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iPad Mini and outlining
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 8, 2012 at 05:05 PM
Hugh,
Yes, I do find the screen large enough for the types of tasks I’m trying to do. The smaller form seems to me to be better in for mobile note-taking than the regular sized iPad (which I’ve never used, so I’m surmizing), because it is easier to thumb type.
I generally have no problem reading the screen, though I did go out and buy myself a bit higher powered reading glasses.
It is remarkably portable, though. It fits into a small bag and I take it everywhere.
Regarding my Curio review: I finally finished it late last week, so it is ready to go live as soon as App Storm decides to do it—usually takes about a week before they go live with them. I ended up writing about 3500 words—and at that I left a lot out. This will be my last review for App Storm as they’ve instituted a policy requiring two reviews/articles a month to remain a writer for them. As you can tell from how long it has taken me to finish the Curio review, that’s not something I can agree to. Anyway, thanks for asking!
Steve
Hugh wrote:
>I should perhaps have asked “Have you continued to find that the screen is large
>enough?”, given what you say in your first post in this thread.
Posted by Ken
Nov 8, 2012 at 05:08 PM
Hugh wrote:
>Steve,
>
>I have a question too. As you’ve used the Mini more and more, have you found
>that the screen is large enough?
As an owner of an iPad2, I have similar concerns. When text is too small to read in the portrait mode, my default reading position, I usually switch to landscape and that often works well. As the mini has the same screen resolution as the iPad2, I am not sure how it will be for reading lengthy text. I do not mind small text, but there is a limit.
—Ken
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 8, 2012 at 05:10 PM
Ken,
I have the Awesome Notes app on my iPod Touch. It’s a nice application, but it is a bit of hybrid with a lot of task management and calendar features, which is redundant to PocketInformant, which I like a lot for that type of information (along with contact management).
I looked at Daily Notes on the App Store, but didn’t bite.
One issue with CPN: It’s one of the options for sending documents to from Dropbox, but it hasn’t yet worked for me. Documents that open beautifully in Notebooks and ProjectBook don’t appear at all in CPN. I’m not sure what the problem is—the same documents didn’t open in Cotton either. Just FYI.
Ken wrote:
>Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>>I like being able to have separate notebooks for different
>arenas (which
>>ProjectBook doesn’t have).
>
>Steve,
>
>Glad to hear that CPNis
>working for you. It has been a while since I looked at it, so I might have to have another
>look. I am curious to know if you also looked at Awesome Notes and Daily Notes, and what
>you thought of them if you did.
>
>—Ken
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 8, 2012 at 05:10 PM
I’m sorry to hear Notebooks didn’t work for you, but it’s very much horses for courses. I too went through a love-hate period with Notebooks, because it is a very sophisticated app with some idiosyncratic features. But once you explore it a bit you discover its true value - and for me, part of that is the immensely flexible interaction with the desktop. There are now PC and Mac clients, which automatically set themselves up with your Notebooks folder in Dropbox (if you’ve set one up). The things I like about Notebooks are:
a) the rich-text editor (simple but effective)
b) the HTML pages it produces (not unlike KeepNote!)
c) the fact you can copy and paste entire web pages (or bits of web pages) into the desktop version and have them rapidly synchronised and indexed on your iPad
d) the fact you can also insert web pages really easily on your iPad!
e) the very nice search function (you all know what a sucker I am for search); also the fact that it highlights search terms (unlike many other iOS apps)
f) the fact that you can, if you wish, use it as a task manager (setting due dates, with a calendar overview if you want it, etc.)
g) the support for tags (called ‘Contexts’ in Notebooks)
I confess I don’t really use the support for file attachments (although I gather it does, and also indexes the contents, which is impressive!).
Having said all that, I use lots of other notebooks and outliners as well. My current favourites include Cotton Notes (vastly improved since its launch), Awesome Notes HD (which is very beautiful and surprisingly versatile), Notability (which is very impressive but slightly irritating) and OneNote plus its - non-Microsoft - sibling Outline+
I think Nebulous is brilliant for pure text editing (and has a very good search function, too!). It’s by far the most flexible Dropbox-focused editor. But Daedalus is rather entertaining, too.
And finally, I keep playing with a true outliner called MindBits, which is education-focused but has some very extraordinary features. But it doesn’t have a search function, alas…
Finally, for anybody who likes wikis, there’s the very impressive TWMobile, which now syncs with Dropbox and allows you to import/export TiddlyWiki pages (and any other kind of HTML page, in fact; it can also unzip zipped files, so you can add TiddlyWiki extensions fairly easily).
Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 8, 2012 at 05:39 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>I’m sorry to hear Notebooks didn’t work for you, but it’s very much horses for courses.
>I too went through a love-hate period with Notebooks, because it is a very
>sophisticated app with some idiosyncratic features. But once you explore it a bit you
>discover its true value - and for me, part of that is the immensely flexible
>interaction with the desktop. There are now PC and Mac clients, which automatically
>set themselves up with your Notebooks folder in Dropbox (if you’ve set one up). The
>things I like about Notebooks are:
>
>a) the rich-text editor (simple but
>effective)
>b) the HTML pages it produces (not unlike KeepNote!)
>c) the fact you can
>copy and paste entire web pages (or bits of web pages) into the desktop version and have
>them rapidly synchronised and indexed on your iPad
>d) the fact you can also insert web
>pages really easily on your iPad!
>e) the very nice search function (you all know what a
>sucker I am for search); also the fact that it highlights search terms (unlike many
>other iOS apps)
>f) the fact that you can, if you wish, use it as a task manager (setting
>due dates, with a calendar overview if you want it, etc.)
>g) the support for tags
>(called ‘Contexts’ in Notebooks)
>
>I confess I don’t really use the support for file
>attachments (although I gather it does, and also indexes the contents, which is
>impressive!).
I do have a copy of Notebooks but haven’t used it for a couple of years now. But it sounds like it’s emerging as an alternative to Surfulater then (or what Surfulater wants to be), especially with the dekstop companion (which I haven’t tried)?