collection of links to great books, instead
I love the variety of books they have added with this updates. Well, they are just affiliated links to Amazon.in bookstore. But, they are awesome. Some inspirational, some reference books, some memoirs of successful leaders and indian civil services officers...

7. Finally,
The feature I love the most : The joy I get when I see all of my little notes on history, geography, polity and IR; Quotes by important people under 'Personalities', facts I learned about each state of India under 'States',the timings of interesting shows running on Rajyasabha TV under 'Uncategorized', articles of the Constitution in news under 'Constitution'; all there, together and beautifully organized.

I would love it if you too try it.... Want to download it now?  This link will take you there.

Want to see my notes for last few months? It's not much... yet, you could upload it into your Noted! app and see how good works, if you want.( Just transfer the folder to your phone. Then open Noted! app and choose 'Load notes from backup'.) Click the link.


A tip : Save the notes often, and keep the text file safe by sharing it to cloud storage or saving in multiple devices. Just in case.


Bye, for now.

Have a nice day

Sunday 21 February 2016

Noted! is out!

Hello everyone,
Apologies for not updating Maps gallery. But, we believe we have something really wonderful for you here. Meet Noted! : Our  new app that is now available for download at Google Play!
It's a simple and no-nonsense Note-making app in which you can add notes, sort them by categories, search for any term you previously added, save them all as a single text file and share them with friends, all in fairly simple steps.

Head for Noted! page to learn more

Head straight for Google Play to get it now.



Our second app for the joy of learning...
                             Looking forward to your kind support and feedbacks,

                            - Boundless

Saturday 6 February 2016

Maps Gallery Update



Two new maps added to Maps Gallery

1.Prelims 2015: National Parks and Historical sites

2.Iron (Fe), Aluminium (Al)( Bauxite), Copper (Cu) and Mica mines
See them Here!!!

Prelims 2015 through Mapboard : 1. National Parks and Historical Sites









We mapped the national parks and historical sites that were featured in Prelims 2015 question paper. Have a look .

Prelims 2015: National Parks and Historical Sites 
Sources: InsightsofIndia, Wikipedia, Google Maps




Sunday 31 January 2016

Mapboard for Civil Services: Prelims 2015 through Mapboard



Hullo there!

Launching a new series of maps. Here, we analyze previous year UPSC civil services Prelims question papers through maps. Hope you will find it useful.


How this series is going to unfold?

- Identifying map-based questions.
- Identifying sub-questions
- Drawing a map of each sub-question, if necessary
-Posting it under 'Prelims through Mapboard'


Why?
Because questions asked in UPSC civil services Prelims are interesting! So, mapping them would be fun.
And also:
Because we have observed that map-based questions are very important for Prelims. In Prelims 2015 at least 14 geography questions were asked. And all of them can be represented in maps. So, why not?
And if you go through some four sets of previous year question papers, you might see that the questions aren't that unpredictable as a beginner would fear. So, we hope to identify the predictability.
Also, these are going to be really really informative. Something you might not find anywhere else. Something that might make you desirous of drawing more maps yourself.

It would be our pleasure to hear what do you think of it all.
And if you have made some maps, and think that it has a potential to be helpful for other learners,
we would be very obliged, if you send them to us  : scholasticappster@gmail.com