Forum Posts Feed
Awesome Note or Daily Notes for iPad2?
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Ken
May 28, 2012 at 02:03 AM
While I have continued my reading of the forum, it has been some time since I posted due to some health challenges I have been dealing with these past few months. The doctors just recently gave me a clean bill of health, although I am still recovering my strength and stamina, so I am slowly trying to resume my life from where it left off late last year before I took ill. Soon I will be returning to work, and I have been starting to think about ways of improving my work flow as I will not have nearly the energy that I previously had for some time.
There is little I can do with my desktop PC as our IT staff are not very open to software beyond the basics program in Microsoft Office 2007. I am still allowed to use Ecco on my PC, but it is mostly being used for my contacts. My calendar, and to some degree my tasks, have been handled by Outlook since it was installed. This isn’t an ideal set-up, but I have accepted it and tried to make the best of it with some success.
The area where I would like to improve my workflow relates to notes I take in project meetings. For more years than I care to count, I have always carried a yellow notepad with me to project meetings. And, I am usually good about entering any new tasks/assignments into Outlook when I return from my meetings, but this is not always the case. Furthermore, my paper notepads often fall into the abyss of piles on my desk, so they are not as useful as I would like when I am in front of my PC, the place where I spend the majority of my day.
As thoughts of hardware CRIMPing began to creep into my head this past week, I thought that an 11” Macbook Air would be ideal. It is very easy to carry and can be woken from hibernation in seconds. I could take my notes and send them to my PC via the web. Thankfully, I did not have any specific Mac software in mind, so that allowed me to easily place that thought on the back burner and save my wallet around $900USD. I also considered reviving my old Samsung netbook, possibly with Ecco, but the netbook is slow to boot, and is larger than I would care to carry to meetings. Another idea for the back burner.
So, I turned my sights to my beloved iPad2. It is light enough, albeit the external keyboard that I have for it certainly negates some of that size advantage. But, as I am not known for taking long and detailed notes, I figured that I could use the on-screen keyboard to start, and possibly learn to carry the keyboard with me if need be. My thoughts have now turned to more affordable app CRIMPing, and that is where I could use some input from folks. The two programs that I am considering are Awesome Note ( http://bridworks.com/anote/en/main/index.php ) and Daily Notes ( http://www.fluidtouch.biz/dailynotes/ ). Both seem to offer the following:
—folders for projects
—tasks related to projects
—a calendar to view notes/tasks
—exporting in a common format (e.g. PDF)
—syncing with web services
I am tempted to buy both programs to try them, but I would first like to know if anybody has used either one of them. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
—Ken
Posted by MadaboutDana
May 28, 2012 at 09:57 AM
Hi Ken,
First, I’m really sorry to hear about your illness - sounds very debilitating.
On the positive side, I have to say that once you start using your iPad in anger, you realise it’s vastly superior to almost anything else for notetaking.
I’ve used both Awesome Notes and Daily Notes. Daily Notes I just didn’t like, mainly because I’m not really a journal sort of person - it’s no longer on my iPad.
Awesome Notes I love, and still have on my iPad. It has one other significant advantage you don’t mention in your list - it’s Evernote compatible, and can export (and import) Evernote files. However, I don’t use it that often (I keep it on the iPad mainly because I love its interface). That’s because:
a) it doesn’t do rich text (not a major failing, actually, but mildly annoying)
b) it doesn’t do more than one level of hierarchy (one set of folders, no subfolders). That becomes quite a limitation once you’ve reached a certain number of notes.
I would, if I may, make two other recommendations:
a) Notebooks (by Alfons Schmid), which also has a Mac app (currently in beta); a Windows app is expected imminently. Notebooks allows you to nest folders to any level. It allows you to embed web pages (and indeed any other kind of file, including e.g. MS Office files, PDFs and so on). It also has no less than three different methods of input, including rich text, plain text and Markdown, depending on what you prefer. It outputs to PDF, and also allows you to open files in a wide variety of other apps on your iPad. It also syncs with Dropbox. Oh, and has an excellent search function - really very powerful, with highlighting (unusual in iOS), which also indexes embedded files and web pages. Finally, Alfons is very painstaking and very responsive. If notetaking is what you want to do, Notebooks is the right choice.
b) WriteUp is also rather good. Again, nesting to any level (folders within folders), Markdown-based rich text. And quite a good search function, although you have to paste complete terms into the search box to get it to work properly! It’s a more lightweight solution, but quite nicely done. The latest iteration also has a built-in web browser. However, Notebooks wins out for sheer professional competence.
c) It would be remiss of me not to mention OmniOutliner for iPad, which is an excellent solution if you prefer single-pane outliners. It supports rich text, outputs to HTML and PDF, syncs with OmniOutliner for the Mac, and has an excellent search function. I use it regularly to produce large documents with multiple sections, outputting to HTML for the final rework on my Windows PC. It also allows you to customise your styles and save templates (as does Notebooks, actually, using CSS stylesheets).
