Whoa, dudes! My evening is complete! I am in CRIMP heaven! I've just discovered the most gorgeous little outliner for iPads (and iPhones, in fact). It's so professional it's ridiculous. And it's on special offer at the moment!

It's called Cotton, and it's a deceptively simple outliner app. But it does a lot more than most iOS outliners (which I find, generally speaking, rather disappointing). It doesn't just fold, it allows you to hoist, too. But it also allows you to add tags. And, comble des combles, it allows you to turn notes into tasks, with an elegant little 'agenda' view to show you what due dates you've set.

Finally, it actually has a competent search function that allows you to zoom straight to relevant notes by finding and then tapping on them!

Actually, that's not quite final. It also allows you to post your notes on the web, although the feature is still in beta. But if you visit the developer's website, cottonnotes.com, you'll see what I believe the author has in mind. It's like a kind of idealised version of the good ole' outlining concepts David Winer still writes about. I'm so impressed!

Actually, my CRIMPness has been further enhanced by the recent discovery of another little app - this time a dedicated task/calendar manager that also happens to be an outliner (with folding and hoisting, too!). Unfortunately it doesn't yet support any kind of synchronisation or backup (not even e-mail), which makes it a bit precarious to rely on. But it's a very professional piece of software, with a lovely interface that's been honed down to an utterly simple paradigm (inbox, folders, tags, calendar and overdue). It's called BusyMe, and once again, it's optimised for iPads. The developers appear to be Latvian - I've written to them, but not had a reply yet.

There's also a website at busymeapp.com (the developers are at eurocode.lv).

Enjoy!

Blimey! Cotton also allows you to collaborate on your notes through a web page, although it doesn't appear to sync back with the app (probably just as well!). Here's a note I posted (the content is totally random): you can have a play at editing it online if you want to:

http://www.cottonnotes.com/editnote/A2539502-F7FE-4848-B557-D6CCDD9E5893

Tasks and pictures don't show up, but you can add tags.

This is quite one of the most entertaining CRIMPer solutions I've ever encountered! It's even more entertaining than Ecco Pro!

I see in principle that edits online should be carried back into the app! Impressive - if it worked. But it doesn't (yet). In fact, I've had one crash where the note that I'd just uploaded to the web completely vanished, and so did the web version. Ah well. On the other hand, I see that one of you (or perhaps several of you?) has/have been playing with the note I included in an earlier post for experimentation! See? Isn't that clever?

" It’s even more entertaining than Ecco Pro!"

That's a pretty tall order, Bill! Are you sure you did not eat any of that pizza that you listed in your sample note? ;)

--Ken

Let's see if it turns out to be the love of your life or just an infatuation.

BTW, I made a couple of additions to the web text and then pressed Save. But then, after I refreshed, my contributions were no longer there. Is this a bug or intentional?

Hm.

Cotton is a nice little outliner but on a par or even better than Ecco?
The edits I made last night to the web page Madaboutdana shared are gone, too.

Franz

Yeah, you'd think after 30-odd years of CRIMPing I wouldn't fall for those long-limbed folds, those heavy-lidded hoists... but I did, and hey, inevitably it all looks a bit stale when you wake up in the morning... but it's a great concept! It's just that the whole web collaboration thing appears to be very unstable, and causes the app itself to become unstable, too. I had to uninstall and reinstall it in the end, because data was simply vanishing. The trouble is, I think once notes are "unlinked" from the web, they cease to be editable. Unfortunately there's no way to get in touch with the developer, and there doesn't appear to be any other way of getting info out of the app and into other apps (except for the web collaboration route).

But I'm keeping it going, because it's very sexy and I still love it, and because once this dude has got his act together, it'll be one of the most beautiful outlining apps of all time. Seriously!

And no, I didn't mean it about Ecco Pro. I did have pizza last night, and I'm still feeling a bit... bloated.

By the way, the nice developers of BusyMe did reply, and my CRIMPer's soul has been lifted by the news that they're just about to introduce synching to the app (in fact the latest version should be out early next week - it's already gone to Apple for approval). It's one of the most intelligently designed task management apps I've found so far (and I've tried literally hundreds), with a very simple but very flexible interface that appeals both to those who prefer lists AND those who prefer calendars (oh, and even appeals to those who like tags, although the tag mechanism is somewhat limited, in that you can only set one tag at a time. Which is probably why they call them 'contexts' and not 'tags').

Grab it while the going's good - it's currently free! And definitely worth testing. I rate it well above popular TMs like Things, and also above the heavyweights like Pocket Informant and 2Do.

MadaboutDana wrote:

It's called Cotton, and
it's a deceptively simple outliner app. But it does a lot more than most iOS outliners
(which I find, generally speaking, rather disappointing). It doesn't just fold, it
allows you to hoist, too. But it also allows you to add tags. And, comble des combles, it
allows you to turn notes into tasks, with an elegant little 'agenda' view to show you
what due dates you've set.

I haven't bought it but from the website it reminds me of Workflowy a bit. Wouldn't Workflowy be more reliable at this stage of their respective developments?

Grab it while the going’s good - it’s currently free! And definitely worth testing. I rate it well above popular TMs like Things, and also above the >heavyweights like Pocket Informant and 2Do.

Pocket Informant (or PI Pro as they call it now) has been the most disappointing iPad app for me so far. I have iPad 1 and everything works on it perfectly still except PI, which has always been far too slow. For a while I wasn't even able to launch it. Though the latest database update seem to have improved things I have just grown to like the native iPad calendar instead.

Hello!

I'm the creator of Cotton. I just stumbled upon this thread. Since we've launched back in September, a lot of effort has been made to reduce the number of crashes and fix syncing with the web.

Since the launch we've added a lot: Dropbox support, Evernote support, exporting notes as OPML, and more.

In the next coming updates, even more will be added. Thanks for the positive feedback!