Jan 17
2009

The category of info organizing software has been an important software are for me.  Being able to keep documents, notes, graphics, etc in a database and to be able to categorize content and find it quickly via organization or searching really makes it quite worthwhile.  The central database makes it easy to have the same content on multiple machines.  Over the years I have kept such virtual notebooks for programming related codes and notes, Catholic info and apologetics, computer tips, addresses, passwords, etc.

For several years I used a Windows product called Info Angel.  Their website is kind of tacky and the name is outputting, but I really liked this program from when it was first freeware and then bought it when it went shareware.  Like many note organizers you could create folders and subfolders to categorize content.  You could import html and rtf documents and create your own documents from scratch.  It has a very rich editing environment along the lines of a good html WYSIWYG editor that allowed using graphics and html elements such as tables.  The table editing was also pretty strong.  It used an Access database to store content and allowed you to create multiple databases if you wanted.  This was useful since I would copy this database back and forth from work to home so that I always had access to the same content.

When I moved to the Apple Mac platform I started to look for a new information organizer.  Ideally I wanted to find a program that would work on Windows and OSX and that could share a database.  Secondarily I wanted to find one that was free or under $40.  There are plenty of information organizers on the Mac and I looked through some of them and did not find a multi platform one.  Most of the Mac ones I first looked at also did not have the editing capabilities that I wanted.  For a while I settled on DevonThink Personal.  The treeview organization was like what I was use to and it had basic editing tools along with some interesting features and a good search capability.  But it was not what I would class a the ultimate product in this area, though it works quite well.

Back in March of 2008 the Mac Review Cast interviewed the CEO on the latest version of Evernote.  When I heard that Evernote was going to be for Mac and Windows and that it synchronized its database on the web I was certainly intrigued.  After getting an invite for the Beta program I downloaded it and started to use it.

Over the almost year since then the program has been constantly updated and I have come to like it more and more.  At first the interface put me off.  I am use to a treeview where I could add subfolders to organize content.  In Evernote you can make multiple notebooks and then add notes to those specific notebooks.  Since I keep plenty of notes in various categories I figured it would be quite inefficient to find content and that it would be cluttered.  I was proved wrong because of Evernotes excellent search capability.  Start typing something and it instantly finds notes that match and then you can simply click on the note you wanted.  Additionally you can tag notes.  This is quite useful and the tag area on the sidebar makes it easy to find content in multiple notebooks that have the same tag.  The fact that I could use the Windows client at work and the Mac Client at home with the notebooks automatically synched made me a really happy geek and I have now switched totally over to Evernote for all of my information management.

The fact that you can use Evernote for free is also quite excellent.  The free version is limited to uploading 40 MB of data a month and lacks SSL.  In my case even though I use this product a lot I have never come close to the monthly allowance.  Though the lack of SSL makes me not put any sensitive data into Evernote.  The paid version is $5 a month or $45 dollars for the whole year which is pretty reasonable and gives you 500 MB of upload, SSL, and Premium support along with some other benifits.

As a Mac user one of the things I have come to expect is beautiful and useful interfaces.  Here Evernote is no slouch and is quite pleasing to look at while also being easy to use.  The Mac version gives you 3 different data views (Windows version has 2 views). You can edit notes inline of the program or have them open in an editing windows.  The editing controls are simple word processing ones for font, alignment, font style, color, lists, etc.  But there are multiple ways to get data into Evernote fully formatted.  You can simply copy and paste from a word processor or from your browser, via email, , drag and drop, or importing from a document directly.  On the Mac you can use your iSight to create a new note.  Using images is one of the coolest parts of Evernote.  While pretty much all information management programs let you paste in graphics, Evernote goes a step further.  Once the image is synced on their server it is parsed for text using OCR.  After this when you search it will also find text within a graphic.  Not only is this cool, it actually works.  I scanned in receipts and was able to find content in the receipts with not problem. Would also be perfect for business cards.

evernote

The Windows interface of Evernote is pretty much identical to the Mac version which is a real plus.  They custom designed the interface not using common Windows controls which look quite spartan when compared to OSX controls.  I so wish more Windows programs took this attention to detail and concern for aesthetics in their interface as most Mac programs do. Though I must admit that Microsoft Office products have come a long way in this regard.

One of my favorite data formatting features is to use tables to present data I have stored in notes.  Unfortunately Evernote’s table handling capabilities are quite limited.  If you import or paste a document with a table it will appear just fine.  But if you want to further edit the table by inserting/deleting columns/rows or changing background color of rows you are going to have a problem.  The Windows version has some capability to add rows and depending on how you move the cursor via the keyboard  you can indeed add rows to an existing table, though there is no way to insert a table from Evernote itself.  The Mac version has a table icon and when pressed allows you to select the column/row size of the table you want to insert, though once inserted I found no way to insert/add rows/columns.  I hope they fix this in the future and at least should be consistent in the Mac/Windows versions.

This is a pure note taking application and does not include calendars, contact information, etc like many information management programs.  Though this is fine for me since I want a note program to do one thing well and Evernote mostly does that in handling note management.  There are additional features such a Saved Searches which let you save commonly used searches.  In Windows Evernote work with Outlook.  You can also clip information directly from most browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc) directly into Evernote via a toolbar.   Each Evernote account also lets you email to a specific url to add content to your default notebook from any email source.  So you could add notes easily from any phone with email capabilities.  For the iPhone/iPod Touch there is a free Evernote app that also lets you use Evernote directly and have access to all of your data.  This application works quite well and they have improved it since the first release to also be able to show some notes even when using the iPod Touch and you are not around Wi-Fi. There is also a Windows Mobile version available.  But you can use any internet capable phone/device to access/edit/add notes via your account on the Evernote website directly.

