My search for a good notetaking app has been a little on the obsessive side, but to me, the one thing a computer should be able to do well is take notes. I have spent 2 years on this one. I’m talking about an application where I can make a short note to myself and come back later and find it easily.
The combination of Notational Velocity on the mac, synced with Simplenote on the iphone, is for me the winner.
Step 1. Install Simplenote on your iphone.
Step 2. Sign up for a Simplenote account.
Step 3. Download Notational Velocity
Step 4. Enter your simplenote account details into the preferences of Notational Velocity.
Step5. change Notational velocity preferences to store the notes as rtf files in a folder instead of a single database file so that spotlight can find them.
That’s it! Now all the notes in simple text on your iPhone will be synced with notational velocity on your desktop computer.
Why I like these apps.
Simplenote is very SIMPLE, and Notational Velocity is soooo FAST. They are both elegant, and the best thing of all – they don’t get in the way.
Notational Velocity is a bit of a head spin the first time you use it. It’s so simple and it only has one box to type in – whether you’re writing a new note or searching for an old note you type in the same box!
And it is so FAST to search – the results appear INSTANTLY. It’s almost as if it’s reading your mind!
I use notational velocity for all kinds of things…
– writing down how I did something so that next time I need to do it I can remember.
– storing trivial information like the ranking of poker hands, or a list of things to take on holidays.
– lists of birthday present ideas for people
– poems and song lyrics
– lists where things are stored
– menus, letters, vision-setting, bits of computer code and so on.
I currently have 355 notes in it, and I don’t need to remember note titles, keywords or anything, I just type a word and it finds the note. It’s great.
For a long time SOHO notes was my favourite, but the worst problem is that you have to manually sync the iphone with the desktop app – I never remember to and get caught out looking for a note that is not yet synced to!
Likewise, Shovebox is a nice app to capture notes into, but harder to search and browse them once they are in.
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