Microsoft's OneNote partners with cloudHQ, Equil and WordPress

OneNote has been around for a very long time - since 2003 to be exact – but I do not remember hearing about OneNote all that much until a couple of years ago.

My own awareness of OneNote and its abilities increased dramatically when I attended a session on the product during the 2013 Microsoft MVP Summit. That presentation was the catalyst for me going paperless with my podcast, Observed Tech, and eliminating the need to print out over 20 stories weekly as show notes.

Since then we have seen OneNote become a key tool for educators, businesses and enthusiasts.  It was even the crown jewel of the Surface Pro 3 as a click from the Surface Pen launched OneNote.

Last year Microsoft opened up an API that developers can use to connect to the service on all platforms and today Microsoft announced new partnerships with three companies.

cloudHQ

Integrates OneNote with Salesforce, Sharepoint, Dropbox and other applications and services. Includes an automatic sync of your OneNote notebook with a folder in Dropbox, or an account in Salesforce; either of which will let you view and edit your information, in real-time, with nothing to download.

Equil

The Equil Smartpen 2 and Smartmarker from Luidia are solutions to connect the physical surfaces of notepads and whiteboards to digital notebooks like OneNote. By connecting the Equil Note app with OneNote, you can easily keep all your notes together, whether you created them by writing on your Surface Pro 3, typing on your iPad, writing in your notebook, or sketching on a whiteboard.

WordPress

Compose your WordPress posts on any device, cross-platform, online or offline in OneNote and easily reuse content from all your existing notes. Manage your writing workflow by keeping posts at various stages of drafting in OneNote. When you're ready to publish, simply pick a page and hit publish from this simple add-in.

I have been poking around the WordPress plugin myself and it has some great potential to turn OneNote into a viable blogging platform.  Since Windows Live Writer is no longer maintained by Microsoft this is the first new blogging tool to come out of Redmond in quite a while.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.