I was a long time user of nvALT on my Mac before switching to Windows a couple of years ago.
Aside from Quicksilver and Terminal, nvALT is the app I miss most on Windows. I'm especially attached to two features: 1) the search and compose field are the same field, just hit enter to create a new note with the search query as the title, and 2) the application is designed to index a directory of txt files.
Has anyone reinvented nvALT for the web?
It's a separate topic, but I would also be interested in Windows or Linux apps in this vein. I imagine on Linux the answer is vim or emacs? I haven't yet tried either.