The article lists Google Docs, which doesn't really seem equivalent, and OneNote. I'm using OneNote right now to organize planning for a media/writing project, and the experience leaves a lot to be desired. The writing interface in particular is clunky, in the web client and on Android -- on my phone, I have to pop open a menu and then a drawer just to switch bold text on or off. And the Office365/OneDrive setup just isn't well integrated overall -- navigating OneDrive is confusing, and you can't, for example, insert a picture stored in OneDrive into a note.
Google Keep doesn't fit my needs, as it's missing support for any sort of real organization. It seems more geared toward quick digital post-its and todo lists.
Is Dropbox's Notes product any good? That seems to be in closed beta still...
It's like Evernote used to be. Just text, not even formatting. It just works for me. There's clients for mobile, mac, web. For Windows there's a client called ResophNotes:
I've been using this for the last couple of years, and it's perfect for my "synced cloud notepad.exe" use-case.
Thanks for the suggestion, though!
On the desktop, I'm forced to use the web client for OneNote and OneDrive, due to the lack of Linux support. I would definitely describe both as "clunky", though OneDrive is decidedly the worse offender of the two.
Mediawiki is going to be around for a long time as a project so I feel comfortable making it my digital brain. I started this a few years back and it has scaled really well for me as the amount of informatiom I collect in it grows.
I'm a devops guy, so I don't mind the admin overhead too much, but it wouldn't really be practical for most people who aren't familiar with system administration. There's probably a Mediawiki SAAS out there, but most of the stuff I've looked at in the hosted wiki space isn't using Mediawiki as the underlying platform.
cd ~/Documents/Notes ; vim `date` ; git add -A ; git commit -m . ; git push origin master
Search:
cd ~/Documents/Nodes ; grep -l 'search terms'
Seems like it would work well for day-to-day tasks or reminders, but it's lacking the power that Evernote or OneNote have for structured projects.
Evernote, located in Redwood City, CA, and directly on the 101, is a bit north of the tech companies that dot Silicon Valley and far south of those that have headquarters in San Francisco. In other words, Evernote isn't exactly on its own in terms of tech-oriented neighbors that it competes with for talent.
.co-m-text-light {
font-weight: 500;
}
@media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.3),
only screen and (-o-min-device-pixel-ratio: 13/10),
only screen and (min-resolution: 120dpi) {
.co-m-text-light {
font-weight: 300;
}
}This is one of my core 'why haven't we fixed this' frustrations with the web. Despite pre-dating social networks, blogging is stuck in its own kind of myspace era where authors have near complete control and proportional ignorance of how to present content, and every article is a surprise for the reader as to how it will look/feel/perform.
For such a simple thing as the written word, the inability to personalize to users basic reading needs is kinda bonkers and exemplary of how different the web has turned out from its intended use. Safari Reader View is alright but unavailable or cuts off on many sites like this one, and the RSS standards are sadly out of favor. Sigh
Personally I just switched to reader mode, but that's not actionable feedback.
Appreciate the feedback.
That, and they lost a bunch of my data, and then waited three goddamn weeks before responding to my ticket. I submitted it on New Year's Eve, so I would have understood if it took a couple of days, but January 20th is completely unacceptable.
Evernote is fairly useful. I pay the minimum amount above the free tier. I enjoy the product but I only use it perhaps 10 minutes a day, on average.
I'm not sure how you can consider a company that's still dependent on VC funding for survival to be an "established" company. During that phase, a company is still in a precarious state, and its survival beyond the current funding round is hardly guaranteed. The investors, management, employees and customers are all aware of that (or should be).
And even companies that have been self-sufficient for a long time die on a regular basis. Technologies come and go, new competitors enter markets, management screws up, etc.
The business press writes about companies in trouble all the time. Potential investors and customers need to know what the downsides are before investing in or adopting a company's technology. Journalists who just write happy stories about companies are doing their readers a disservice.
It is an interesting scenario of a company receiving a lot of funding, having a huge paper valuation, but in the end just being a mildly profitable company with little return on investment.
In my opinion Google doesn't get enough credit for it's Apps offering. I see lots of articles on here and elsewhere that deride it as a 'search company' that 'can't build product' - but I really think they're quietly building an excellent product suite.
