Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
General brainstorming for Note-taking software
Lashiec:
I yet have to find a decent note taking program to suit my needs (although my needs are more geared towards an outliner than to a pure note taker), but I've heard good comments about AM-Notebook, from AM-Deadlink programmer, and I personally tried ShirusuPad, which is a sweet little note taker, although it could be considered more of a post-it like program.
Jimdoria:
Just noticed this today at Google Labs:
http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/overview.html
Google Notebook - Clip and collect information as you browse the web.
* Clip useful information.You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.
* Organize your notes.You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.
* Get access from anywhere.You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.
* Publish your notebook.You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.
Seems like a lightweight solution compared to some of the apps discussed here, but an interesting idea anyway.
I've been trying TaoNotes but oy vey! The UI is definitely a big speed bump, but there are some other things about it that drive me right up the wall.
1. You can't get rid of the standard databases "todos" and "clips" or even rename them. The program keeps rebuilding them. There are just some weird gaps in file handling in general - creating & managing tabs is a bit difficult and inconsistent.
2. The balloon tips! Please make them stop! "I have saved my file again!" "An hour has gone by!" It's like having a 3-year-old hyped up on cola and candy bars living in my system tray. Looked and looked for an option to configure or just disable these, but no such luck.
3. In the list view, you can change some attributes directly by clicking on them (priority, flag, progress, label) but others just bring you to the editing form. For example, click on "context" and you're suddenly in the editing form - but you're not on the right tab to set the context! So just by looking at what comes up, you can't really see where the information you requested/wanted to enter is supposed to go.
Vadim, I can see you have a lot of creativity and good ideas. Tao Notes shows a lot of promise. But I fear you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater in your app's UI design. We're all used to certain conventions in the UI of an application. It's OK to break those expectations once in a while, if there's a definite benefit. But Tao Notes breaks so many of them, and in such unexpected ways, that it becomes inscrutable. Yes, it's faster to mouse over a part of the screen to close a window rather than clicking a small X box or a button, but it's also easier to do this accidentally and interrupt your workflow. And the first few times it happens, the user gets hit with a "what just happened?" experience where it looks like the data they were working on just vanished.
If you don't have the time to really document the app, perhaps you could just be a little more judicious in your default settings. Turn off as much of the "gee-whiz" as possible by default. Let your users get used to the basic features. Then, IF THEY WANT TO, they can track down and enable the more "out-there" kind of stuff.
BTW - I still can't quite figure out how or why you'd "execute" an item. :-[
And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add an option to disable those balloon tips! :D
[/list]
superboyac:
Oooo, Lashiec, nice find! AM-Notebook is extremely interesting. It's not complete enough to be included in the Big Three, but there are several unique things it does that is worthy of mentioning and that the Big Three programs can learn a lot from. Right when I thought that we had found all the good ones...anyway here are some interesting features:
* One very interesting feature is that AM keeps each note as a separate file in the folder where it is stored on the computer. This is similar to a discussion we had here a couple of pages back about keeping each note as a separate file and having the software be a frontend that just provides a UI for access to the notes. So this is a healthy implementation of that idea, and it's very cool to see it being done differently. Whether or not it is the best way has already been discussed
* There is a built in addressbook module in this program that isn't really anything special, but it does have the live search feature (search-as-you-type) that I love. And it works pretty smoothly, so that was nice to see. If only the same live search feature was implemented in the regular note searching, but oh well. The regular note searching is decent also, but nothing really special.
* Table! AM has awesome table features. Blackhole is the only other notetaking app that can do tables. But I think AM does it much better, it can even do formulas to a certain extent. It's really nice. Other programs like Evernote and Surfulater can kind of do tables, but their not really on-the-fly tables, but more of templates of tables of a prespecified size. Not the same. Very nice, AM!
