A Replacement for Notebook Apps
This discussion got me thinking. I’ve been playing with Notebook Apps for the past 3 years looking for the perfect solution for all my junk–snippets, saved webpages, random pdfs, hyperlinks, bits of short media I find on the web, pictures, and on an on. On the Mac, I’ve tried Mac Journal (the free version), Journler, and DEVONNote (I got it for free from Mac Heist). Everyone had it’s upside, and everyone had flaws.
I have three criteria for a usable notetaking app.
1. It should be able to easily capture data out of any Application (read “uses the Services menu”)
2. It should be able to quickly search through the data so I can find stuff later.
3. It should be easily accessible via other applications so I can use the collected data later.
Two additional features that would make me near delirious with joy would be:
1. Syncing between multiple computers
2. Spotlight searchable
Of all these Applications, Journler is my favorite. It satisfies the first 3 crucial feature and has the added bones of being Spotlight Searchable, but does not Sync. Thus, whenever I’m looking for something I need to remember what computer I was on when I found it or search both of them. DEVONNote was nice, but it puts everything in a database, so I needed to remember that I put it in there if I want to find it. If that was accessible via spotlight, it would have worked much better for me, since I would use spotlight as a unified search location for all my data.
Despite, my love of Journler, I did run into a few brick walls. For one, it is nearly impossible to migrate entries from one computer to another. Also, if your selection includes media such as pictures, it is hit or miss whether you’ll be able to export that media with your own text. In other words, when something was in Journler it was hard to get the whole thing out of Journler. I did like that Journler is scriptable, although I never had a chance to play with it much. Don’t get me wrong, Journler is a great application and if you’re in the market for a note-taking app you should definitely give it a shot. However, the need to keep information in sync between Computers and easily move that information somewhere else left me wanting more.
Alas, I’ve adopted a much more low tech, less managed solution. It seems to be working for me, although I miss Journler’s GUI goodness. Basically my new workflow for random capture consists of three key features.
1. A “Notes” folder where I put all the junk.
2. FolderShare to keep everything in Sync
3. And QuickSilver to assist in the quick capture and tagging
An optional component that I’ve started to integrate is Smart Folders to make sense of it all–might as well since I’m going through the trouble to tag everything.
Basically it works like this, if I have a brilliant idea, I use QuickSilver’s Append to text or Create file feature to throw it into a file into my Notes folder. I then use QuickSilver’s add tags feature to tag it. Similarly, if I come across a webpage I want to keep I use Safari’s “Save as Webarchive” capacility (which is technically all that Journler was doing), and then tag the reseulting archive with QuickSilver. As for Snippets, I use QuickSilver’s “Current Selection” proxy to either create a file or trigger the Services Menu for another Application. FolderShare ensures that all this information propagates to all my computers.
Granted it is not as elegant, and neanderthal simple, but it seems to keep all my information easily within reach and easily findable no matter where I am. I’ve only been doing this for a week or two so I don’t know of any long range limitations. What’s funny, is that I used to do this before I discovered Notebook apps, and it was a disaster. However I’m hoping that with assistance from Spotlight and tagging, it will be a lot easier to retrieve stuff than it was all those years ago.
