This is purely a want and not anything realistic, but
I'd love a device with a reflective LCD screen since I find that my eyes hurt after staring at bright screens for so long. Ideally it would be color, giving it a distinct advantage over eink. TCL NXTpaper looks very interesting for this reason.
As for apps, I'd be happy if it ran Obsidian, Sublime, Scrivener, and Office (or really anything powerful enough to let me write my papers with proper Japanese support and do code snippet highlighting).
Having a pen input might be nice for diagrams and mindmapping.
Pen and paper. It’s the only thing that can keep up with me! No changing modes, never have to select or delete anything, plus I can draw arrows and diagrams that are often way more helpful than the words I’d use to describe them.
I completely agree. I haven't found anything effective for remote collaboration. I sometimes use the Whiteboard app on a Surface Go but that's not an online app. I have to copy the image over, or show the physical screen to my main computer's webcam.
I use a small moleskin pocket ("cashiers"?) journal and Zebra F-402 pen.
It's not obnoxious to pull out and jot something down as it would be to take out a digital device would be. I have a record that's easy to look through. I line-out items that I don't need anymore. If it's a large block of text or picture that I've transfered to somewhere else, I 'X' through the whole thing. It looks neat and clean.
At a glance, this looks very nice, any chance it could run and store locally?? Some of us still have a need for working without any available online connection.
I use a combination of pen and paper, and sticky notes on a wall mounted detective board for things to do immediately.
I also use Simplenote. Free with markdown support, sync, and publishable links.
I use Samsung Notes for trivial stuff, like chores or shopping list.
If I want to easily sketch inside a note app, OneNote is the best. But it is weird in a sense that there are two OneNotes- one that comes with Office, and anotherthatcomes with Win 10. But OneNote is buggy and slow. You can barely use it in mobiles. I don't use windows that much.
Which brings me towards Obsidian. Best data policy, custom plugins, and what not!?
I am using it everyday. I am using another sync service to sync between devices.
I have an iPad pro and do the same... OneNote is great because I can handwrite, type, drag/drop, and clip web pages/youtube. The search function is also really, really good.
Something like a palm pilot.
Perhaps an app to add that function onto your phone, that would be that simple and easy to use. There seems to be a lot out there, but they don't seem to work that well.
I found the Remarkable quite good. I have a problem where I lose my notebooks, or have multiple notebooks for the same topic. The Remarkable is nice in that I can put it all in one device.
Also the writing experience is 90% of the way to natural writing, and the battery life is amazing.
In the circus of electron, subscription, messload of features and all I gave up and just decided to stick to Simplenote and Notes.app. And paper notebooks/journal which I've anyway used since school.
The best two note apps are standard notes and Joplin. They are almost identical. Standard notes has a few extra features, but I think Joplin is minutely faster iirc. Both are encrypted and then synced via other cloud providers
I'm still using tiddlywiki (tiddlywiki.com), the key features being portability, search, and linking between notes. It's free open source too and has a large community of users who contribute plugins (like LaTex interpreter that I use). I've been using it for 10 years and have found these features to be essential, almost a super power, for the kind of work I do (research). (BTW I believe the name to be a derivative of TLDR, which is the only reasonable thing I can come up with to explain what is otherwise a kind of lame name). Also, worst case you can read the file with a browser, or view it in a terminal since it's essentially markdown. Back it up in Dropbox and you can be sure that you'll never lose it or lose access to it.
The downside is that browser security updates almost killed it, since in its simplest implementation it's a single file that lives on your computer, accessed and saved via the browser. Browsers no longer allow modification of local files in a simple way. I found the best method for saving the file, of the several listed on the website, to be to run the Ruby server (a minimal server using Ruby Webrick, point your web browser at http://localhost:8000 to view and save the file).
Obsidian and DEVONthink look interesting for many of the same reasons, but I don't want to commit to something that dies in a few years (and I'm hesitant to pay). DEVONThink has been around for a long time now however, probably because it's a paid product.
I'm using Vimwiki, and pushing everything to a gitlab wiki repo. I've gone through just about every knowledge base/note taking app and service out there and this is where I've most recently landed. Using plain markdown files ensures that everything is portable, and if one day I want to move it elsewhere, I can. Pushing the markdown files to the gitlab wiki means that it's also available on all of my devices. The added benefit of having a well documented and diffable history of all changes is pretty nice, as well.
For purely note taking, Remarkable 2 can't be beat. The problem is everyone wants that and the kitchen sink in a single device. If you want a multiple purpose device that _can_ take notes, an iPad is likely the best choice.
For me, just writing things down is amazingly helpful. I don't even have a workflow set up very well on it yet, just got mine a few weeks ago. Its really pretty damn good. Is it worth the money? probably not. That said, I don't regret getting one at all.
Like, how often do I ever reference my school notes... rarely. But the act of synthesizing and writing something down physically just feels sort of like a memory hack.
I'm a big fan of the Rocketbook line of notebooks. You get all the benefits of paper and pen, and then you use the mobile app to scan your notes to email or DropBox or Google Drive or wherever. When the notebook is full you get a wet cloth and wipe it clean.
