We’re extremely happy that the latest release of Simplenote as a free app has been very well received. The Unnofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) calls Simplenote “a worthy replacement for Notes.” Meanwhile, Gizmodo lists Simplenote at the top of its list of “Best iPhone Apps” last week alongside Facebook and several other fine apps. And finally, Lifehacker says “there’s no reason not to grab it” in their post about Simplenote.

As a result of all this attention, we’re experiencing our most significant growth yet! All our systems have scaled and remain stable. We’re making ongoing improvements behind-the-scenes, and our web-based account purchase and upgrade system should be ready to go soon.

Don’t forget that a subscription to Simplenote Premium is on sale for $4.99 per year. We’ve added a couple screenshots to help demonstrate some of the benefits.

Today we’re announcing that the full version of Simplenote is available as a free download for iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide. We’re partnering with the great Fusion ad network to make this possible. (If you use the free version of Tweetie for Mac, then you know what Fusion is all about).

We’d like to tell you why we made this decision and what it means to you.

Simplenote is doing well. Quite well, actually! We’ve been getting some great reviews and a good number of new users lately. However, in the past couple of months, while ramping up our efforts to spread the word about Simplenote, we’ve started to reach the growth limits of what a simple, paid notes app can achieve.

Our goal is to be the best app for text notes in the world in terms of price, quality, and customer support. We’re already delivering great quality and support, but until now, we’ve been at a huge disadvantage in terms of price.

Some of you might disagree. We sometimes hear that we should be charging more for Simplenote. But this usually comes from people like John Gruber, who is very tech-aware, and more than happy to pay for an online service that measurably improves his life.

However, we view our main competitor to be Apple’s free, built-in Notes app, whose millions of users might only have a vague awareness of syncing and how it can help them. And it’s hard to compete with free! By making Simplenote free as well, we’re eliminating a huge barrier that stands between Simplenote and all the note-takers who might benefit from our fast and easy syncing.

The remaining barrier we need to overcome is one of awareness. Although syncing isn’t nearly as complicated as something like Google Wave, it suffers from a similar problem. “Why do I need that?” So if you know anyone who is still using Notes (and isn’t fanatical about its Marker Felt font) please join us in spreading the word about the benefits of syncing, and letting people know that they can now download and use the full version of Simplenote free of charge.

To celebrate the occasion, for a limited time we’re also offering premium subscriptions for only $4.99 per year (less than $0.50 per month), which is 50% off the usual price.

Please note that as an existing, paid user—even if you haven’t subscribed to premium—you’ll never see ads on your device unless you want to. You’ve already paid for the right to use the app ad-free. Of course, you have the option to enable ads if you want. They’re a great way to discover other quality apps that might interest you, and tapping them will help support our ongoing efforts. But the choice is yours.

Meanwhile, as of today, all new, unpaid users who create accounts will see an unobtrusive ad on their device. To disable it, these users will need to subscribe to a premium account.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy the ongoing improvements we’ve been making to the service.

Mike and Fred

Tweets have been tallied, emails read, and discussion threads unwoven. We received a wide range of entries. Some people chose to review the app, others described specific uses, and still others were downright silly. We loved reading your stories and feedback!

In the spirit of the “why” part of “WhySimplenote” we selected winners who described exactly why they use Simplenote. For fun, we picked two honorable mentions as well. Winners receive a $30 iTunes gift card and a free upgrade to Simplenote Premium. Honorable mentions get a premium upgrade too. Here are the winners:

Winner via twitter: @drdrang

Dr. Drang pushes Simplenote to its limits. Using some home brewed formatting techniques and a bit of creativity, he keeps a variety of data at his fingertips. Recently he started a weightwatching campaign. And he invented a way to keep a variety of schedules as notes inside Simplenote, complete with column formats.

Winner via discussion thread: Laurence Broadhurst

The sheer variety of uses that Laurence describes is what impresses us the most. And in revealing why he uses Simplenote, he unwittingly reveals some details about himself: commuter, cook, fix-it man, teacher, techie, giver, husband, father, and reader. Impressive.

