Nsquared

Posted via web from Nishith’s posterous

As promised in the previous post, here’s a review of popular note taking apps for Android.

What’s the point of having a smart phone if you can’t jot down the priceless quote some one made, in the office meeting, for water cooler talk later, or perhaps a compilation of quotes for your blog.

With the number of choices available in the Android market, choosing the perfect note taking app for your Android phone has become a non trivial pursuit.

I have compiled a table of features for the popular notepad apps from the Android market, I have put the features that I thought would be useful.

I only tested the free apps, some of the following apps have paid versions which include more features.

Some applications have some other features worth mentioning that are not in the table. Here are some that I found note worthy

3Banana:

It has a good web interface. The web interface can , Barcode, Sign-in using Google account, Location tagging,

AK Notepad:

AK Notepad comes bundled as an uninstallable applications in some of the custom Android ROMs. It is a pretty decent option if all you want to do is take text notes.

ColorNote:

The main USP of this application is that the notes can be color coded and sorted based on the color. Other than that this is a simple app for taking text notes.

Evernote:

Evernote is perhaps the best known name in this list. They don’t have a release version out for Android yet, so I tested the beta version that can be downloaded from their site. Evernote  definitely has best online presence amongst the listed apps. Their desktop app is too good to ignore. If you are a Windows or a Mac user then this is definitely worth a very serious look. Me, I am waiting for them to release a Linux version.

Foxnote:

This application is supposed to sync with Google Docs but I was unable to get it to work.

GDocs:

GDocs integrates pretty well with Google docs. It allows the user to download their documents from Google Docs and edit them. The editing can be done offline. Documents can be created offline and can later be synced. If you use Google Docs then you should definitely give this application a try.

Note Everything:

This is a feature rich note taking application. Most of the features for which it says “no” in the table are available in the Pro version which has Photo notes, checklists, encryption, reminder etc. I did not try the Pro version.

Note Me:

Note Me has a slightly busy looking interface with lots icons at the bottom of the screen. It has filtering by tags and a send to calendar feature which is similar to the remainder feature that some otherapps have.

Notepad:

This is plain vanilla  note taking app, it provides syncing through its own servers at http://pad.helicoid.net

Paint Note:

This is not a normal note taking application. This is meant for taking picture notes. You can open any picture from your album or SD Card, add notes to it and share it using one of the many photo sharing sites. You can also create your own drawings and share them in the same way.

Ultra Notes:

This is another feature rich application. It is one of the few application that support encryption. The home screen, by default, contains a list of folders which can be used to categorise the notes.

Wiki notes:

This is useful for creating wikis, all wiki words (text with more than one capital letter) become links to notes of that title.

Status note:

This is another app which is not a simple note taking app. This puts an editable note in the status bar.

OI Notebook:

Open Intents (OI) have a pretty large suite of apps for Android platform. Their note taking app, OI Notebook, is a pretty decent application. The USP of OI Notebook is that it integrates well with other OI products like OI Voice Notes, OI Safe, providing additional functionality.

I have been a Linux user for around 9 – 10 years (Red Hat 5 anyone). We have had an exclusive relationship since last 5 years. I did run Vista for a while on my laptop because the Broadcom card did not seem to like Linux. The issue got fixed in Jaunty so I switched immediately. My laptop has been running Karmic since alpha 4.

I have been using Windows 7 rc for around 3 months now, a little before it started getting all the good press. Installation was easy, mostly because I installed it on a separate disk so there was no issue of it wanting to be on the first primary partition of the disk. I had that trouble with Vista which kept on giving the very helpful message “Your disk does not meet the prerequisites” without giving any kind of hint as to what those prerequisites were. I had nothing to backup and restore so I side stepped that landmine.

I must admit that my experience with this brand new Microsoft OS has been pretty good. It is definitely slicker and faster than Vista. There are fewer application compatibility issues.

Here are some of the things that I like, they may not be the big killer features or major technological breakthroughs but I find them very useful.

• New taskbar: The new taskbar has got a good amount of media attention. I hate having too many windows on my taskbar, it causes searching for a particular one take that much longer. This is one of the reasons I absolutely love the multiple desktops that are available in Gnome and others. This feature in itself might be a copy of the Mac Dock but it is, undoubtedly, immensely useful. One more thing that I love about it is the fact that when you have multiple windows of the same application, hovering the mouse pointer over now square enclosed icon on the toolbar, shows all the instance windows and you can then click on a particular instance to bring it to top. You can, also, close a particular instance right from there and hovering the mouse on one of the instances brings it forward for as long as the mouse pointer is on it, great for checking score on cricinfo or some such thing. This has become a feature that I have started missing whenever I am on Linux.
• New Start menu: The start menu has received a face lift. The search box there, although not an original idea again, is pretty useful. When the mouse is hovered over one of the applications in the list the right panel of the menu changes to a list of files recently opened using that application. Another feature which cuts down time and clicks required to do mundane and repetitive tasks.
• Another feature that I have started using a lot is maximizing a window to cover half of the screen horizontally. This is done by dragging the title bar of the window out of either sides of the screen. This causes the window to cover exactly the left or the right half of the screen. This becomes very useful while copying stuff from one window to another or comparing some stuff etc. For people whose text editors don’t have vertical split this can be a really useful substitute.
• The system bar has been now been minimised and converted to an upwards pointing arrow. More space on the task bar, Very good.
• Internet is definitely faster than on Ubuntu. Perhaps an upgraded network stack. I have tried disabling IPv6, using OpenDNS, dns caching and multiple configuration changes on Ubuntu. While they have helped, the speed is still a good amount less than what I get on windows. There was a bug on bind which seems to have been patched but the problem persists.
• Microsoft Office: This is a _huge_ difference. Open Office is not even in the same zip code. Trust me, I have been doing documentation for past 6 months   . I have tried crossover, while it works reasonably well, it still can’t provide the integration that one gets with almost every thing when running office natively.
• The new version of MS Paint is pretty useful. Lots of changes and Microsoft did not make a mistake hiring the guys that wrote it.

