Other not-quite-there solutions

As a followup to my entry on Google docs, here are a few of the note-taking solutions I've either tried or read enough about to reject in the last year or two, along with a few thoughts about each.

Google docs: as discussed above, this is the best so far but it's missing robust two-way integration between online and offline editing.

EditMe: I use EditMe for my own personal wiki. It has security model that allows me to share what I want with individuals or groups, but it's difficult to administer and the WYSIWYG editor is quirky and sometimes unpredictable. You have to build your own navigation structure, otherwise you are left with a simple index by page title. There is no offline editing mode.

JotSpot: I tried JotSpot and found the note-taking and task list features in the web-based interface to be pretty slick. Their pricing model made it so that you ended up paying a lot after creating only a few pages, though, so I found myself trying to reuse pages and cram as much onto each as possible to avoid paying. Eventually it became unmanageable and I stopped using it.

Microsoft OneNote: I tried this based on the recommendation of a fried who uses it every day in his consulting business. It was developed as a note-taking app for tablet PCs and it can accept pen input. Like JotSpot, it alows you to create a notebook full of pages with specialized purposes like task lists, web clippings, meeting notes, etc. It is strictly an offline, one computer solution, though. Also, as I often do with MS products, I found the interface to be a bit clumsy and overbearing.

EverNote: I read about this today as a competitor to OneNote. It has innovative ways of organizing your notes with multiple category tags (much like Gmail), as well as specialized formatting for task lists, etc. Like OneNote, you can also drag in all sorts of content from other apps, like photos, text, links, etc. Also like OneNote, though, it is an offline-only solution at the moment. (See my note below for more on this topic.)

Google Notebook: I have just downloaded this slick little app. It consists of a small browser plug-in that allows you to collect links and clippings as you browse. It's ideal as a tool for web research, but it is restricted to use within the browser and (obviously) while online. You can access your notes from any browser, but again, not while offline.

Lotus Notes:  I used Notes for years as an email program, meeting scheduler, and document creation/organizing/sharing system. It is very powerful but not intuitive or easy to use, particularly if you want to selectively share or search content you've created. There is a web interface for access from any connected computer, but I found it clumsy and limited and you need your IT department to set up and manage it. It's an industrial age solution in an information age world.

Groove: Groove was created to be a web-based successor to Lotus Notes and was actually worked by many of the original team. It shows in the quirky ways the product works, I think. It designed from the ground up for sharing, but at least originally it was a peer-to-peer model that meant at least two members of a group needed to be online with Groove running for one to access documents. Like eRoom, it became mostly a repository for Office documents created and edited offline.

eRoom: I use eRoom at ATG today for shared access to documents. Not everyone is using it, but it's quite usable as essentially an online repository. It suffers from difficulties with searching for content and I find people don't trust that the information they find there is up to date, often calling me to double check. Also, though there are special forms for creating and editing documents right in eRoom, I find that people use Word, PowerPoint, and Excel and just post the docs in eRoom. Offline editing of Office docs is supported, but offline access to those docs is not, so you have to download something before you leave the office in order to read or edit it on the road.

Microsoft Outlook: The king of email, Outlook is also used for calendaring, note-taking, task lists, and contact management. I've had my contacts database in Outlook for quite a few years, taking it with me from company to company. Group calendaring is somewhat unreliable, but it has become the standard so people use it. Few people I've talked to use the notes or task list functionality as it is rather limited. Notes are in a simple categorized list and has only basic text editing features. The task list was at one time fairly customizable with rules and filters, but a bug in my edition of Outlook 2003 prevents my customizations from being saved, so I have ceased using it. Outlook content is also accessible from a browser and the features of the web interface have recently been upgraded with AJAX techniques making it fairly usable in recent versions of IE for Windows. It works less reliably in Firefox and very poorly in Safari, however. The key thing that works well in Outlook is universal access to your content. Nearly everything in Outlook, including the email in your inbox, your personal notes, your task list, your calendar, etc. is accessible in the program and on the server for Web access from any PC any time. Even offline, you can access and edit your content in Outlook and then send email and synch changes with the server when you are connected again. The exception is email you've filed away in your personal folders. This is stored on your local drive so it's only accessible from your computer.

 
Notepad: I've tried and failed to use so many different means for managing task lists and notes that I've gone back to basics as far as possible without resorting to paper. It's only accsible on my laptop and I can't share it or put anything into it but text, but the interface is so simple it never gets in my way. Because it only runs on one machine, I am still jotting notes to myself on paper or in emails when away from my laptop. And if I want to share some notes I've taken, I cut and paste them into another document and clean them up. This is not the solution I am looking for, but I can't find that solution, it is the simplest substitute. I think it says a lot about how far these other apps have to go that they are not enough better than Notepad to make me want to use them.