I admit it: I use Simplenote on my iPod Touch more than I use Music on it. I use it to log bus times (rather important in -30 Winnipeg); to do my regular food shopping list and my irregular hardware store shopping list; to keep track of readings in the courses I teach; to keep straight all the darn keyboard shortcuts on my various CPUs; to remember sporadic ideas for presents for my spouse and children; and, most important, to assist with surgical strikes to the host of libraries I frequent—anytime I find a book/article that needs attention, I use JustNotes to log it, then it’s synched to all my computers and, most important, my iPod.

Winner via email: Andrew

And finally, Andrew’s story is a great example of how multiple people can access Simplenote as a shared resource.

In my college share room, there’s five of us, but it’s my job to get the groceries. Each of us have access to the online component of Simplenote.

Whenever someone remembers something we/they need from the shops (often while daydreaming in lectures), they just type it onto the web app from their laptop.

Then, when I’m at the shops, I just take out my iPhone to look at the collaborative shopping list that’s been generated over the week. I never forget to get anything since I have a list, everyone has everything they need for the week, and there’s minimal stress since everyone can do it in their own time – not when I’m going out the door shouting to ask whether anyone needs anything.

Works great.

Honorable mention: Sarah Tan
http://myri.ca/tmp/c96074ae.jpg

That… is why I use Simplenote. I love my notepad but the papers… AH, a mess! Desk, at last cleared!

Honorable mention: colladude
colladude @simplenoteapp Psychic RAM #WhySimplenote

Thanks so much to everyone who participated! We’ll contact the winners shortly.

Well, that was fast and unexpected. Apple approved Simplenote 2.5 before we even announced that we submitted it! We’re scrambling a bit over here, so please bear with us…

This version has a healthy list of improvements and fixes. When combined with all the changes in the last big update, we felt this warranted a version bump to 2.5. Here’s the complete list:

• faster scrolling performance of note list
• faster startup time
• much faster syncing
• added option to disable automatic links
• hide search bar by default
• added option to not hide search bar
• prompt new users to create an account
• added password confirmation field to account creation
• use standard network progress indicator
• removed custom network progress indicator
• improved appearance of 0-line note previews
• improved reliability of sync-on-close and sync-on-resume
• fixed date in note editor when sorting by creation
• fixed note list skipping when sorting by creation
• fixed some localization problems
• fixed some problems when viewing searched notes
• fixed rare crash when clearing search field
• fixed potential crash when the app closes

Astute Simplenote users (of which there seem to be many of you) will probably also notice a new little option that says “Show Ads.” Don’t fret! If you’ve paid for the app, then we’ll never force you to see ads on your device. That’s only fair. But you’re welcome to turn them on if you want. They’re nice, very unobtrusive, and they’ll help us, especially when you tap them and buy the corresponding app.

As you might have already seen, we’re also experimenting with ads in the web app as part of our ongoing quest to expand Simplenote. We’re not 100% happy with how the web ads are visually integrated yet, but this is something we’ll keep thinking about as we continue to experiment. Note that premium users can disable these.

The ads are offered by Fusion. They rock. We’ll have more news to announce about all this next week. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the update! Let us know if you spot any problems and we’ll get a fix out there. Very quickly, apparently.

Resen, Corp. has officially released DashNote, a Simplenote dashboard widget for OS X. DashNote’s interface is clean and simple, just the way we like it. Similar to other Simplenote Extras, DashNote lets you view and edit your notes while staying in perpetual sync with your iPhone or iPod touch, as well our web app.

On an unrelated note, happy holidays everyone! A healthy maintenance update for Simplenote is currently being tested. We’ll start sharing some details soon.

With this update, Simplenote is even faster and cleaner. We also hand-picked some new features for your note-taking pleasure. Here’s a list of what’s new:

• new web app design created by Mighty Dream
• notes can have web, phone, and email links
• notes can be sorted in different ways
• supports TextExpander touch snippet expansion
• toggle for disabling web syncing
• option to lock orientation
• option to change number of preview lines
• option to show modify date in note list
• in-app emailing
• new options screens
• even faster startup time
• auto sync when the app closes
• improved search bar look and feel
• faster searching with lots of notes
• restore position in auto-opened note
• respect international time formats
• fixed “+” button not appearing
• fixed rare text overwrite
• subtle aesthetic improvements
• premium features

Also, to celebrate our integration with TextExpander, they have discounted it to $1.99 for a limited time! TextExpander is a great way to quickly enter frequently used text into your notes.

