I’ve started this blog by complaining about not having a OneNote Replacement on the Mac. Since then I have forayed into Circus Ponies Notebook, DevonThink, and Eagle Filer. Of them all Eagle Filer came the closest.
I discovered Curio, and wrote about it. I even resorted to installing OneNote on a VM and run it when I needed to keep my notes. I can even use the Unity interface on VMware Fusion to make OneNote look like a mac app. I’ve gone to quite a few extremes.
The replacement
The replacement I found is Growly Notes. In the above screen shot you get to see the Growly Note interface which looks a little bit like OneNote. It works like OneNote allowing you put notes anywhere on the page. It also can open more than one notebook in the same windows, as demonstrated in the above picture.
If you decide to use Growly Notes, then be sure to tip the developer. Let’s encourage him to continue developing this software
Don’t get me wrong. I love the iPad, but I was the not the user it was designed for. I carry a full-fledged computer with me all the time. I never really needed it to be my main computer. I believe that the iPad was designed for a user who only needed something to get on the internet, get email, consume media, and do a little light computing. It did that admirably, but that was not what I needed it for. I wanted a better ebook reader than the epaper-based Kindles et. al. I also came to the conclusion that I really just needed that in something larger than my iPhone.
Then Amazon announced the Kindle Fire. Suddenly I had what I wanted; what I needed the iPad to be for me. So, I put my pre-order in and it arrived Wednesday, 11/16/2011.
First Impressions
Amazon packaging for the Kindle has been spotty, but this time is actually was a little fun. When I took the Fire out of the packaging, the first thing I noticed was the heft of the product. It felt solid and sturdy in my hand. It is lighter than my iPad, but the screen is smaller. The Kindle screen seemed sharp and the color was excellent. I watched a couple of episodes of the Big Bang Theory, and did not have to squint to see the screen. For some of the darker films, you may need to bring up screen brightness to see well. The Kindle was set for about 80% screen brightness.
I am an Amazon Prime Member, and I have taken advantage of the cloud storage that comes with that, as well as the free on demand for some movies and TV episodes. The Kindle Fire seems to be tied very much into that feature. The fact that a free month of Amazon Prime membership come with the Fire seems to substantiate that observation. Right now the only content that is on my Fire are the active books and magazines.
The magazines are now in full color and very much the same as the Zinio Publications that I am used to with the iPad.
So, the Kindle Fire has fired by iPad.
With the new Lion changes were sure to happen, but –please– changing the direction of scroll on the trackpad or mouse? I had gotten use to scrolling down to go down the page, and scrolling up to go up a page. This was the way it was for on a PC, GNOME and it was this way for the Macintosh. Then along comes Lion and changes the way I have been working for years.
so, I struck back…
It wasn’t hard to find where to make the change. Open preferences and go to the mouse preferences. In the above image I show you what option to uncheck. Uncheck this option and you will be returned to you sanity at one. Where scrolling down on the mouse moves you down, and scrolling up moves you up in the document.
For those of you who think this is a screed. It isn’t. It’s just an old fool who likes things the way that they were. Change for Change sake is not necessarily good. Enjoy!
I have installed an interesting application – BlogJet. It’s a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com
“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein
For a while I have been searching for a replacement for MS OneNote. I’ve tried just about everything. Among the things I tried were DevonThink, EagleFiler, EverNote. Each of these products does what it does very well. With DevonThink Everything was a single File. EagleFiler is an excellent tool for keeping me organized in my files, and makes sure that things I collect are accessible. EverNote is great for managing media and things. Of all those the one that I retained was EagleFiler.
I retained EagleFiler because of it’s robust search capabilities, better than spotlight in most cases. What I missed was the freeform association of ideas, drawings and notes that could be had in OneNote. Then I ran into Curio, quite by accident, in the App Store.
Curio had the free form nature of One note. You could have more than one page in a project. They call these pages idea spaces. You could type notes anywhere. It will record using your facetime mic. You can even use a drawing table to draw in the space. The one thing that you can do is import just about anything. This helps with organization, and with putting relevant material where they will be of use.
If you are looking for a replacement for OneNote, then Curio might be what you need.
Sorry about the infrequency of posts on this site. I will resume posting here. It will have to be weekly until I can get everything sorted out.
What I will be writing about is technology that I love, speculative fiction in all of it’s forms, and games and gaming. Yes, I know there are other sites out there doing the same, but not from the perspective of a 50 year old who, in his mind, still thinks of himself as 18 years old.
Yes, it does Snow in San Antonio, but it is a rarity
Two things. I have taken a job with a Training firm, and I have been busy sorting things out. The other things has been my laptop has bitten the dust. I will be back to normal in a few weeks when I buy the replacement for that machine.
This sudden employment has meant that I will be changing things on the blog. It will be more technology and writing oriented than it has in the past. I also will not be able to make daily substantive posts. I will promise at least a post a week, but when I get the new machine all bets are off.
How am I writing this now? I am using my iPad to do a lot of my work now. I am finding that it can do most everything I want with the exception of doing unix commands, and programming. The site will be having some things removed and new things being added.
I am currently in the middle of a move from my House into an Apartment. This has meant a big problem for me. I am hiring people only to move big furniture, while I am moving the small stuff in my car. I have Things for the iPhone and on my Mac as well. I am using it to help me move. After the break how I am doing that.
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