NoteBook 2.1
Company: CIRCUS PONIES SOFTWARE, INC.
Price: Standard License $49.95 (US)
Academic License $29.95 (US)
Family Pack License (3 users): $99.95 (US)
http://www.circusponies.com
I am such a neat freak. On both my Mac and PC I have folders logically organized for everything I need. With the spotlight technology that comes built-into Mac OS X Tiger, things can’t get any better then that.
But I have always wanted a software that can handle my daily web surfing, for throwing all those small snippets of clippings in a folder to be organized later. But things tend to get a bit messy, which can drive me crazy.
So I started my online research to find the best information organizing software for the Mac. I have been surfing the web looking for product reviews and comparisons, with no luck. So I decided to try everything myself, using my Seek & Try tactic.
StickyBrain 4:
I downloaded the trial version. It turns out that StickyBrain was considered as the crowned king of information organizing softwares, but it was too cluttered for me. I wanted something simpler, straightforward looking. But what I got was a jumbled up Mail app wannabe application.
Another thing I didn’t like about StickyBrain was it gave me a sense that it was forcing itsself over OS X, and I don’t like wise-ass software to act like that. Uninstalling StickyBrain, although easy, reminded me of the Windows approach to computing; you had to run the installer software to uninstall it, so I guess that Chronos never believed in drag & drop. (Comment to Windows users: Drag & Drop to the trash is how you uninstall software on a Mac, another reason to switch).
VoodooPad 3:
So back to square one, looking on the web for information organizing software. I ran across VoodooPad 3, with its wiki look and feel. It was an unsophisticated to organize your scraps, it was more of a text editor on steroids. It wasn’t what I would call an information organizer, maybe a teenager would get a kick out of it, but it wasn’t for me.
iOrganize:
I found iOrganize, cute, lightweight, but yet an “ultimate†StickyBrain wannabe.
K.I.T. (Keep It Together):
K.I.T. was kinda okay, if it was a beta version, which it wasn’t, for a final product it needed a lot of work to be perfect.
Let me remind you that I wanted a place where I can toss away all my clippings without feeling guilty. I ran across NoteBook, I downloaded it and got a license key to run it free for 30 days. I bought the software a day later, as it was exactly what I was looking for and more…
NoteBook 2.1:
It is simple, straightforward, powerful, and feature-loaded. I read its user guide to find more functions then I imagined I needed.
NoteBook looks like a real life notebook, you simply drag anything onto one of its pages and it will store it. And when I say anything I mean anything, you name it: pictures, movies, sounds, text, HTML, PDFs, links, and folders, they even have a specs page that shows all the formats it can take. Working with NoteBook was like pulling a snippet you come across out of your Mac’s screen to a table-side real notebook. It is amazing.
You can create a clipping service on any page in your NoteBook, which will add an option to your contextual menu to clip anything in and snap to that designated page without firing up the application. It also gives you an option to edit that clipping before you send it off to the page you want.
Although you can’t sync a NoteBook page to your Palm PDA, you can add pages to your iPod, and I guess more people own iPods then Palms. I even went ahead and synced the places I need to visit on my next Malaysian trip on my iPod so they would be there when I need them. I think this is quite cool, walking around a new city looking around and exploring while listening to your favorite music on your iPod and looking up information on its screen.
I think if one day a better information organizing software would come along and beat NoteBook, it will be created by Apple and no one else, because NoteBook gives you a feeling of seamlessly working with a Mac.
NoteBook is a must have to any Mac neat-freak.
MyMac.com Rating: 5 out of 5
Copyrights © 2006 Mazen Al-Angary, All Right Reserved.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.