Taposé's Split Screen For The iPad: A Visual Tour

Taposé (pronounced "tap-oh-ZAY"), a new note-taking app by Zanther, Inc., addresses a problem a lot of iPad users probably wish they didn't have to endure: switching back and forth between two full-screen apps in order to copy and paste items. Taposé lets you split the iPad screen into two side-by-side panes. It comes with five apps that work in the dual panes: Journals, a note-taking app; Web, an integrated browser; Maps, a subset of Google Maps; Contacts, which accesses the iPad's contact list; and Calculator. You can display any two apps at once, or work with two views of the same app. Unfortunately, version 1.0 of Taposé has a beta roughness about it with too many limitations to be useful. I wouldn't rely on it for creating polished business documents.

The centerpiece of Taposé is Journal, a very capable note-taking app that lets you create and save multimedia-rich pages. Taposé gives you plenty of tools to get the job done, whether it's directions for friends or notes from the conference. Tapping on the pencil cup icon in the upper left of the screen accesses most of the input tools: Pencil, Eraser, Highlighter, Font, Sticky Notes, and Media (audio, images, video). The scissors icon is a little misleading--it actually launches a lasso selector for creating custom screenshots. There are a fair number of formatting options for making your typed text look nice. At any time you can see a list of your pages and change the paper design or wrist guard settings for different writing styles when using a stylus. When you're finished, you can print a journal or share it via email, Dropbox or Evernote.