A preview of OneNote Service Pack 1 is out on the web. For those who haven't heard, OneNote is a cool new note-taking application released last year as part of Office 2003.

Most service packs only contain bug fixes since companies don't like surprise features and don't want to have to retrain everyone every time they deploy a service pack. So, this Office service pack that includes updates for OneNote and InfoPath, and the upcoming Windows XP SP 2 update, are notable in that they include many brand new features.

Chris Pratley, the Group Program Manager for Word and OneNote, and Peter Rysavy of Tabula PC have excellent blog posts detailing some of the new OneNote features.

A few notable ones that stood out to me:

• My favorite audio notes feature works for video now too.
• Import notes from the Pocket PC. Essentially lets you bring into OneNote notes you've taken anywhere.
• A limited API lets outside programs import info into OneNote. I'll bet we'll be seeing some neat companion programs to OneNote soon.
• Encrypted sections for your secret notes.

Random tangent (these tend to come up a lot when I'm blogging): I wonder how the press uses these ultra-high resolution pictures that Microsoft sticks up of our execs. Click the picture of Chris in this interview to see what I mean. I'd be a little freaked if a picture of me like that was put up (heh).