* If you want, you can open different notes in their own tabs. And when you have a bunch of tabs open, you can save that configuration as a "group". I don't know how useful this is but it's kind of cool. However, even though it has this tabbed feature, it's not like you can open different databases up at once. In fact, AM can only have one database open at once. Mybase and Surfulater offer tab funcionality also, but in their case, each tab represents a different database.
* AM can encrypt each note seperately. Mybase is the only other software that can do this. I think this is a very important feature. Evernote can encrypt, but it's implementation is a bit klunky in my opinion because the way it works is you select a portion of text and you can encrypt it. In AM, you can encrypt the whole note. The only problem is that once it's unlocked and you go to another note and you come back, it's locked again. In Mybase, once a note is unlocked, it remains unlocked for the remainder of the session. But it's a preference thing. the author of Evernote told me that he prefers the note to revert back to locked anytime you leave the note for security purposes. I just think it's a nuisance.
* There's a clip/templates feature on the program that I have no idea what it does and I couldn't find any documentation for it. But I'm curious...
Overall, it's a very impressive package and I like it a lot. As a whole, it doesn't offer anything too special to put it on the level of the Big Three (Surfulater, Evernote, Mybase) but it does a couple of things neither of those programs do and for the most part it's very good application. For a more casual user, it's a fine application.
superboyac:
Vadim, I can see you have a lot of creativity and good ideas. Tao Notes shows a lot of promise. But I fear you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater in your app's UI design. We're all used to certain conventions in the UI of an application. It's OK to break those expectations once in a while, if there's a definite benefit. But Tao Notes breaks so many of them, and in such unexpected ways, that it becomes inscrutable. Yes, it's faster to mouse over a part of the screen to close a window rather than clicking a small X box or a button, but it's also easier to do this accidentally and interrupt your workflow. And the first few times it happens, the user gets hit with a "what just happened?" experience where it looks like the data they were working on just vanished.
--- End quote ---
Haha! I know exactly what you're talking about. That one little strip on the side of the dialog where if the mouse hovers over, the dialog automatically closes. That's exactly the reaction I had the first couple of times. I'm like "what the heck did I just do?!" Too funny.
actitrend:
> 1. You can't get rid of the standard databases "todos" and "clips" or even rename them. The program keeps rebuilding them. There are just some weird gaps in file handling in general - creating & managing tabs is a bit difficult and inconsistent.
Keeping todos and clips notebooks is a plot, indeed.... Todos is used to be opened as first notebook always... may be it was bad idea... do not know..... clips are used as "internal clipboard" for items copy-from-one-notebook and paste-into-another notebook.... it is not conventient way I know... I will redone this....
> 2. The balloon tips! Please make them stop! "I have saved my file again!" "An hour has gone by!" It's like having a 3-year-old hyped up on cola and candy bars living in my system tray. Looked and looked for an option to configure or just disable these, but no such luck.
I will add option for that :O)
> 3. In the list view, you can change some attributes directly by clicking on them (priority, flag, progress, label) but others just bring you to the editing form. For example, click on "context" and you're suddenly in the editing form - but you're not on the right tab to set the context! So just by looking at what comes up, you can't really see where the information you requested/wanted to enter is supposed to go.
That's my development incompleteness in implementing proper attributes editors for those attributes.... thank you that you pointed on them.... I will improve this soon...
> If you don't have the time to really document the app, perhaps you could just be a little more judicious in your default settings. Turn off as much of the "gee-whiz" as possible by default. Let your users get used to the basic features. Then, IF THEY WANT TO, they can track down and enable the more "out-there" kind of stuff.
OK. Right now I am writing manual + I will add more options + will disable advanced features by default...
> BTW - I still can't quite figure out how or why you'd "execute" an item. embarassed
If item has type LINK and URL attribute is real URL of file path then you can "EXECUTE" it... i.e. LAUNCH browser....
If item has type EMAIL and URL attribute is real email address then you can "EXECUTE" it... i.e. LAUNCH email client....
> And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add an option to disable those balloon tips! cheesy
no problem with this :O) Today I will do that :O)
Vadim
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