Mini-review of Circus Ponies NoteBook 3 for OS X
Eric Durbrow
) which might be of interest to OS X using academics. After a year or
so of only incremental improvements, this elegant application now
allows simple drawing and colorful ways of adding notes and reminders.
Users of Microsoft OneNote will note the similarities with NoteBook
(NoteBook came first!). Here is what it can do for academics:
1. Allows outlining of your research papers and courses (but no
cloning).
2. Uploads collection of outlines, called NoteBooks, to your website
so that students and colleagues can keep track of what you are doing
(no collaboration or comments).
3. Simple writing module (but no full screen or citation manager).
4. Adds keywords (similar to tags) but not able to DISPLAY multiple
keywords or tags for each item (like Gmail or Google Reader).
5. Prints graceful PDFs (no TeX or KeyNote export like OmniOutliner).
6. Presents templates especially Cornell notes that help you and
students take more efficient and analytical notes on readings.
7. Imbed audio and video files.
8. Finds anything well
9. Imbed To Do's that are available system-wide in the Mac (but cannot
do recurring events).
10. Simple vector drawing ability (but no mind-mapping).
Conclusions: A year ago, I used NoteBook extensively to organize my
teaching and writing. I abandoned it because of slow improvements. In
the last week, I've returned to it to see if it would make my teaching-
writing process more streamline. Without mind-mapping, recurring
events, or citation management it is hard to say how long I will keep
using it. Nevertheless, it is probably the most elegant and gorgeous
application I've encountered. Mac Users: download the Demo and let me
know. Windows Users: What can OneNote do that this can't? Everyone:
There is a video tour at the circus ponies website. (www.circusponies.com
)
Disclaimer: I am not involved in the company except as a customer.
Academic discounts available.
Eric Durbrow Ph.D. PLEASE NOTE MY NEW EMAIL: dur...@gmail.com
STUDENTS: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/16296206292021843372
Try: www.ripple.org
willem
I've used NoteBook - and still use it for publishing course syllabi on
the web, which it does so effectively that I've never bothered to look
anywhere else. So that's about one month in a year. I found the
interface cumbersome, and especially wanted to see two pages at one
time if necessary—I'm curious to learn whether that is now possible.
Also, it doesn't display different scripts nicely (some cells suddenly
become large and ugly) which is essential for my purposes. The
interface (with the Inspector) is not intuitive.
If you want to imbed audio and the like, I guess it is one of the best
options available. I'm not into that myself. I did find that large
NoteBooks became slow and unstable.
On the whole, however, I'm much more pleased with Ulysses, which is
esthetically far nicer, powerful in its Search & Replace, exports to
Word or TeX, has notes, project notes and excerpts and a browser view,
but above all this German piece of software is so counter-distractive
that you actually get work done. Scrivener took some inspiration of
it, but I like the implementation of Uls better. You have a project
with an infinite number of documents which you can collect via
Collections or Filters (the latter allowing a selection via various
tags). No outlining, but as far as I am concerned as effective. It is
incredibly clean, stable, and as long as you can live with the non-rtf
text editor, addictive. But that's the crux: to focus on contents,
Ulysses does not allow you to write in italics, boldface and the like
in the main editor. Users of TeX will readily recognize that as one of
its advantages, but not everyone is of the same mind, and for those
that are not there's Scrivener.
I must admit that it has no mind-mapping (I'm using Tinderbox for
that, or sometimes CMapTools, which is free). But do you really want
all those things in one app? I for one do not. If I can create it
elsewhere, I am happy as Harry. For courses, I use Ulysses (although I
might, whenever it becomes unicode-savvy, use Tinderbox for courses; a
Unicode-version has been promised since, well, quite some time). The
latter is not for everyone, though. I myself only scratch the very
surface. Both Ulysses and Tinderbox are, however, far more powerful
than Notebook, if only you can do without the AudioVideo strengths of
NoteBook.
BTW, I believe you tipped us some time ago about effective writing,
with the suggestion to write every day, even if only 30 minutes. I
tried - and I was surprised and how well that works. Many thanks for
that!
Willem
Jan Erik Moström
>anywhere else. So that's about one month in a year. I found the
>interface cumbersome, and especially wanted to see two pages at one
>time if necessary-I'm curious to learn whether that is now possible.
It is
>But that's the crux: to focus on contents,
>Ulysses does not allow you to write in italics, boldface and the like
>in the main editor.
Which is a good thing (not that I'm using Ulysses but BBEdit instead)
>I must admit that it has no mind-mapping (I'm using Tinderbox for
>that, or sometimes CMapTools, which is free). But do you really want
>all those things in one app? I for one do not.
Neither do I
jem
--
Jan Erik Moström - www.mostrom.pp.se