First, I used google notebook to keep track of ideas and websites I liked. Google notebook went away. One note from Microsoft seemed like it might work, it quickly became unwieldy for me, too many tabs and finding notes was not intuitive. Evernote seemed pretty good, but it soon became visually ugly too me and it did easily or cheaply stay on my iphone when I did not have internet access. I started using the native iphone notes application, and it worked, but again started looking ugly. I would open the notes and it just was too long of a list that did not make sense. I tried springpad, liked the looks of it, but again did not like the hoops I found to get items to all be on my phone without having internet access. Next I tried the Awesome notes app on the iphone, I really liked it, it had potential, it looks beautiful and keeps the items on my phone and as a bonus, it synced nicely with Evernote. Now we are talking, but I also started using Simplenote, and I think we have a winner.
Simplenote is a good name for this product, it is a simple text only note storage, searching and syncing platform and it just works.
I use the product on my iphone 4 primarily, but it also has an Ipad app that works fine, in full screen, and it has a chrome browser plugin that works fine and it syncs perfectly with notational velocity on my Mac, or the NValt varient of it, which is the one I use.
Syncing is perfect, instant and no problems. I do not think about it.
I read in a review at Incoherent Mumblings how Tsilcheters prefers dropbox as a sync method because dropbox plays nice with many more services. While that is true, for my use, I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to hit sync, or go to another app, then go to my dropbox folder then go to my sync folder then hit sync (at least not yet). With Simplenote, the Chrome browser extension for Simplenote, the Chrome browser extension for Nvalt and Nvalt itself, syncing is instant and friction free.
Searching is another thing I enjoy with Simplenote, and perhaps the feature that makes it work well for me, to find previously entered information I just start typing in the search box and instantly everything starts appearing, any word in the note can be searched. This is helpful for me because sometimes I only remember one part of a note I am looking for. Simplenote also supports tags, so you can also do a search for tags, this is also useful. It makes my notes viewable as an adhoc list, I like that for viewing quotes, etc.
Creating a note on the Iphone is easy, I just start the app and hit the + key at the top of the screen. On my Macbook Air, I use NValt. There I just start typing in the blank box at the top, previous notes are searched as I do this, but when I hit enter, a new note is started. By the way, I use NValt for the Mac because it supports markdown, which is a simple formatting language I want to use someday.
Perhaps my favorite way of using Simplenote is how it ties into NValt via the Chrome browser. The NValt extension allows me to highlight some text on a webpage and create a note out of it, that of course syncs instantly with everything else. This note also has a hot link to that web page. Brilliant. When I receive an email I want to remember for a task I create a note and now I can easily find that email again. My email box scrolls rather quickly so this is a great advantage. Also, when someone sends me an invitation or a meeting schedule via an email, when I make a note out of it, then open the note on my Iphone, then date becomes a hot link for the Iphones native apps, thus the Iphone asks me if it should create an event and put it on the calendar, uh yes. Then, via my exchange syncing with google calendar, this event syncs to all of my calendars without my typing anything. GMail claims you can create events from an email message, but I have yet to have it work right.
I am now trying out an app called Listary which claims to make a simple list out of anything I tag with listary in Simplenote. We shall see how that works.
The drawbacks I see so far with Simplenote:
1) The ios app has ads. The app itself is free, but instead of charging for the app they use the subscription model. OK, how much, $20/yr. Will I pay that, probably, however, in principal I am opposed to yearly subscription models, I can’t get around the fact if I use this for 10 years, I will have paid them $200. Yes, I want the service to thrive, but $200 is $200, for notes. How about a more reasonable compensation method. Anyway, $20 removes the ads.
2) The ios app has a slight lag when first starting it as it syncs. The lag would not be such a problem, but when I am opening the app, it is usually to quickly add a note, now I have to wait. When I say quickly, I mean quickly, like a phone number I hear on the radio, this has to go quick, the information is quickly melting in my mind. Why not allow instant note writing, syncing should be background or wait, or an option to toggle on.
This is my first review, I now feel like I am rambling so stopping is important. In conclusion Simplenote is a great description for a very useful app/platform. I say give it a try.
