Shovebox review – a new notetaking app.

There is a noticeable lack of any notetaking app for mac that will sync with an iphone. By notetaking application I mean an application that you can use like a notepad: Write down thoughts on a topic. Come back later and find them. Add a few more notes when you want to. A new application, Shovebox seems to be OK, although it’s still early days…

Firstly to appreciate how seemingly hard this is to do, consider the following apps:

FAILED CONTENDERS

Evernote:
Great for capturing information, but you can’t edit notes on the iphone. STOP PRESS: Evernote can edit notes from the iphone now! Evernote rocks.

Apple Notes app:
Good on iphone but you can’t edit the notes on your mac.

SOHO notes:
My favourite I’ve been a user of SOHO notes for many years, but you can’t even read notes from iphone let alone edit them.

Yojimbo:
again great app but no iphone application apart from webjimbo is too complicated.

Together:
again, it may be a great app but no iphone access to notes and they say they have no plans to develop one.

Devonthink:
again, it may be a great app – a lot more than just notetaking but no editing of notes from the iphone

So there have been various workarounds. Some people have been using contacts to store notes, some have been using draft emails. It’s embarrasing to be a mac user and hear about this, so it’s nice to finally have a solution.

Shovebox:

Shovebox is a new piece of software just for taking notes. It’s got great potential.

Pro’s:
It syncs with the iphone.
You can edit notes on the iphone.
There are rules that automatically sort notes by keywords if you wish.
Amazing selection of hotkeys to grab data instantly.

Con’s:
On the iphone you can only edit the files as text files not RTF (not sure if this will be addressed in the future or not?)
On the iphone app you can’t search notes – only browse.
It’s complicated to actually read a note on the mac! There’s no preview, and I’ve found that sometimes when you click to open the note it doesn’t work.
It cost’s $25.
It’s still almost a beta version. There are some things that are a bit messy, and/or missing.

It will be interesting to see how shovebox develops.