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Looking At And Longing For Mars: Reflections on a childhood dream.
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Long After The Boys Of Summer Have Gone: What makes a relationship work?
Winter Of Our Feline Discontent: What the cat wants, the cat gets. But what DOES it want?
To Tell The Truth: There may be no honor among thieves, but can't we find it even in a few good men and women?
Should The Human Brain Retire?: We know that we cannot win forever. We know that machines will continue to improve. So why don't we let the human brain retire gracefully now, with honors?
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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Sat - July 12, 2003
Review of Notetaker 2003 v1.5: Simply elegant software
AquaMinds' NoteTaker 2003 is
outstanding software to organize notes, photos, and multimedia clippings simply
and easily.
Every
so often you discover a piece of Macintosh software so well-conceived and so
well-executed that it radiates goodness with every keystroke. For students who
take copious notes and for professionals who need a convenient way to keep
electronic records, Aquaminds' NoteTaker 2003
for OS X is such a product. It is nothing less than the digital equivalent of a
Swiss army knife for collecting, arranging, and presenting
information.
NoteTaker 2003 is an outliner, an indexer, an audio recorder, a multimedia catalogue, a web site clipping service, a presentation manager, and a web site publisher all in one. Yet at 11.4 megabytes it is smaller in size than Apple's Safari browser and nearly as fast. With a Cocoa user interface and support for the popular RTF, XML, vCard 3.0, and PDF standards, creating, exporting, and sharing information with colleagues on and off the Mac platform is breeze.
Outlining and Note Taking
NoteTaker 2003's interface resemble spiral bound notebook with tabbed chapters whose virtual pages may be flipped open, paged through, and perused much like their paper equivalents. The software automatically creates a hyperlinked table of contents for your notebooks while you type—and, optionally, generates and updates a detailed index of their contents. These functions make NoteTaker 2003 an ideal tool for creating manuals as well as for organizing notes.
NoteTaker 2003 pages may be skinned to look like plain, legal, or graph paper, but the difference is purely cosmetic. All NoteTaker 2003 pages accept an infinite amount of data entered with the software's powerful outlining capabilities, which use generally accepted command conventions—the return key starts a new topic, the tab key indents and demotes text to create a child topic, and the shift-tab combination promotes a child topic to the next highest outline level. Outlines may be created with or without bullet points, paragraph numbering, legal numbering, or in the traditional Harvard (I, A, (1), (a)) style. Outlines that are frequently reused—an address or recipe card, for instance—may be saved as templates and retrieved from a pull-down menu in a toolbar optionally visible at the top of every page. A special kind of outline called a "To Do" list updates itself every 24 hours to remove tasks you have marked as completed.
NoteTaker 2003 lacks the ability to show multiple columns and perform numeric calculations which is a feature of some popular dedicated outliners, such as OmniOutliner. Unlike, OmniOutliner, however, NoteTaker 2003 treats outlines as a mere starting point for building more complex documents replete with internet references and rich media links. Drag a photograph, graphic, sound file, or movie into NoteTaker 2003 and it embeds itself in your notes. Drag in a Microsoft Word file relevant to a topic and you'll have easy access to that file simply by clicking its image in NoteTaker 2003. NoteTaker 2003 intelligently updates stored links, documents, and folders in its outlines when their corresponding files are moved.
If you prefer a custom set of keyboard commands to NoteTaker 2003's standards, that's no problem. NoteTaker 2003's preferences enable remapping of the entire keyboard. And if typing isn't your thing, the software also supports Apple's InkWell technology for handwritten notes or sketches and includes MP3 audio recording capabilities right in the application for recording meetings or on-the-fly ideas. Very handy.
Web Pages and Slide Shows
NoteTaker 2003 makes it easy to create a working web site in minutes without coding a line of HTML. A "Create Web Notebook ..." feature saves notebooks as web sites which retain the spiral-bound appearance and tabbed navigation features of the original note file. If you want to link to other sites, you'll find it convenient that hypertext links entered into a NoteTaker 2003 file become live links and can be clicked to launch a web browser. The software also can optionally display pages as full-screen slide shows for quick presentations with either manual or automated slide advance.
