Evernote adds new features to Penultimate, makes it a free app

After acquiring popular iPad handwriting application Penultimate, last year, Evernote has now made the app a free download, and has introduced new features in addition to refreshing the app's user interface.

Talking about the update in a blog post, Evernote said that it has made the ink within the app, sharper, smoother and more natural for jotting and sketching. It has also made the user interface cleaner and clutter-free, and the important functions are now more accessible, while the less-used ones have been put in a menu.

Although, Evernote had introduced the ability to share Penultimate notes with Evernote accounts, last year, it has now tightly integrated the experience with Penultimate's core features. Following the move, the app now offers users the option to connect Penultimate with their Evernote account and sync notebook data across all Evernote apps including desktop apps. Users can now create different Penultimate notebooks mapped to individual notes. It has also added the ability to search through hand written notes created with Penultimate. However, search takes place on Evernote servers so users would experience a slight delay in getting results.

Evernote said that in order to implement the new features, all of the users' existing and new notebooks, will be synchronized and backed-up to the Evernote Service, and that any of their Penultimate Notebooks that are too large to sync will be kept locally on their iPad, remaining accessible to them.

Whenever users decide on syncing the notes with Evernote, they'll be able to do so by tapping on a new 'sync warning' icon located at the bottom right corner of the notebook cover. The app will also allow users help in breaking the notebook into smaller, sync-able pieces. However, Evernote's also letting existing users opt out of the synchronization and search integration feature, though they'll only be able to make notes on a single notebook until they sync to the Evernote service. The app is available on the App Store for download.