Taking Notes

There are many different applications that may or may not be suitable fpr taking down your notes. Here, I will present a few, which I use myself, and yes, I do really use more than one of those apps since there are many different scenarios, in which I need to take notes.

Evernote
Evernote is a simple but really powerful application for note taking of any kind. Like any of these apps, it can be used to take notes in a text editor and to save them automatically. But, there is more to it. you can create screenshot notes, copy and paste notes via its menu bar item (a new note will be automatically created), and even create a kind of snapshot note, which will be taken via a webcam. You can tag you notes, and you can search via these tags or full text search.
But, the true power of Evernote lies in its web features. You can create an online account, which you sync your notes to. When synced, full text search can even be used on notes, which are screenshots or photos. To make this possible, Evernote applies a text recognition system to the imagefile on their servers, and after the next sync, its results are made available offline.
The Evernote desktop app comes to you for free, and even the online service is free, if you can manage with 40 megs of upload limit a month. If you need more, you need to pay a monthly fee. Versions of the desktop applications are available for Mac and Windows, and there are also clients for different mobile phones.

Scrivener
This comes as the perfect app for the writer of long texts using a mac. It is Literature and Lattes application for writing anything longer than one page of text. But, its not only a writing application, but lets you manage your research for a larger writing project as well, and  very efficiently as well. You can even add photos and pdfs to your research folder and have them always available in your research folder. If you are writing a longer text like a novel, or a scientific paper, you can use Scrivener to have your research notes stored in the same place and available in the same place as your actual writing project.
Scrivener can be bought for 39.95$ here, a 30 day trial version is also available. It is only available for the Apple Mac, no Windows version is planned. Highly recommended.

Journler
This is my place for taking down notes, that don’t go in any of those other apps. Its kind of a personal Wiki, where I can organize all my different shorter writing Projects. For instance, this blog entry was drafted in Journler. It can even be used as a simple GTD app, though I prefer Chandler for this. But it has all the tools needed for this, and is very easy to use. If you need a program to take notes of any kind in one place on your Mac, just use this. It lets you organize your notes in intelligent folders, insert photos, audio files and videos into your notes, and apply tags and full text search on them on the fly. It is a very powerful app, and if it wasn’t for the online features, Evernote would have to go. Journler is free for non-commercial use and available here only for the Mac.

Chandler
This is my GTD app, which I already introduced a few days ago, see here for my original blog entry. It is a great open source GTD and calendaring application, which even has great online features for free. It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac here. Very Highly recommended.

Well, quite a lot of useful apps for anyone to take notes. Feel free to comment, if you find any replacements, additions to these apps, which I might find interesting.

Android ported…

Now that Googles Android OS for phones is available, there seems to be a shortage of available phones. The G1 is only available in the US, and only with a T-Mobile contract, and other phones that come with Android are not available yet. But, since Android is Open Source, a growing group of programmers and hackers seems to have made it their hobby to make it possible to install and use Android on already available phones. Here is a list of soon to be available ports of Android to other phones:

• Andoid port to the OpenMoko Freerrunner – This is already the phone for people who want to be different. Originally it comes with the Open Source Software OpenMoko, which is intended to be expanded by its users. The OpenMoko Freerunner is a touchscreen phone with quite capable hardware. The original software of the freerunner seems to be in a pretty unusable state, so the need for Android is desperate for its users. It is already available for download, but right now, certain features are missing. Batterylife seems to be at about 6 hours right now because the phone is not able to recover from suspend. Details about the phone and its original software can be found here, the first infos about android running on it can be found here.
• Ports for older HTC phones – There are ongoing efforts in the forums at xda-developers.com in the forums to port Android to most of the recent touchscreen phones made by HTC, the company that brought the G1 to the market. Ports are developed for the HTC Kaiser, Touch, Touch Diamond, Touch Pro and Touch Cruise. The status of these ports varies, and it remains to be seen, which of these are going to be finished. Although, one can say, that the port to the Touch (vogue), seems to be quite capable and already supports a lot of features. More details about this port, which has got its page and community now, can be found here.

These are in my opinion the most interesting efforts. The Android OS is nearly as advanced as the as Apples IPhone, and the increased availability on other phones is will be great news. As of now, no port supports G3, but that will hopefully change in the near future. For now, in my opinion, the most interesting option would be the Freerunner. When all hardware features of it are supported, the Android on the Freerunner will rock!

Blog Client on Mac?

I really want an offline client for blogging. Something free if possible. On the mac!!!

On Windows, I can use Windows Live Writer, but on the mac… Well, there is Qumana, but that is not in the same league as the MS tool. Right now I am trying Flock, but thats even worse for blogging, as its a browser essentially, with too many functions…

I will try other options which I can find, but right now, it seems, that I will need to use WordPresses webpage, which still gives me the best options…

Is there a better one?

UPDATE: Found Scribefire, which seems to be much better than anything that I tried before, at least on the mac… for now, I’m quite happy…

Chandler, the calendar and GTD app everyone should use…

Let me tell you about a cool piece of software which I recently discovered: Chandler. It is essentially a GTD (for Getting Things Done) app, which lets the user take notes about his tasks, put them in collections, and set there state to now, later or finished. All that in a very neat and simple to use interface, which allows you to easily enter a new task in a box that is allways in the toolbar. Press Return, and a new task is created, simple as that. On Chandlers startscreen, all your notes from every collection, or only selected collections are presented in a very clear way.

Now, there are other apps that let you do just that. But there is more to Chandler: You can use it as a full blown calendar app by adding dates to a note (with all the options you know from other calendars), you can view everything in a calendar view, you can sync your collections to chandlers free webservice and even use most of chandlers functions online. It is even possible to use Chandler in groups, by sharing collections with others. If you cannot live without other calendars at all, chandler can export to ical format.

In any of those taasks, the real greatness of Chandler lies in its easiness and speed to use. The user interface allows for quick creation of notes and calendar events, state changes, collaborative notes, etc.

Chandler is free and open source, available for Windows, Mac and Linux at http://chandlerproject.org/.

Start again…

Ok, a while ago, I started blogging on blogger… and gave up…

This will be a new start for me, and I hope I will be more successful here on wordpress. I welcome every reader to my new blog with the creative title “My Digital is Life”.

So, let me introduce myself: I am mathmatics student from Berlin, Germany, with a feeling that I want to express myself to the public…

In the future, this will be the place where I will talk about technology, politics, photography, newfoundland dogs and other things…

Feel free to comment and be welcome…

Jonathan Gebauer

PS.: Congrats to the next President of the United States, Barack Obama!