The upcoming version of Simplenote allows you to buy a premium subscription at a competitive price. If you use Simplenote in your daily life, a premium subscription will give you additional power, reliability, and flexibility.

Our goal with the subscription is to add significant value to your experience. Of course, buying a subscription will also help us pay for our costs, and support future development.

It’s easy to subscribe: when the next update is released, simply visit the Options page on your iPhone or iPod touch and tap Premium Features. Wait for the price to show up, press the button, and one year of premium features will be yours. The cost will be $10 per year (US).

Premium features will initially include the following:

Automatic Backup. For peace of mind, Simplenote Premium will regularly backup all your notes. You’ll rest easy knowing that older versions of your notes are accessible in the web app if you ever need them.

Note Merging. Simplenote syncs your notes automatically. But if you edit a note in two places at once without a sync happening in-between, then a conflict can arise. Simplenote Premium does extra work to try and intelligently merge your notes in this case. (Note that this feature is currently not available for very long notes, nor for notes synced via the API).

Create By Email. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could turn an email into a note? With Simplenote Premium, you’ll get a private email address for creating new notes by email.

RSS Feed. RSS is a publishing format you can use to read and share your notes in a variety of ways. When you subscribe to Simplenote Premium, you’ll get your very own RSS feed.

Unlimited API Usage. When you use Simplenote Extras, such as desktop applications and scripts, we need to reserve the right to limit your usage to about 2000 API requests per day. With Simplenote Premium, your daily usage is unlimited (as long as you don’t abuse or misuse the system).

Insider Access. With your purchase of Simplenote Premium, you’ll get early access to new services for the duration of your subscription.

Premium Support. Our regular support is usually quite fast, but with your subscription, we’ll give you a high priority support address.

We hope you’ll consider this option when it becomes available! In particular, some of you are heavy users of 3rd-party extras like SimplenoteSync and JustNotes. We’re happy that you try to melt our servers with your ongoing syncing! But after the update is released, if your usage surpasses the API limits, we’ll let you know and invite you to upgrade to a premium subscription, or tell you what to do to lower your usage.

Lastly, if you’re interested in reading a little more about Simplenote, its history, and the people who make it, we’ve also posted The Surprising Story of Simplenote today over at the new Cloud Factory website.

The Simplenote update is “In Review” again over at Apple, so hopefully the wait won’t be too long!

 The somewhat delayed but still forthcoming update for Simplenote has been fully translated to French, German, Dutch, and Spanish, and partly translated to Italian. A huge thanks to the wonderful people who helped us! They put a lot of work into this, and we couldn’t have done it without them: 

• Alexandre Testu (French)
• Bernd Folberth (German)
• Michiel Houtman (Dutch)
• Arturo Martín (Spanish)
• Emanuel Carnevale (Italian)
• Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali (Italian)

Due to some App Store strangeness, there are translated versions of Simplenote’s description already available in iTunes. But the fully translated versions of Simplenote won’t be available until the update is released.

It’s a lot of work to create and maintain these translations, but we’ll be considering adding more of them in the future so we can cover an even wider range of territories.

 

Simplenote comrades, our big update has been rejected. After the stinging news, our self esteem dropped, we questioned our self worth, and wandered dark alleys in a drunken stupor. But somehow we are picking up the pieces and soldiering on.

The rejection explanation was short and to the point:

3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. The non-public API that is included in your application is setOrientation.

It looks like the update was doomed from the start with our usage of an illegal, undocumented API call to implement our new orientation lock feature. While we’re not particularly thrilled with Apple’s new jihad against illegal APIs, they are the law of the land, and we must obey or suffer horribly (Android? Please no.) But who is going to speak for the illegal APIs? How far is Apple willing to go to secure the sandbox borders of the iPhone from the illegals? Next thing you know they are going to deny them education, healthcare benefits, and drivers licenses. Here at Simplenote we are starting a campaign to grant amnesty to ALL illegal APIs. Pledge your allegiance to our movement by sending us a message @simplenoteapp.

Meanwhile, a workaround for Simplenote has been submitted and as we await the result of Apple’s shiny new SCAT (Static Code Analyzer Tool), we can only hope that it’ll finish quickly so the update can be in your hands post haste.