The CEO of EverNote said someting in a recent interview with CNET that I thought illustrated what is missin to one degree or another from all of these solutions. He said, "we are not releasing our mobile version, which is ready, because synchronization is not ready. It is the most difficult component of this equation." I think it is also the most important component.

Comments

[Ben]

I've been really happy with Yojimbo on Mac OS X as a note taking tool, because of the integration with .Mac synching (you can also synch using other services). It's not a shared app though.

I also use Backpack for notetaking, especially because you can share read-only versions with the world and/or select others to edit a document. It includes simple todo lists, calendaring, and reminders. Also you can edit backpack using email or text messaging which is cool.

I haven't used erooms as much as I probably should. I wish it were more like a Wiki, and focused less on MS Ofice documents. We used Atlassian Confluence at my last job, and it was fantastic.

Yojimbo:
http://barebones.com/products/yojimbo/

Backpack:
http://www.backpackit.com/

Confluence:
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/

[Bruce McCarthy]

Thanks for your comment, Ben. I remember Yojimbo. (The name is quite memorable.) It touts itself as an effortless way to collect information, and it does look easy. Being limited to one computer at a time, though (a Mac in this case) makes it hard for anyone who needs access when away from that one computer.

I also tried BackpackIt for a while but ended up dropping it because in the end its interface was not much more useful than Notepad (though nicer-looking) and the fact that I had to be online to edit anything limited its usefulness too much. I am curious about editing with email and text messaging, though, which are not features I tried out. How does it work? Can you really "edit" with these tools or only add a new page by sending a message?

I hadn't run into Confluence before. It appears to be a full-featured enterprise wiki with a WYSIWYG editor.

[Ben]

You can synch Yojimbo between multiple macs, which I do have my notes available at work and home - it's the key feature for me. But all the shared computers have to be macs.

With backpack you are right that the cellphone/email integration isn't true editing. You can *add* to-dos, notes or photos to an existing page, but you'll have edit them on the website. I've never had a reason to do it, but I've always thought it cool that I can snap a picture on my cameraphone and have it show up on a backpack page a few minutes later. You're right though, the online only interface is a bummer. I would love it if there were an accompanying desktop app that you could use offline and then have it synch when you are back online.

[Bruce McCarthy]

Cnet's new Webware site focusing on Web2.0 apps has a short review of HyperOffice wherin they complain about the primitive "Web 1.0" interface.

What I found interesting was the comment posted by a small business consultant who said in part:

"As a Small Biz consultant, I've looked at a lot of this class apps for clients and what it always comes back to, is they want their data local for when they don't have a connection. A lot of clients use Blackberry/Palm/Windows Mobile devices and like to sync data between them."

Similarly, their review of Joyent ("simple, powerful, web-based software that provides small teams with email, calendars, contacts, and shared applications"), says:

"The two big downsides of Joyent are that there's no offline version of it yet (although the Joyent server is standards compliant; the e-mail can be accessed by IMAP clients, for example) and that its cool tools don't easily extend to people outside your company's installation."

It seems the irony of Webapps designed to make information more accessible is that they have their own ways of restricting access.

HyperOffice review: http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9664455-2.html

Joyent review: http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-6631900-2.html

[Bruce McCarthy]

Ben's comments on how backpack could be improved.

http://benbrophy.com/index.php?archive=0611

[Bary Coleman]

I've been using EverNote for a couple of months now and really like it. It's interface is simple to use for ordinary note taking and seems to just do the right thing when you drag stuff to it.

My biggest complaint is the sync capability. The sync is via SneakerNet on a USB drive. This is great if I have notes on a work desktop that I want to carry home to my home desktop so I can work on them there. However, I work at home. My biggest problem is that I have many computers that I use based on convenience. I'd like to use EverNote on my wife's desktop in the kitchen (a Mac), my desktop in the office (a PC), my laptop when on the road, and the Home Theatre PC. I'd like them all to stay in sync without having to walk the stuff around.

Most of the note taking systems either seem to work well with only one or two machines, or are restricted to a machine types (Mac Only or Windows only), or don't have an offline mode.

I like EverNote's UI. I hope they do the syncing right, and get rid of the SneakerNet as it is a bonehead idea.

[mike]

humm, really solution you have found and nice narrartion.