You might expect software with advanced web site creation and NoteTaking abilities to excel at gathering information from the internet. NoteTaker 2003 is indeed well-equipped for this function. A sophisticated clipping service allows you to clip information to pre-designated pages of your notebook from web browsers, email applications, word processors, and database systems without even opening NoteTaker 2003. In addition, you can create system-wide NoteTaker 2003 search services to look up information in your notebooks while working in other Cocoa-based OS X applications. Now, you'll always know where you read that interesting article, and you'll be able to recall it—instantly.
Marking and Highlighting Documents
Setting bookmarks within a notebook is easy. Dragging, dropping, or clicking a Page Mark tool creates a section or page alias for instant access from another notebook, the Mac OS X desktop, the Dock, or another application. And when relevant information and content appears on multiple pages, a special Highlight tool can collect it to review and summarize. Selecting the Highlight tool opens a dialog box in which you can set values for notebook entries to summarize including text strings, categories, priorities, flags, and dates. When you press the Highlight command button, NoteTaker 2003 searches the current notebook for results matching the values that you set and places them on a new page in a new section called Summary so you can view all relevant information in one place.
Problem Areas
All this functionality doesn't come without a price—and in NoteTaker 2003's case, two costs predominate:
-- The software's many features impose a steep learning curve upon the user who wants to take full advantage of its capabilities. Even with an Aqua interface, menus teem with a startling number of options to choose from and preferences to set. AquaMinds compensates by providing detailed documentation in the form of a notebook file, but at just over 70 pages long, even this can be a daunting read. A recent, welcome development is the availability of online video tutorials to supplement the help file by explaining NoteTaker 2003's most widely used functions.
-- The software sells for a whopping $69.95 ($39.95 for an individual academic license). This makes NoteTaker 2003 one of the most expensive Macintosh shareware programs available. With a robust and well-considered feature set, this idea processor may merit that valuation—but by all means give the 30-day demonstration version a try before you buy. If NoteTaker intrigues you but its price is beyond your means, you may be interested in Circus Ponies' $49.95 ($29.95 for an individual academic license) NoteBook for Mac OS X, which includes similar outlining, indexing, navigation, web clipping and image importing features but lacks NoteTaker's more advanced toolset. A favorable review of NoteBook by a fellow Blogger can be found here.
Coming soon: A Windows version?
AquaMinds has announced plans to make NoteTaker available for Windows and other platforms in 2004.
Overall rating: A-
Thoughtfulness of Design: A
Ease of Use: B+
Interface: B+
Price: C+
Pros: Versatile note taking with sophisticated multimedia and web clipping capabilities.
Cons: Steep learning curve required to fully exploit more obscure functions. Price is high for Macintosh shareware. Requires Mac OS X 10.2 or higher to run.
NoteTaker 2003 is an outliner, an indexer, an audio recorder, a multimedia catalogue, a web site clipping service, a presentation manager, and a web site publisher all in one. Yet at 11.4 megabytes it is smaller in size than Apple's Safari browser and nearly as fast. With a Cocoa user interface and support for the popular RTF, XML, vCard 3.0, and PDF standards, creating, exporting, and sharing information with colleagues on and off the Mac platform is breeze.
Outlining and Note Taking
NoteTaker 2003's interface resemble spiral bound notebook with tabbed chapters whose virtual pages may be flipped open, paged through, and perused much like their paper equivalents. The software automatically creates a hyperlinked table of contents for your notebooks while you type—and, optionally, generates and updates a detailed index of their contents. These functions make NoteTaker 2003 an ideal tool for creating manuals as well as for organizing notes.
NoteTaker 2003 pages may be skinned to look like plain, legal, or graph paper, but the difference is purely cosmetic. All NoteTaker 2003 pages accept an infinite amount of data entered with the software's powerful outlining capabilities, which use generally accepted command conventions—the return key starts a new topic, the tab key indents and demotes text to create a child topic, and the shift-tab combination promotes a child topic to the next highest outline level. Outlines may be created with or without bullet points, paragraph numbering, legal numbering, or in the traditional Harvard (I, A, (1), (a)) style. Outlines that are frequently reused—an address or recipe card, for instance—may be saved as templates and retrieved from a pull-down menu in a toolbar optionally visible at the top of every page. A special kind of outline called a "To Do" list updates itself every 24 hours to remove tasks you have marked as completed.
