Evernote for the Mac - I can’t wait
Wow, just wow. I just watched the video for the upcoming version of Evernote, an application I used to use regularly back when I was a Windows user.
Evernote’s claim to fame was that it allowed users to capture notes in a never-ending ribbon of paper paradigm. You could simply scroll back in time endlessly looking at the notes and information that you had captured to your Evernote file. Neat stuff, and really useful.
I’ve never really found a note taking utility on the Mac that was as seamless as Evernote was on Windows. But I’ve also moved a lot of my note taking to online tools like Google Notebook and Backpack. I like being able to get to my notes from my phone or Pocket PC.
Jay Hathaway, one of my fellow bloggers at Download Squad, wrote a post that mentioned that Evernote has a beta version for the Mac coming out, along with a web version and mobile versions. Wow! As excited as I was to hear this, I couldn’t help but think that I’m not sure I want to be tied to an offline software tool for ubiquitous capture of information.
Then I watched the screencast of the new Evernote that is coming out. It blew me away.
Everything you put into your system can be synchronized and is therefore available from the web and mobile devices. Plus, it has built-in character recognition so if you take a photo of something with text on it and put that into your Evernote library, the text in those objects is searchable - even handwritten text!
Of course I signed up for the beta right away. I can’t wait to give this a try. The screencast shows some very mature looking user interfaces, so I suspect the beta will already be a very usable product. This is one product release I’m looking forward to.
Line Rider to the ultimate extreme
This Line Rider video is off the charts insane. It’s an illustrated video, meaning someone took a bare-bones but impressive line rider course and put illustrations all over it to make it even cooler.
Test post from Flock
I have to admit that when I first heard about Flock, I thought that the hype was totally out of proportion with what it deserved to be. A Mozilla-based browser with a bunch of baked-in extensions seemed like a dumbed-down version of what someone could easily cobble together with Firefox and some carefully chosen add-ins. Of course, the downside of doing it yourself is that you need to do the legwork of figuring out what to install, then maintain the install yourself - sort of a pain. The upside, though, is that you get exactly the functionality you’re looking for, and nothing extra.
I gave Flock a try back then (well over a year ago), and while I was pleasantly surprised that it was better than I expected, it certainly wasn’t compelling so I promptly forgot all about it.
Recently I’ve heard a lot of people online (particularly ones I trust) talking about how good the Flock 1.0 beta is. While I’ve been trying to avoid the “me too” attitude of having to try every new tool that gets some good comments, I have to admit my attitude about maintaining a browser with all of my preferred extensions is getting a bit cumbersome. If Flock can get it 75% right, it’s good enough for me.
Surprisingly, Flock seems to be getting it right. All of the baked-in functionality works extremely well, and is virtually seamless. While I haven’t yet tried installing some very important add-ins like Greasemonkey, I hear that Flock is compatible with many (but not all) Firefox extensions.
If you’re looking for a browser that integrates with your online life, services like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, or del.icio.us, have a hard look at Flock. Like me, you might be surprised at what you see.
Oh, and did I mention it integrates with your blog? This post was written entirely in the built-in blog editor in Flock.
Tags: flock, browser, web, beta
Testing Ecto
I’ve been reading quite a bit about the latest beta version of Ecto, and decided that I had to try it out for myself. Typically I’m not big on external editors for blogs, however I have to say this one is growing on me, and I’ve only been using it for about four minutes.
I wish that it were possible to have my AOL overlords allow API access of some manner so that I could use one unified interface (something like Ecto) to write posts for all of the blogs that I could potentially write for.
If you’re a Mac user and you want to see what I’m talking about, check out this page.
Hat tip to David Chartier.
Google is a big whiner - google’s a verb, get over it
[Update] It seems Seth Godin agrees with me, at least that’s how I’m reading it. [/Update]
I’m sorry, but I don’t care in the slightest that Google doesn’t want people to use the word “google” as a verb meaning “to search” in general terms. In fact, to me it sounds a bit silly when spoken out loud. But their bellyaching (same link) actually makes me want to do it more.
Yes, you’re Google - at this point who gives a rat’s ass if your name remains trademarked? Everyone knows who you are.
I’m just not remotely feeling sorry for you.
Now excuse me while I go google some stuff using Yahoo’s search because I’m annoyed with Google.
Tags: Google, to google, Google as a verb, Google usage
