techblog 

I spend enough time at conferences and meetings without WiFi access that I’ve been looking for a decent note taking program for OSX. My list of requirements was pretty simple:

• Highly usable interface. Not too much to ask.
• Simple document editing. Start a new document as quick as possible and have it always auto-save.
• Easy creation of links. Both to URLs and to other documents.
• Multiple levels of categorisation. Both hierarchical and one document in multiple categories.
• Local copies of web pages. Just enter a URL and have it download and store the web page.
• Decent search. With relevance indicators.

In the end I settled on SOHO Notes, but I thought I would write up my notes on all the products that I tested. These are in rough order of preference, with my chosen product first. Apologies, but prices are in dollars.

SOHO Notes

SOHO Notes ($40) used to be known as StickyBrain but some mad marketing person decided to give it a bland, almost anonymous name. This is slightly different from the other products as it uses an OpenBase server, which allows you to access the same store of notes from two different computers. It does everything I want and a bit more, such as posting to blogs and synching two copies using a .mac subscription. All of this is done in a simple and intuitive interface. For example, taking local copies of web pages is incredibly easy. There are a few too many things when you first install it, like the annoying Dock, but getting rid of all of this and customising it only took a couple of minutes.

Yojimbo

Yojimbo ($39) was so close to being my first choice, but was just let down by a poor folder categorisation structure, which is too prescriptive and inflexible. Basically it insists on certain icons and folders down the left hand column and does not let you remove some, nor does it allow nested folders. Otherwise it does everything I want it to and in a very nice interface, surprisingly similar to SOHO Notes. For example, encrypting a note is as easy as everything else.

DEVONnote and DEVONthink Pro

DEVONnote ($20) and DEVONthink Pro ($80) give the impression that they might be really clever programs, not just note takers. But when you look under the hood you realise they’re not. Creation of notes is easy enough but try and import a web page and if you don’t do it just right then it won’t have it. Counter intuitive is an understatement. There are a couple of nice touches, such as a concordance (how many times each word appears in your notes) but those are only eye candy. The search is the best of all the products but let down by the rest of it.

Journler

I did test Journler ($free) at the same time as the others, but forgot to write it up until prompt by the comment. This is a bit different since it looks very much like a diary program, which you can get past but the impression still lingers. Though this is not surprising since this is what it is intended to be. Some bits are very simple, such as changing the category of a document. But some bits, such as taking a local copy of a web page, were too complicated that I never figured them out. Overall not bad, but not my cup of tea.

Mori

Mori ($40) is simple and straight forward but I found a couple of bugs in the user interface. For example I couldn’t get colour-coding to work. These were sufficiently annoying that I gave up and didn’t try it any further.

VoodooPad

VoodooPad ($30) has a very clunky interface and so I didn’t spend much time on it. For example, if you select some text and click the link button then it creates a new document in VoodooPad with the title of the link. If this isn’t what you wanted then you can’t just press undo. If you actually wanted to create a URL link then start searching the menus. One nice thing it does is allow you to draw a quick picture and insert it into your note.

Tinderbox

Tinderbox ($192) is pretty expensive and tries to be much more of an information management tool than just a note taker (as does DEVONthink). Unfortunately it is so horribly complicated to use that it would take hours to learn how to use it effectively. Even then I’m not convinced that the snazzy graphical representations actually add any value.