NoteTaker 2003 lacks the ability to show multiple columns and perform numeric calculations which is a feature of some popular dedicated outliners, such as OmniOutliner. Unlike, OmniOutliner, however, NoteTaker 2003 treats outlines as a mere starting point for building more complex documents replete with internet references and rich media links. Drag a photograph, graphic, sound file, or movie into NoteTaker 2003 and it embeds itself in your notes. Drag in a Microsoft Word file relevant to a topic and you'll have easy access to that file simply by clicking its image in NoteTaker 2003. NoteTaker 2003 intelligently updates stored links, documents, and folders in its outlines when their corresponding files are moved.
If you prefer a custom set of keyboard commands to NoteTaker 2003's standards, that's no problem. NoteTaker 2003's preferences enable remapping of the entire keyboard. And if typing isn't your thing, the software also supports Apple's InkWell technology for handwritten notes or sketches and includes MP3 audio recording capabilities right in the application for recording meetings or on-the-fly ideas. Very handy.
Web Pages and Slide Shows
NoteTaker 2003 makes it easy to create a working web site in minutes without coding a line of HTML. A "Create Web Notebook ..." feature saves notebooks as web sites which retain the spiral-bound appearance and tabbed navigation features of the original note file. If you want to link to other sites, you'll find it convenient that hypertext links entered into a NoteTaker 2003 file become live links and can be clicked to launch a web browser. The software also can optionally display pages as full-screen slide shows for quick presentations with either manual or automated slide advance.
You might expect software with advanced web site creation and NoteTaking abilities to excel at gathering information from the internet. NoteTaker 2003 is indeed well-equipped for this function. A sophisticated clipping service allows you to clip information to pre-designated pages of your notebook from web browsers, email applications, word processors, and database systems without even opening NoteTaker 2003. In addition, you can create system-wide NoteTaker 2003 search services to look up information in your notebooks while working in other Cocoa-based OS X applications. Now, you'll always know where you read that interesting article, and you'll be able to recall it—instantly.
Marking and Highlighting Documents
Setting bookmarks within a notebook is easy. Dragging, dropping, or clicking a Page Mark tool creates a section or page alias for instant access from another notebook, the Mac OS X desktop, the Dock, or another application. And when relevant information and content appears on multiple pages, a special Highlight tool can collect it to review and summarize. Selecting the Highlight tool opens a dialog box in which you can set values for notebook entries to summarize including text strings, categories, priorities, flags, and dates. When you press the Highlight command button, NoteTaker 2003 searches the current notebook for results matching the values that you set and places them on a new page in a new section called Summary so you can view all relevant information in one place.
Problem Areas
All this functionality doesn't come without a price—and in NoteTaker 2003's case, two costs predominate:
-- The software's many features impose a steep learning curve upon the user who wants to take full advantage of its capabilities. Even with an Aqua interface, menus teem with a startling number of options to choose from and preferences to set. AquaMinds compensates by providing detailed documentation in the form of a notebook file, but at just over 70 pages long, even this can be a daunting read. A recent, welcome development is the availability of online video tutorials to supplement the help file by explaining NoteTaker 2003's most widely used functions.
-- The software sells for a whopping $69.95 ($39.95 for an individual academic license). This makes NoteTaker 2003 one of the most expensive Macintosh shareware programs available. With a robust and well-considered feature set, this idea processor may merit that valuation—but by all means give the 30-day demonstration version a try before you buy. If NoteTaker intrigues you but its price is beyond your means, you may be interested in Circus Ponies' $49.95 ($29.95 for an individual academic license) NoteBook for Mac OS X, which includes similar outlining, indexing, navigation, web clipping and image importing features but lacks NoteTaker's more advanced toolset. A favorable review of NoteBook by a fellow Blogger can be found here.
Coming soon: A Windows version?
AquaMinds has announced plans to make NoteTaker available for Windows and other platforms in 2004.
Overall rating: A-
Thoughtfulness of Design: A
Ease of Use: B+
Interface: B+
Price: C+
Pros: Versatile note taking with sophisticated multimedia and web clipping capabilities.
Cons: Steep learning curve required to fully exploit more obscure functions. Price is high for Macintosh shareware. Requires Mac OS X 10.2 or higher to run.