I do like Awesome Notes, and if you want a combination of To-Do app with Notes, then it’s a nice solution. And the interface is a model for other iOS app developers. But the folder restriction is worth bearing in mind.
Cheers, and a swift recovery,
Bill
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
May 28, 2012 at 10:39 AM
Hi, Ken,
Glad you’re back and best wishes for continued recovery.
My experience with these apps is on an iPod Touch not an iPad, so my observations may not be entirely relevant. I agree with everything Bill says. His experience of those apps mirrors mine even through the different machines. The one question I think you should ask yourself is if you see the iPad as being the capture tool only, or if you also plan to keep duplicate data on the iPad and PC. The reason I suggest this is it may affect which program you want to use. If you see the iPad as the gateway—the place you type and capture the notes on their way to your PC (really a way station for notes) you might want to choose an app that is really good writing environment, but doesn’t need all the organizing functions of Awesome Note or Notebooks. An application like Nebulous Notes, for example, is highly Dropbox enabled. You can create one document for your meeting, type in the notes, save it to Dropbox, open it back at your PC and then parse the information as you please to your PC applications. In this way, you most reproduce your yellow-pad approach.
Steve Z.
Posted by MadaboutDana
May 28, 2012 at 11:50 AM
Yes, good point, Steve. This is where note-taking apps that have a desktop equivalent really shine (e.g. Notebooks on iOS and on MacOS, Evernote, OneNote etc.), but it’s also where text notes are useful (you can use Dropbox or, as Alexander pointed out recently, SimpleNotes, to sync text notes between platforms and then edit them in the editor of your choice, e.g. ResophNotes). In that case you have a huge number of options on iOS, including Appigo Notebook, Daedalus, Writings, Nebulous and any number of others I’ve removed from my iPad but still keep an eye on (Notesy, WriteRoom etc. etc. etc.).
The number of apps that interact directly between platforms is slightly larger (as you might expect) on Mac, but as a Windows user myself I’ve been gratified to find how many text editors can be set up to default to specific Dropbox folders. Definitely the cheapest and cheerfullest way to do things!
Posted by Dr Andus
May 28, 2012 at 12:02 PM
Hi Ken,
I agree with what the previous commenters said. The important thing is whether you want the iPad to be the central device or just a note-capturing device, and what software you want to import your notes into on the PC. Here is my journey in terms of note-taking on the iPad (and on the iPod Touch - in fact the best thing is having both (or an iPhone), so you are never without a device for capturing digital notes):
1) I started out with the native Notes app. I liked the fact that it synced automatically with my Gmail account (notes show up under “Notes” label), from where I could copy and paste into other apps in the PC. However, once I had over 90 notes, I started losing a sense as to what’s in there. I wished it had tags or folders.
2) I switched to Notebooks for iPad because it offered folders and synced with the iPod via Dropbox. However, having a hierarchical folder system brought its own problems. After developing a complex hierarchy, again I had problems remembering and finding where everything was and I lost the overview again. Also, importing information into the PC from a folder hierarchy in Dropbox is not trivial. It’s not easy to see which Dropbox sub-sub-sub-folder might have a new or altered note that needs importing. Apparently now it’s possible to import notes directly into Scrivener (not sure if for Windows as well). I haven’t tried it because I moved on in the meantime. But Scrivener seems to me more of a writing tool, rather than database for notes (but I might be wrong).
3) Eventually the answer to the above 2 questions (“flat” list or hierarchical?) was “neither”: instead I’ve converted to the religion called “wiki.” On the PC I now use ConnectedText for storing all my notes. I realised that all I needed was a Dropbox-enabled text editor, so that I can use the iPad/iPod for capturing notes and sync them to a dedicated Dropbox folder called “ConnectedText” from where I can import them into CT and organise them there. I use Nebulous Notes for this and I love this app for its simplicity, the customisable keyboard, and the way it handles the sync with Dropbox. So the iPad/iPod are merely capturing devices now. Processing/storing happens in CT.
I do think Notebooks for iPad/iPod is a remarkable app (and Alfons a responsive developer). But I did have some problems with the auto-sync, which is why I like Nebulous’ solution, which gives you some control over when and which file you want to sync, thus reducing the risk of sync conflicts.
Good luck with this all and have a speedy recovery!