My only complaint is that they weren't around when I was in college.
I recently got a Supernote tablet and I absolutely love it. It does a great job as a notebook, works quite well as a PDF/eBook reader and the company has been very responsive to feedback and questions. It's more pricey than the Remarkable but from the sounds of it, the Remarkable folks are pretty slow to listen to customer feedback.
If you don’t take notes currently, a device for taking notes probably won’t change that.
Note taking is a habit not a technology. It is a way of thinking. Not a set of tools.
For example, no device can replicate writhing notes in the margin of a book. Not even other pieces of paper. An underlined sentence can only happen where the sentence occurs.
If you want a new Surface buy one because you want one. Don’t pretend that it will cause you to take up note taking.
I made my own. I like markdown a lot, and also want to have full control over all of my notes... Most importantly, I want to track my ideas with tags, and also have the ability to cluster text semantically.
... so I built my own tool. I call it NonConOS (non-consensus operating system)[1]. I haven't opened it up to other people yet but if you want to give it a shot, I'm always happy to let others try it. The idea is: use markdown but enable tags as well! Simple.
Not yet, sorry! If you'd like I can give you an account -- it's all web-based for now (Desktop + mobile friendly). Just shoot me an email at w -at- chimerais.com :)
45 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadI'd love a device with a reflective LCD screen since I find that my eyes hurt after staring at bright screens for so long. Ideally it would be color, giving it a distinct advantage over eink. TCL NXTpaper looks very interesting for this reason.
As for apps, I'd be happy if it ran Obsidian, Sublime, Scrivener, and Office (or really anything powerful enough to let me write my papers with proper Japanese support and do code snippet highlighting).
Having a pen input might be nice for diagrams and mindmapping.
I guess I really just want a reflective iPad.
It's not obnoxious to pull out and jot something down as it would be to take out a digital device would be. I have a record that's easy to look through. I line-out items that I don't need anymore. If it's a large block of text or picture that I've transfered to somewhere else, I 'X' through the whole thing. It looks neat and clean.
No slow modes, or toolbars – just click anywhere and start typing, then drag to move or connect thoughts/cards together
(It's called kinopio and you can use it with signing up, https://kinopio.club)
Right now, it’s partially offline: if you load kinopio but lose your connection while editing, your changes will sync up when you regain connection
Mind sharing what tech you’re using?
I also use Simplenote. Free with markdown support, sync, and publishable links.
I use Samsung Notes for trivial stuff, like chores or shopping list.
If I want to easily sketch inside a note app, OneNote is the best. But it is weird in a sense that there are two OneNotes- one that comes with Office, and anotherthatcomes with Win 10. But OneNote is buggy and slow. You can barely use it in mobiles. I don't use windows that much.
Which brings me towards Obsidian. Best data policy, custom plugins, and what not!?
I am using it everyday. I am using another sync service to sync between devices.
My vote would to to-
Obsidian + Simplenote.
I used various apps and paper based means in the past. OneNote is the tool I use for 5(?) years now.
I am using `doom emacs` config and `spc + X`
Also the writing experience is 90% of the way to natural writing, and the battery life is amazing.
Not an ad, I just like the product.
Private stuff DEVONthink with DEVONthink to go. Great search and sync across all my devices.
The downside is that browser security updates almost killed it, since in its simplest implementation it's a single file that lives on your computer, accessed and saved via the browser. Browsers no longer allow modification of local files in a simple way. I found the best method for saving the file, of the several listed on the website, to be to run the Ruby server (a minimal server using Ruby Webrick, point your web browser at http://localhost:8000 to view and save the file).
Obsidian and DEVONthink look interesting for many of the same reasons, but I don't want to commit to something that dies in a few years (and I'm hesitant to pay). DEVONThink has been around for a long time now however, probably because it's a paid product.
Like, how often do I ever reference my school notes... rarely. But the act of synthesizing and writing something down physically just feels sort of like a memory hack.
My only complaint is that they weren't around when I was in college.
Works with Siri and share extension and is available for free on iOS and Android.
I have released it 5 years ago as a side project and keep updating it since then, motivated by the organic traction and (lot of) positive reviews !
If you don’t take notes currently, a device for taking notes probably won’t change that.
Note taking is a habit not a technology. It is a way of thinking. Not a set of tools.
For example, no device can replicate writhing notes in the margin of a book. Not even other pieces of paper. An underlined sentence can only happen where the sentence occurs.
If you want a new Surface buy one because you want one. Don’t pretend that it will cause you to take up note taking.
Finally I just settled for RemNote.
My answer is, just try out the alternatives out there and choose what suits you. There is no ONE alternative that fits everyone's requirements.
Multi device, conflict resolution
Another good tool is ZimWiki but the limitations of desktop only applies .
But to me cross device Joplin works brilliantly.
... so I built my own tool. I call it NonConOS (non-consensus operating system)[1]. I haven't opened it up to other people yet but if you want to give it a shot, I'm always happy to let others try it. The idea is: use markdown but enable tags as well! Simple.
[1] https://nonconos.com/