Keeping a change history isn't a wildly innovative feature in note-taking apps, but using a slider bar to move backward and forward through time isn't something I've seen before. Open a note, and you can revert it to an earlier draft by simply sliding your finger along a line and seeing the note change to its earlier state. The second oddball feature is a revisions history button, which works via a slider bar. It's a strange strategy, although I could imagine situation when it would be very useful. Then, all the parties working on the note can see it any time via the URL. You can send a link to that page to anyone you want, and if the recipient signs up for Simplenote as well, she or he can edit the very same note. You "share" any note by pressing a button that turns it into a Web page. The first is how it handles collaboration. There are two unique features in Simplenote that I found both quirky and endearing. Simplenote's search is pretty good, but considering its only looking at text and tags, it's nothing to write home about. Evernote, meanwhile, lets you organize notes into notebooks, and you can even organize your notebooks into "stacks," which function more like projects or sections of your life. I learned that only through trial and error. Hit the space bar, and the app kills the tag-creation process altogether. You can add tags, although it's a little wonky because you can only add single-word tags. In terms of note organization, Simplenote relies entirely on search. But it also has a voice memo recorder, photo upload functionality, and OCR for searching any text that might appear in your images. Evernote does have a pretty clean and clutter-free view for typing new notes and editing existing ones. The most powerful note-taking and syncing app in my experience remains Evernote (an Editors' Choice), which blows Simplenote out of the water in terms of capabilities and features. Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. ( Read our editorial mission (Opens in a new window) & see how we test everything we review (Opens in a new window).) The list of services that Simplenote does support is an eclectic little group, including Click.to, Scrivener, Tinderbox, and a list of few other apps (Opens in a new window) that slightly favors Macs over Windows PCs. What's unusual is that Simplenote doesn't give you the option to use Dropbox-or Box or any other major storage service for that matter. They're both rather plain without a lot of fluff, but Writebox syncs via Dropbox, whereas Simplenote provides its own storage. Both have iPad apps that sync with a Web app, all used for typing notes in a fairly distraction-free environment. Simplenote reminds me of Writebox in many ways. Simplenote is also rather unusual, though, in that it has one or two unique features-and yet lacks some fairly standard features.
As its name suggests, it's simple, at least in its design and what it attempts to do, which is provide you with a place to take notes and sync them in the cloud so that you can access them via a Web app or supported third-party app. Simplenote (free to $1.99 per month) belongs with the former. Note-taking apps for the iPad largely fall into two categories: those designed for typing, and those that support drawing and marking up PDFs. Free versus paid account benefits unclear.
0 kommentar(er)
