note-taking.net

Evernote slips while competition for note-taking productivity apps continues to heat up. Here are the top 20 note takers as of December 24, 2009.

The competition in the Productivity section of the Android Market is really heating up with the debut of Evernote’s Android App. Here are the top 20 note takers as of December 17, 2009.

Evernote is the new entrant since the last ranking, but AK Notepad has maintained its position as the top Android note taking application on the Market.

3banana Notes makes it easy to store your notes in a cloud and access them anywhere. Any information you throw into 3banana will sync to a free web account at Snaptic.com. You can also create notes on the web and see them appear on your phone which provides a seamless connection between your notes and devices. There are also a lot of options to share your notes so if someone missed a class and wants to borrow your notes, put ‘em in 3banana.

via 10 Android Apps For The Tech-Savvy Student | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

After a few months of beta releases, the all-inclusive note-taking service Evernote has launched a release version of its app for Android phones, making it very easy to snap pictures, jot notes or record audio notes for yourself.

The app’s smoothed out its kinks, bugs and looks over multiple beta releases, and does a fairly good job of integrating your Evernote account with your phone’s functions.

via Evernote Makes Its Official Debut In The Android Market | Lifehacker Australia.

Google’s mobile app store, the Android Market, has doubled in size in the last five months, and now hosts more than 20,000 applications, according to unofficial numbers from specialist portal AndroLib.

While 20,000 apps is an impressive number, the Android Market runs a distant second place to Apple’s App Store, which has more than 100,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Google is narrowing the gap, though, according to AndroLib’s numbers (Google doesn’t disclose Android Market figures); the selection is up from a reported 12,000 titles earlier this year to 20,000 in December. Google’s Android Market is a few months younger than Apple’s App store, but both stores are just over one year old.

via Android Market Hits 20,000 Apps Milestone – PC World.

Google is providing developers with a dashboard that is aimed at helping them decide which versions of the software to support and that shows the fragmentation of the Android platform.

The chart, displaying the percentages of Android phones using different versions of the software, also offers a peek at how the various Android phones are selling.

via Google Dashboard Shows Android Fragmentation – PC World Business Center.

Palm, which makes smartphones like the Pre and Pixi, said Thursday that its sales declined slightly from the previous quarter, although they were still up sharply from a year ago.

The company trimmed its net loss and said it had shipped a total of 783,000 smartphones to retailers in its fiscal second quarter, which ended Nov. 27. That was up 41 percent compared with the second quarter last year, but down 5 percent compared with the first quarter.

via Palm’s Sales Dip From Previous Quarter – NYTimes.com.

In the beginning, there was Notes, and it was… well, it was pretty awful, actually. No sync, no password protection, and mandatory Marker Felt. But then Apple created the App Store, and it was good. It’s been just over a year since the App Store opened, and plenty of notes apps have appeared, so we thought it was about time to round up some of the top suspects and see which one came out on top.

Before we dive into the assessments, a couple of notes: John Gruber has written a bit on this subject already. We did our best to ignore everything he said and come to our own conclusions, but in the interest of full disclosure, we did read both of those articles.

We excluded Evernote from this roundup for a couple of reasons: it does one too many things for a simple ‘notes’ app, and it doesn’t actually store most of your notes on the iPhone itself—except for manually chosen favorites, they’re all stored online—so if you don’t have internet access, you don’t have your notes. All the apps we included in this roundup keep a copy of your notes on the device itself, whether or not they also include a sync feature.

via Take Note: A roundup of ‘notes’ apps for the iPhone « Smoking Apples.

Next Monday sees the release of the latest mobile phone to run Google’s Android operating system. The Motorola Milestone is a significant launch and is already being touted as an “iPhone killer”, not least because it will be the first handset to run Android 2.0, the very latest version of the software.

Android – the brainchild of search giant Google and a consortium of handset makers and component manufacturers – is finally beginning to realise its huge potential, and so too are consumers.

via The Motorola Milestone: will Google Androids take over in 2010? – Telegraph.

For executives and field personnel alike, there's a lot to like about smartphones: They're always present, they're always on, and increasingly, they're always reliably connected. So if your organization is using smartphones only for e-mail, it's missing a huge opportunity.

via Practical Analysis: Smartphones — Passion To Profit And Productivity — Practical Analysis.

Students of previous generations had to go to great lengths and pay big prices to find the tools and resources they needed during college. Fortunately for today’s undergrad, almost everything we need to know about the world is at our fingertips. Use these links and tips, and your university years are sure to end happily, healthily, and successfully.

via 100 Free Productivity Tools to Get You Through School | Online Universities.

A while back I mentioned a vexing problem I was having with my speedy new HP desktop: Once a week or so, it would slow to a crawl. I spent weeks trying resolve the problem, but nothing worked. Eventually I threw in the towel, at least for a while.

When I revisited the issue a few weeks later, I couldn't remember what troubleshooting steps I'd tried. I was more or less back to square one. Read on for a terrific free service that helped me get organized to track down my problem, plus a Web site that turns PDFs into text, and an online storage service that acts like an extra hard drive on your computer.

via Free Online Productivity Tools From Hassle-Free PC – PC World.

