

Ask HN: What application do you use to take/store notes? - sushi

I had lost hope in every kind of notes-taking app until Evernote came to the scene and made me hooked to it. I loved it. I recommended everyone to use it.<p>The latest version of Evernote however changed it all. It sucks hairy balls as they have gone the Microsoft Office/OneNote way and made it a bloatware. I have totally stopped using it.<p>What do you guys use to take simple notes which can be easily synchronized with a web version and have everything that Evernote once was.
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santry
Notational Velocity <http://notational.net/>

From the description on the site:

The same area is used both for creating notes and searching. I.e., in the
process of entering the title for a new note, related notes appear below,
letting users file information there if they choose. Likewise, if a search
reveals nothing, one need simply press return to create a note with the
appropriate title.

If a note's title starts with the search term(s), that title will be "auto-
completed". This selects the note and consequently displays it.
Correspondingly, selecting a note places its title in the search area (De-
selecting the note restores the search terms).

To create a new note, just type its title and press return. Edit the note as
needed in the bottom pane.

To view or edit an existing note, type one or more words contained in its body
or title. Reveal a note's content by using the up/down arrow keys to select
it. To make good use of NV, try to maintain one detail/fact/item per note.
Notational Velocity's strength, note-filtering, is diminished when only a few
notes contain most of the content in the database.

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thinker
We've been working on a productivity app for researchers (currently only have
a web dashboard). We're finding it great to organize notes/links/files within
our own startup as well. Would be awesome if you guys could give it a try and
give us some feedback!

Check it out here: <http://thinkpanda.com>

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jaxn
OmniOutliner on the Mac is awesome for note taking.

Being able to take notes in an outline format allows me to order the
information as it comes in. People often jump around and come back to a point
or say they will speak more about something later, with an outliner I am able
to keep topics organized better.

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scorpioxy
I tried to write my own because i wasn't satisfied with all the different ones
i tried. But as free time kept getting shorter and shorter, I abandoned the
project and reverted to using Tomboy on my Ubuntu desktop.

Not exactly cutting edge, but I yet to overcome the information overflow that
i suffer from.

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soyelmango
Have you tried Google Notebook? It's no longer in development, but it does the
job for me - it's fast, clean, shareable. [However, I suspect that if you
haven't used it before, Google doesn't let you start using it... I might be
wrong]

Good luck in your search, and let us know what you choose in the end!

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sushi
Yeah I have used Google Notebook but I want some local app. There are already
some very good ones as an extension on a web browser.

Zoho Notebook is also good enough now that Google Notebook is no longer in
development.

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corruption
org-mode. Nothing else even comes close.

~~~
limist
Agreed. org-mode is simply perfect, and alone is worth knowing and sticking
with emacs for - that is, if you already mostly use plain text in your life,
for speed and simplicity. Be sure to get and use the cheat-sheet at
<http://orgmode.org/orgcard.pdf>

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nedwin
I've been using xPAD for a while. It's simple but very useful. My housemate
swears by Evernote but I'm not convinced yet.

~~~
sushi
Since I am using Windows 7 my options are rather limited. I think xPad might
serve my purpose if only it had an alternative for Win 7.

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ScottWhigham
Oh man - what's wrong with OneNote? I've used it for years and can't live
without it. What is better on Windows?

~~~
sushi
There's nothing wrong with OneNote as such but I have to check my notes online
quite often(from other systems) which is kinda hard with OneNote. As a matter
of fact OneNote is an awesome app for windows but until they come up with
synchronization and a web version like in Evernote, I'd rather not use it.

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alanthonyc
I just picked out some wiki software (I use DokuWiki) and start logging
everything on there.

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rlpb
I use Tomboy. It has some sort of sync function, but I don't use it.

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Raphael
a few options:

notepad.exe with DropBox

Google Docs

Etherpad

~~~
sushi
Dropbox is awesome and it has single-handedly made me a backup freak.

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cianestro
Google Wave.

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sushi
Google Wave? Really? Care to share how you do that.

~~~
cianestro
Yes. I'm a big note jotter and have experimented with different apps; Wave is
the best so far. Whenever I have a thought I need to record I just open a new
wave, write it, and move it from my inbox to an appropriate folder within the
Wave client. All wave contents are searchable, so finding stuff is easy. Plus,
when the note/wave is business related, I just add a contact to the wave to
get feedback on what I wrote or to start a fully treaded discussion. If you
don't already have Wave apply for an account or ask for an invite--it's worth
a try. Plus it's free.