Now for the gripes

• Lack of multiple desktops: I have absolutely no idea why this is not there. I find it incredibly useful and time saving, productivity increasing etc. Just throw all your IM clients etc in one window, mail clients in another etc. and only keep one group of work related windows on one desktop, so that when you are working you don’t get any popup notifications and Alt Tabbing just becomes incredibly easier.
• Synaptic: This is a killer, although underrated, feature of Ubuntu. All applications in one place. Don’t have to worry about updating individual applications, drivers etc. Microsoft definitely should look at something like the Windows Marketplace implementation for this purpose.
• Mouse copy: This is the feature that I start miss most. In X selecting some text using the mouse automatically copies and can be pasted using the middle click. I now have to do every copy operation twice on windows, when the middle click paste fails then I realise I am on windows, I curse, and then go back and use Ctrl-C Ctrl-V.

All in all a pretty good offering from the Microsoft stable, I have already placed a bet on it capturing 40% market share in 6 – 8 months.

I am in Misr, who would have thought. As a kid, I alwawys thought of Egypt as an exotic and mysterious place with lot of wierd and fascinating history.  It was a mythical place where amazing and strange things happened. A place with a lot of interesting stories to tell. Pyramids, mummies, pharohs and whatnot.  Now here I am sitting in the capital city Al Quairah popularly known to the English world as Cairo. The city on Nile. The place where civilization started. Of course staying in The Grand Hyatt, Cairo helps. Yahoo!! Amazing view from my hotel room balcony. The Nile, Cairo tower, a couple of bridges and what not. Nice. I am going to enjoy this.

Now that I have actually landed in Cairo, I decided to go visit the pyramids and see what the fuss was all about. First thing to notice, yes they are huge. Second thing to notice, they are still standing and in not too bad a shape. Being the adventurous guy that I am I  decided to take the a horse ride around them. Of course this can also attributed to my being very gullible but that would be totally wrong. So here I am sitting on a horse for the first time in my life wondering when the horse will decide that it does not like my smell or that I am too heavy or any such things that horses use to decide which specimen of humans they don’t like and throw me down. I first thing one notices when riding a horse for the first time is the amount of shaking and stirring. The horse owner happily referred to it as a natural massage, yeah right, massage is what I would need the next day when I wake up and find my self stuck in a crooked position which looks very funny/stupid unless you are on a horse. Thus began my trip around the pyramids on the taxi of the desert. My  guide started telling me about the pyramids. This “telling” somehow included a lot “All the pyramids are made of the same stone, stone Alabaster” and reminding me of how much fun I was having because he was giving me his best trip. So, I want around the pyramids on a horse, during the middle of the day in the month of May right in the center of the desert. The benefit of being on a horse was that I did manage to cover a lot more ground than I would have otherwise.I saw all the nine pyramids from all the sides. There was a particularly nice vantage point from where all the pyramids appeared in a line, I would not have reached that place on foot. Another benefit of having a guide was that he showed me some of the temple ruins that were a little away from the pyramids. As soon as you  enter these temples or the pyramids you realise what bloody showboats these pharohs were. The living chambers in the temple are small. Very small. I am not claustrophobic but I am pretty sure it was a good place to start being one. Some how all the living quarters in  the temples were down some kind of endless hole. These ancient Egyptians were a weird lot. One good thing that came out of the horse ride was that I lost one kg. No, actually I did. If I could do that for a couples of weeks I would get in perfect shape. What with  the natural massage and all.

There seemed to be a lot more people around the Sphinx. Another benefit of having a guide was that I was able to get inside the Sphinx without buying a ticket. Woohoo!! Of course he later took me to his shop and slickly made me 250L.E. lighter in exchange for some funny smelling “flower extract”. At least I got out of buying his papyrus art.  It is interesting how many people in Egypt know India by Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. I think more people in Egypt watched “Khuda Gawah” than in India. Also people do ask your religion a  little more often. The shopkeeper’s daughters seemed more interested in Mr. Sharukh Khan though. It seems I have dimples like him. Hmmm… who would have thought. Another thing that many Egyptians mentioned was how similar the cultures of Egypt and India  were. My canned reply to this observation was “Yes yes of course, very” which seemingly satisfied them enough.  Came back to hotel and had a troubled night of sleep. Perhaps because of the jet lag or because of all the “Egyptian action” in the desert. My next tourist activity was to go to the Al Tahrir square. It is the kind of the city center. Of course standing there and looking around one notices the KFC, the McDonalds etc. Suits me just fine. None of the local restaurant owners seem to be able to speak any kind of English at all.  Actually, after a lot of highly scientific experimentation I came to the conclusion that more Egyptians speak indi than English. Almost every body knew “Kaise ho?”. Although all this Hindi talking got me into buying some papyrus art after all. On my last day, I visited the Cairo museum, which I heard was one of the biggest in the world. It was. I roamed the corridors north of six hours. Came out so exhausted that I had to cancel all my further touristy plans. But it was a good visit. Alll my tourist work done, I came to the airport to catch my very human friendly timed flight ,4:50 A.M.. Immediately upon entering the airport I got a feeling of being in a typical Indian railway station. People sitting every where. Kids crying. No space to walk and a lot of noise. But once you manage to get checked in, the international departure  terminal is quite nice. Good bye Egypt. So long.