...Holy shit. OneNote has Mac and Android versions now? I only stuck with Evernote this long because it was the only thing that would sync across all my devices.
I don't need collaboration, just an external memory store. How is OneNote for taking structured/organized, rich-text notes for a single user? I'll check it out tomorrow, and I might switch immediately.
I should add that I was a paying customer.
I was already struggling with the crappy UI and looking for an alternative when the data loss happened. For a while I tried different apps, then Microsoft released OneNote for iOS. OneNote works great for me but now I'm snake-bitten and worried about Microsoft losing my data.
As your usage grows the product becomes worse for you for non-search navigation and discovery.
MS OneNote on the other hand feels like an upgrade from evernote in terms of its ability to provide a simple hierarchy for organising and navigating between notes and notebooks.
A key thing for any productivity tool is to balance between it being easy to adopt for new users and continue to improve its utility as usage grows over time. Very few companies have managed to do this effectively.
I think the biggest problem these current VC-backed unicorns will face is when "venture tourism" comes to an end sometime in the future and all this available cash becomes harder and harder to raise as mutual/hedge funds back slowly away from the private markets:
http://blog.pitchbook.com/if-winter-is-coming-how-well-are-u...
I hear a lot of chatter about how IPO is the new down round in tech, and it seems to make sense to me. I don't foresee the high quantity of venture-backed companies worth over 1BN being able to keep up with such valuations ESPECIALLY if they try and hit the public market anytime soon. I also don't see how they're going to be able to maintain increases in valuations thus making it pretty safe to assume an impending "down round" period for those unable to find sustainable revenue. And lastly, there isn't a huge M&A market for companies with a price tag north of 1BN.
I tend to believe the later story, which was that they didn't get there, but didn't mind all the press thinking they did and it was just never corrected (i.e. this story(1) in Fortune cites a valuation that happens to be under $900M).
Either way, there's definitely no way to know for sure, and I've seen it left off of plenty of 'unicorn' lists.
(1) http://fortune.com/2015/01/22/fab-billion-dollar-valuation/
I only use Evernote for my personal note-taking, and as much as I shake my fist at the massive clutter that has always existed in their first party apps, I can't live without it. (Notebooks AND Tags AND Search AND a map? Why?) It has never once occurred to me to use it as a collaboration tool. It boggles my mind why they would think this is something their customers want from them.
I've been using Evernote for so long the thought of having to move dozens of notebooks and hundreds of notes to another platform does not sound appealing!
And they're going down. Not good.
How to export your data from Evernote.[1]
[1] http://jasonfrasca.com/deconstructing-everyday-blog/evernote...
The latest significant development I saw from Evernote is its tie-up with the Nikkei newspaper, which was still a meager addition of the “Clip” button to the online version. (It’s well-known that Phil is a fan of Japan; Evernote even tied up with the Nagatanien bottled tea.)
Perhaps, Evernote can expand its offerings into paperback books, in which annotations are not yet effectively digitised. I’d also appreciate if they could release a suite for members of the press, who need to research, organise, and release information.
Also, do One Note/ any other alternative do search within PDF?
While I do like OneNote better in some ways its organization style is very old fashioned (at least with Evernote it was easier to stuff tons of things into it, tag it properly and get it back easily). Once you get past 10 or so notes in a single section (depending on screen size) you have to scroll in OneNote and it just makes things a pain.
Google docs is awesome for documents but for notes? No thanks, it's too much of a pain in the ass to navigate. At least with Evernote or OneNote I can quickly access a note within the same interface.
Honestly I feel like there is room for a killer note taking app here that can go cross platform. But it would quire so much effort to build something even to parity that I don't know when or if that would happen.
Does anyone know of any better apps for my usecase (writing loads of text on tablet and have them easily available across devices. Preferably native Desktop app as well)?
Ps: I love OneNote but... it does't feel like its meant for dumping loads of text into it and the Android app has horrible reviews so i haven't risked downloading it yet
Feedback welcome. Still beta
But the Chrome extension is 1.0 and doing really well!
Knotable.com/chrome/note