Sundaram Applied Technologies Inc.

Prem, can you give an overview of what Sundaram Applied Technologies Inc. is about, and what you do?

My company, Sundaram Applied Technologies was founded about 15 years ago, and my goal is to provide information management services and products, helping people boost creativity and productivity. I’ve spent a career in helping companies and people in the area of information management and software development. I believe that technology makes it possible to improve creativity, productivity, and personal growth, and I am very inspired about how handwriting can be a bridge between human creativity and technology productivity. Truth be told I was inspired many years ago by the Apple Newton (yes, I still have it!) and then more recently about 10 years ago by the first Microsoft Surface Pro 2-in-1 tablet with stylus device. NoteDex is our cross-platform handwriting enabled index card/notecard application. As the Founder and CEO I get to think about innovative new features and use cases that can be incorporated into NoteDex.

 

You mentioned NoteDex. Can you explain more about the app and what that journey has looked like?

The original Surface Pro device I mentioned was introduced back in 2013. I was inspired by it’s incredible potential for note taking and idea generation with its pen input capabilities. However, I felt that the potential of the device had not been realized. As a technology consultant, I do a lot of thinking and idea generation work both on my own and with clients, and I needed an app that would allow me to brainstorm like using a paper notebook or a packet of index cards – yet be supercharged by the technology. But I couldn’t find it. None of the existing apps fitted the style or function I was looking for. There is a hidden power in the short-form handwritten notecards (index cards) that can be created, organized and shared.

So, I decided to take the matter into my own hands (together with my developers) and we began the development of our first ink-enabled app, called Index Cards for Windows. Over the years since then users asked for a more cross-platform solution, and that’s when we created the second generation of our app, calling it NoteDex. On any device (Windows, Mac, iPad, Android or Web) you can take beautiful ink notes (as well as just text ones), just like in real-life using a real index card.

With NoteDex you can scribble on the cards, you can see your ideas visually laid out in front of you, you can arrange them in project stacks, and you can easily go back to them later. The beauty of using a cross-platform ink-engine (unlike Apple or Windows only toolkits), is that the handwritten ink notecards you create can be shared and edited across any device, so it breaks down device, portability, and accessibility barriers around the world.

I’ve tried to make the experience as true-to-life as possible, leveraging the power and benefits of technology to make using NoteDex better than using real index cards – and hopefully cooler too.

My vision is that NoteDex keeps blending the best of both old and new worlds – the classic index card with the power of technology. We have a ton of ideas still to implement, so the journey is long but fun.

 

What can you see coming down the pipeline for NoteDex, and perhaps other ink-handwriting apps in the future?

I do think there are a couple of key areas of improvement and creativity that we will see in general in our and other apps.

Obviously, the advent of AI will play a big part in the future of note taking and idea generation. We’re working on features that will enable you to convert handwriting into text and use AI to help provide more context around the content you create. Things like providing text summaries or translations of content you write, providing insights into the semantic nature of the content, and assisting you to find more information and help you be more creative and productive during your brainstorming and idea generation process.

We’ve also seen many cross-platform handwriting enabled canvas whiteboards, but I still think there is room for innovation here and we’ll be adding some new features to our app over the coming months that blend the power of handwriting enabled canvases with the power of index cards. Stay tuned!

We also love the feedback we get from our users, and we try to make sure our app stays useful and valuable to all our users, whether they are a consultant, professional, researcher, student or a hobbyist.

Do check out our app – there is free 7-day trial. And let us know what you think!

 

Find out more: https://www.notedexapp.com/

 

Thanks so much Prem, we appreciate the insight into NoteDex and look forward to all the new innovations to come.