While built-into the company’s own Windows Phone operating system, iOS is the next smartphone operating system to get this great piece of software and for a limited time it’s completely free.

The app isn’t just about storing notes on your mobile, just as with OneNote on Windows Phone it will upload your notes to Microsoft’s cloud storage service SkyDrive (you’ll need a Windows Live ID) so that you can share your notes with your PC and open notes created on the desktop when on the move.  Microsoft say of the new product.  OneNote users will also be able to view and edit their notes in the OneNote cloud app, that can be accessed through Microsoft’s Office Live service, or SkyDrive.

Microsoft OneNote Mobile is an easy-to-use note-taking application for capturing all of your ideas and to-dos on the go, brought to you by Microsoft Office.  With OneNote Mobile, create searchable notes with text, pictures, bullets, and checkboxes. Then keep your notes in sync using free Windows Live SkyDrive cloud storage to access, edit and manage them from virtually anywhere, from your PC or almost any web browser.

OneNote was first introduced in Office 2003 but wasn’t really popularly used until touch screen computers became commonplace.  Now with Office 2010 running on many tablet PCs, it’s considered a stable of the Office system.  The extension of the software into the iPhone will only help professionals who need access to notes, and the ability to create notes on the move that they can then use and work with on their PC.

What is curious about this however is the release of OneNote for the iPhone at a time when the program itself still isn’t part of the Office 2011 suite for the Mac.  Microsoft have not commented on this but it would most likely be down to the current lack of touchscreen support in Mac OS.  Now that Apple are addressing this we can expect to see the next generation iMacs and MacBooks coming with touch screens.  Thus the next version of Office Mac, due sometime around 2013, should include OneNote.

With this omission it remains to be seen how useful people will consider OneNote on the iPhone.  Many iPhone users, probably most in fact, still use a PC and this will help uptake.  The lack of OneNote support on the Mac could damage the apps chances of picking up serious traction on Apple’s smartphone platform though.

There is also no word currently on a version of OneNote for the iPad or for Google’s Android operating system.  We can be reasonably certain that the former is already in development.  The future of OneNote, and indeed other Microsoft Office services, on Android is less certain however.  Microsoft haven’t made any announcement as regards this and could decide to avoid Android development altogether.

On the flipside, Microsoft have a long history of developing Office products for the Mac, and so this was only to be expected.  Microsoft have also announced that they will be bringing their new Lync communications platform to the iPhone later this year.

The app needs iOS 4.2 or higher to run and can be downloaded from the iTunes store.  There is no word yet on how long Microsoft will be making OneNote for the iPhone free to download, though it will probably be for 30 days or less.  If you are interested in trying OneNote on your iPhone or iPod Touch I wouldn’t leave it too long before you add it to your download basket.

A limited technical preview of Office Web Apps was announced yesterday. Interested users could apply to become part of the technical preview but there was no instant way to get access to Office Web Apps at that time.

Instead of having to wait days, week or even months before they get accepted users can do the following to get instant access to Microsoft’s Office Web Apps preview.

It starts by logging into Windows Live Skydrive. Users who do not use English as their main language might need to change the language to English first before they can continue with the process.

Upload at least one Office document. The following screen should appear after uploading that document:

A sentence with a link to join the preview program should be visible above the uploaded document. A click on that link will open a license agreement page. Accepting the license will automatically enable the Office Web Apps Technical Preview for that account.

A new menu entry will be displayed in the header afterwards called new. A click on that opens a submenu with options to create a new Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Excel workbook or Microsoft OneNote notebook.

Only Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations are available at this moment in time. It is also possible to edit Excel and PowerPoint files that have been uploaded. Files that can be edited will have an Edit option in the top menu indicating that. via Liveside

I’m a university student and having spent a few weeks attempting to organise my notes with MS Word (Trial Edition) I was quite excited to discover this great note taking application. OneNote really is useful, but I just couldn’t help feel as though it was a little overkill for me and how I would use it.

OneNote is targeted more at people working in business of course, which is shame because Microsoft is really losing out on the student market. In fact there are two main reasons I couldn’t effectively use OneNote:

• Organisation: Like many students I’m very unorganised. In fact considering most students are, designing a note taking program with this in mind would be a good decision.
• Too much for too little: What other reason aside from lectures and tutorials would I use OneNote? Sure I tried using it for some other things as well, but really it just feels like too big an application for what I need it for.

Enter EverNote.

I had a beta invitation to EverNote months ago, however based on reports of bugginess and performance issues I waited till the service has improved a little.

After the latest version 3.0 update yesterday I have begun to use EverNote for all my notetaking needs. I quickly discovered it’s a fantastic application for what I need it for. Here is why:

• Synchronisation: EverNote is running a ‘freemium’ model for their service. What? Pay?! I’m quite glad of this as it means EverNote is very likely to stick around as they have an actual business model! You will get 40mb free data synchronisation each month between different computers and mobile devices.
• Organisation: Is far easier and simpler, Use notebooks, tags and attributes to organise all your content. It is much quicker to just get in and start working and easier later to locate what you wrote through the search focused toolbar.
• Search in Images: It could still do with a lot of improvements but the Image searching feature of EverNote is pretty impressive. It will locate any text within any image you paste into your notes. You can also take screen clippings like OneNote which is handy.

In essence EverNote is a killer note taking product I couldn’t recommend more.