Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

news.ycombinator.com

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

#51

Zim is pretty decent if you like something on the desktop and like wikis. Its strength is in quickly organizing a bunch of related ideas/notes (being a wiki) but it is much faster to use than a browser-based wiki. http://zim-wiki.org/ I tend to just scribble in Vim though, or use paper and pencil.

+1 for Zim, even if you don't much like wikis. You don't actually have to use wiki markup or anything with Zim if you don't want to. You can just organize things with folders, subfolders and tags and never worry about creating links.

I find it to be sort of halfway between Notational Velocity and Evernote. Like nv it stores everything as flat files, but like Evernote you can add some structure to how your organize things.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

#52
Best multiplatform notetaker: wiznote. http://wiz.cn/index.html

Yes, it's a chinese product, so the servers will be in China. Hopefully the NSA has a bit of a harder time, and the local gov. doesn't have that many people reading English notes :)

Features are amazing, but more than anything I like the fact that everything is html, with headings assigned to shortcuts. Proper outlining.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

#53
post #10

Does anyone know of any note apps which support Linux, iOS, Windows, and OS X. Starts up fast. For example, vi starts up fast. Works offline and online. Always syncs without a manual step. I don't care about pictures, or audio, or OCR, etc. I just want the basics to work and work perfectly.

Zim and nvPY are cross-platform and save everything as plain text, which you can open and edit on iOS with Dropbox or something similar.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

#54
post #43
post #22

I created a project called http://dok.io The goal is to easily create and forget (like in gmail) small piece of info (dok). The dynamic search helps to find them if needed later. Of course it's collaborative (like a wiki) and everyone in the team can add/edit just by typing in the dok (like in asana), no edit button or whatever. Oh and behind, it's HTML5/JS with Meteor. Feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Since you asked for feedback... get a native speaker to review your copy. "leverage on" - you don't need the "on" (this is in 2 places). "Notes are information that aimed at becoming knowledge" - doesn't make sense, perhaps say "aims" instead? hierarchizations - just say hierarchies. Well, you asked : P

Thank you! You right, I'll have to find a native speaker. I'll fix that.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

#55

Zim is pretty decent if you like something on the desktop and like wikis. Its strength is in quickly organizing a bunch of related ideas/notes (being a wiki) but it is much faster to use than a browser-based wiki. http://zim-wiki.org/ I tend to just scribble in Vim though, or use paper and pencil.

I also use Zim.

The nice thing is that Zim uses plain .txt files without the need of a database. So you can also view and edit your notes/pages using any text editor instead of Zim itself. Making backups is also very easy this way.

I keep these text files in sync across my devices using owncloud. That way I can also use it on my smartphone by just viewing the plain text. No extra apps necessary.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

#57
post #7

Definitely check out Springpad: https://springpad.com/about For me, I've been using Basecamp for practically everything. It's so useful and reliable, and the mobile site has the best most functional interface I've ever used.

The problem with these (and all the other alternatives I've seen in this post so far) is that they ignore the one thing that locks people into Evernote despite the bugs, poor interface etc: scanner-support and OCR. Sure, if you have your information in digital form already, there's a bunch of decent solutions, but in terms of killing the paper mountain I am not aware of anything that supports that workflow, certainly…

what do you mean by "killing the paper mountain"? The OCR feature of Evernote Premium?

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Evernote?

#58

How about OneNote? They have a desktop version, tablet version, online versions, and clients for iOS/Android/WP8 as well. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/

I'm hooked to OneNote, started using it a year back. From what I've seen it's extremely intuitive. Creating a table is a breeze and so is the indenting.
Post reply on HN