In the time of the cloud, paper notebooks

notebook-fetish

I love paper notebooks. I have several at a time: the reporters’ favorite Green Apple steno small enough to fit in your pocket, a pair of Moleskine plain cahier journals and OhYeah Moleskine knockoffs (see photo). When I’m in the bookstore, I never fail to stop by the notebooks section, often going there first. I go over the items one by one, the notebooks I checked just last week.

I panic when I don’t have one: notwithstanding the fact that my phone has Evernote and Simplenote, which are both connected to an online account and syncs to all my devices.

I live in the cloud, so to speak, before that word became mainstream. Mention a note-taking service or application, I probably use it or have tried it: Evernote, SpringpadIt, Simplenote + Notational Velocity, Fetchnotes, Google Drive. For a time, I had an intense love affair with TiddlyWiki, a self-contained wiki system. (I just scrawled “check out TiddlyWiki5” after opening the TiddlyWiki website for the first time in several years.)

And yet for notes, I’m a pen-and-paper guy. I’m an inveterate scrawler – a random quotation here, a new web service listed as “to-check” there; a column idea here, a potential blog post there.

“We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption,” said Joan Didion in her essay “On Keeping a Notebook (PDF link),” “a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensees; we are talking about something private, about bits of the mind’s string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker.”

The post In the time of the cloud, paper notebooks appeared first on Leon Kilat : The Tech Experiments.

Great-looking note-taking app for iPhone offered for free download

If you love old-school paper notebooks like Moleskine and use an iPhone, install Meernotes. The beautifully-designed app allows you to take down notes on your phone on an interface that mimics a paper notebook. It’s easy to use — you just tap on the screen and then type your notes.

Meernotes lets you take notes on your iPhone using an interface that mimics old-school paper notebooks. Click on photo to enlarge.

Meernotes lets you take notes on your iPhone using an interface that mimics old-school paper notebooks. Click on photo to enlarge.

Meernotes also allows you to insert photos into your notes by swiping up. You can then choose different frame designs for the photo.

The app allows you to keep several notebooks with various cover designs. Some of the designs, however, can only be used after you pay for upgrades.

Meernotes automatically synchronizes notes with your iCloud account. It also has Evernote export and Dropbox import/export capabilities.

Meernotes costs $.99 but is currently offered for free download.

The post Great-looking note-taking app for iPhone offered for free download appeared first on Leon Kilat : The Tech Experiments.