Apps to help jot down ideas and map out productivity are a dime a dozen. While they all look like they could be of great service to you, they often don’t pan out. Once you download them, you find they are of limited help to you, if any. Finding a Productivity app that can actually help you is a rarity.
Corkulous is one of those rare apps. It’s being promoted in the App Store as an app that makes the best of the new Retina Display on the new iPad, and they’re right. Not that it wouldn’t be a good app on the first or second editions of the iPad, as it would be, but the great display just means it’s not only useful, but beautiful as well.
Like any smart productivity app, the tutorial for Corkulous is built right into the functionality of it. You learn how to make the best of this app while you move around what resembles an old-style corkboard. It shows you how to build your own corkboards while you move around exploring the tutorial. You can create as many different corkboards as you want. One for each project, one for each type of task that you are working on, etc.
Building your project is as simple as dragging and dropping. In the bottom left of the corkboard is a pullout drawer. Inside are different types of items to build with. These include labels, sticky notes, ToDo reminders, index cards, Rolodex cards, photos, sticky note directional arrows, and new corkboards. With all these great tools, you can build a variety of different projects from a list of contacts to notes for a presentation, to pictorial essays.
Simply drag the tools out of the file drawer and place them wherever you want. While dragging around on the corkboard, thin lines appear to help you line up the objects, just as you would have in a word processing application. With the sticky notes, index cards, and informational arrows, you can choose the color, the font, and the size of the text. With the ToDo reminders and Labels, you can choose the fonts and size of text. The reminders can also be checked off as you return to your corkboard.
You can even build corkboards within corkboards. I dragged a new corkboard from the pullout drawer, but could have also dragged an existing one. I’m traveling next weekend for a destination wedding and there is much to do and remember. I started a new corkboard for the trip by dragging it into the corkboard for this article, but when clicked, it opens up an entirely new corkboard for the trip, with ToDos, a screencap of my itinerary, etc. One of my ToDo Reminders is to pack, and I then started a new corkboard with my packing list. When I click on that, it opens up an entirely different corkboard with my list. It creates an entire hierarchy for a project.
Corkboards can be shared by emailing them as a .pdf or as an image. It also allows you to email it as a corkboard, but it really amounts to the same thing as sending an image, as it arrives as a .jpg. The corkboards can also be exported using iTunes File Sharing in this same manner or printed. The only thing I am wishing for is that I was able to export my text, even if I did it piecemeal. That’s the only thing this app needs.
Laura has spent nearly 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with more than 10 of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past three decades. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.
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