Today the thought of missing out on a hot deal or a pressing business meeting just because you are traveling doesn’t have to be a concern. Staying on top of business while working on the road is easy when you arm yourself with the right productivity tools. The following tools are top picks not only because of their productivity value, but also because each one of them is a web based tool. These tools can be accessed wherever you are: from any laptop, smartphone or computer. They give you instant access to your account and the information whenever and wherever you need it. In today’s world convenience and accessibility rule.

via The Top Mobile Office Tools – Productivity Tools for the Road | Toktumi VoIP News.

We scoured the web to see who was still in the business of offering online note-taking applications, and here is what we came up with.

These are online notebooks for recording your personal notes and/or private web clips. They are listed with monthly unique users as reported by Compete.com:

If we missed anything, please leave a comment!

At long last we have a new ranking of the top iPhone Notes applications together with their overall ranking within the Productivity Category in the iTunes App Store.

Top Paid iPhone Apps in the Notes & Tasks Category

Top Free iPhone Apps in the Notes & Tasks Category

As in prior rankings, we recognize that there is a convergence of text notes, voice notes, task and to do lists, as well as mind mapping software for capturing your ideas.

What all of these apps have in common is that they are competing for your attention when you want to capture a thought on your iPhone.

Note that we are only looking for apps listed among the top 100 in the the Productivity section. We looked at both the top Free and top Paid apps.

Interesting to see that Wikipedia has a whole section on Notetaking, including a comparison of a number of notetaking software and websites.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Notetaking:

Notetaking is the practice of recording information captured from a transient source, such as an oral discussion at a meeting, or a lecture. Notes of a meeting are usually called minutes. The format of the initial record may often be informal and/or unstructured. One common format for such notes is shorthand, which can allow large amounts of information to be put on paper very quickly. Notes are frequently written in notebooks, though all sorts of paper may sometimes be used: for instance, some people like to usePost-It notes. Notetaking is an important skill for students, especially at the college level. Many different formats are used to structure information and make it easier to find and to understand, later. Computers, particularly tablet PCs and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are beginning to see wide use as notetaking devices. In some contexts, such as college lectures, the main purpose of taking notes may be to implant the material in the mind; the written notes themselves being of secondary importance.

You can find the link to the Wikipedia comparison of notetaking software here:

Comparison of notetaking software – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sign up for a free account, then punch your credentials into both the Android client and your browser. Bam, note syncing! It’s not a substitute for a full-fledged file syncing service like Dropbox, but 3banana is a drop-dead easy way to keep your notes/images synced between your Android handset and your computer.

via Ten Apps All New Android Users Should Check Out.

AK Notepad – A great little notepad that I frequently use to jot down an address or ideas that I have and don’t want to forget.  It’s not fancy but it works perfectly. You can also send your notes to a friend via email or SMS (see how-to video).

via 5 Great Productivity Apps For Your T-Mobile G1.

Astrid is a solid task manager developed by the Google folks (you know Google always makes good stuff). Tasks are easy to add and easy to check off when you’re done (my least favorite thing is having to “edit” a task to mark it “complete”). You can also add a timer – you know I like timers! – to help you build that sense of urgency. But what people like most about it isn’t the features but the notifications, which offer friendly encouragement to help motivate you to finish up.

via 12 Free Android Apps to Help Get Things Done (Part 1) – Stepcase Lifehack.

Many mobile platforms have some sort of note-taking application in the default app set, but it’s worth shopping around to find something more full-featured if you do a lot of idea capturing on the go. One thing to think about when considering apps is whether or not voice notes are important to your workflow; some apps will include support for both text and voice built-in, or you can consider two separate apps if you prefer to hunt for more specialization.

One of my favorite cross-platform note-taking apps is Evernote, featuring a robust cloud-syncing platform with Mac and Windows desktop apps, web-based access, and mobile clients for iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile and the Sony Ericsson X1, with an Android client available in a beta version. Evernote also supports voice memos, along with post by email and even via Twitter options.

Though it’s getting a bit long in the tooth, Microsoft OneNote is still a worthy option for Windows Mobile users and will be getting a refresh in early 2010. Android users might want to check out Notepad, Note Everything, and AK Notepad for text notes, and try using the VoiceText app as an input method for almost any of the other notepad apps to convert voice notes into text transcripts.

via Top Mobile Productivity Tools for the Small Business.

At long last we have a new ranking of the top 40 Android Notes applications together with their overall ranking within the Productivity Category in the Android Market.

As in prior rankings, we recognize that there is a convergence of text notes, voice notes, task and to do lists, as well as mind mapping software for capturing your ideas.

What all of these apps have in common is that they are competing for your attention when you want to capture a thought on your Android phone.

Note that we are only looking for Free Apps in the Productivity section. There are so many free apps to choose from, so why pay? And if it’s not in productivity, it’s not categorized in the section where it belongs.

There are many new entrants since the last ranking, but AK Notepad has maintained its position as the top Android note taking application on the Market.