One problem with Evernote is the lack of exporting features.  As far as I could tell you could not export a single note back out.  Sure you could copy and paste the data to get it out, but you really should be able to export the information back out as text or html.    You though can email an individual note and so could email it to yourself.  But you should not  have to go to this length.

So overall I quite like this tool and I have no doubt it will only get better.  I will always be looking for the ultimate note organization application, but for now it is going to be hard to find one as flexible as Evernote.

Evernote site

A Quick Introduction to Evernote

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Jan 13
2009

As a fan of the social networking site Plurk I have been waiting for an iPhone/iPod Touch App to navigate it.  You can use the mobile page for Plurk, but it is quite simplistic.  For those who don’t know, Plurk is like Twitter except the comments are threaded and everything is displayed on a timeline.  The comment threads are the best part of Plurk.  In Twitter there is no connection between Tweet and reply and you can’t have a conversation as easily as you can on Plurk.

Now if you don’t know what Twitter is well it is difficult to explain.  Kind of a micro-blog limited to 140 characters per posts (called Tweets) where people Tweet everyting from heading to the dentist to passing links to sites on the internet, etc.  A boring thing to explain, but quite addictive once you get immersed.

As for iPlurk app I must say I am a bit dissapointed.  It provides three tabls for All, Unread, and Private to select in a list the various Plurks.  The Plurks are then listed vertically along with the Avatar and informaton about responses including unread responses (nice touch).  Click on the right side of the entry to read the comments.  To reply click on an icon in the top right and then enter via the standard keyboard.

In operation this is much better than the mobile version of Plurk, but it is also quite miminmalistic on features.  For one I would much prefer also having a horizontal view in addition to the standard horizontal view.  I really prefer the horizontal especially for replies and being able to use the easier keyboard.  The font used to display the Plurks is not very large at all and for me somewhat difficult to read.

There are some settings you can set at the preference pane that allows highlighting to make beginning words look like they do in Plurk.  Rich Text I believe gives you the ability to see emoticons.  Poll interval specifies how often it looks for new Plurks/replies. I am not sure what Timeline paging which I think allows you to easily move down 4 Plurks at a time (I like this).

I do hope they maintain this app to add more features.  It would be nice to be able to graphically select emoticons like you can in Plurk.  It would be nice also to have a mechanism to select commenter names to reply to. Right now clicking on their name will bring you to their timeline.

One nice thing is that if you click on an entry you prevoiusly Plurked you can choose to edit it, delete it, or reply to it.

So final verdict is that I will be using this app since it is an improvment over over the mobile page for Plurk for the most part since it is easier to read through and reply to Plurks.  It costs $1.99 so it won’t set you back much, but like I said I hope it is maintained and updated with new features in the future.

Here is their web page which has screen shots of iPlurk.

iTunes App Store link.

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Jan 12
2009

I have always been a reluctant laptop user and always more of a desktop kind of guy.  Sure laptops can be quite useful for there portability, but they always feel like so much compromise when using them.  Over the years I have used multiple laptops associated with work and pretty much always attached external keyboards and mice to them.  The interface to use them is what really gets in the way and you kind of defeat the portability purpose when you have to carry external peripherals to go with them.  Some time back I had a Dell Duo-Core machine with a good amount of memory and a 17″ screen, but I just hated typing with it and using the trackpad and trackpad button was always a chore.  It just never melted into the interface background.  My wife’s 17″ inch HP laptop is much the same and the trackpad would drive me to frustration in short time as the cursor would seem to go pretty much willy-nilly.  The actually processing of laptops have though quite advanced over the years and there is much less compromise in this area.

Having given my Dell laptop to my daughter a year ago I have been without a laptop and would just resort to using my wife’s when I needed one.  But using that HP trackpad has me offering it up in short order.  So last week while at the Navy Exchange I decided to look at getting one of the new Mac laptops.  I had originally planned on getting a middle-0f-the-line MacBook.  I was trying to exercise the virtue of prudence by thinking that all I needed was a MacBook and not a Mac Book Pro. Though I have to admit that just adding Pro to the model name made it more desirable for me. But I was all set to go with the MacBook, the only problem was is that they had it sitting right next to the 15″ MacBook Pro.  This is where all of the rationalizing started to kick in.  First I noticed that the MacBook Pro and the MacBook I had wanted had less than a $400 price difference.   Plus a 15″ screen suits my tastes much better than as 13″ one.  So the rationalizations continued as I thought “hey I plan to keep this machine for several years so why not get the one which has Firewire and and Expresscard/34 slot which the Mac Pro does not.  Throw in the fact that it has two (count em two) video cards the $400 price difference quickly becomes moot or so I justified.  The one nice thing about being able to shop in a Navy Exchange is that the prices are slightly lower than in an Apple Store and it is tax free.

Now onto the review.

The  Mac laptop line now uses the aluminum  unibody enclosure (except the white MacBook). This gives the laptop a real solid feeling while at the same time being quite thin.  The magnetic latch is an improvement over previous MBPs.  Since it was carved out of a solid block of aluminum the solid feeling is more than skin deep.  The LED-backlit widescreen display is really quite beautiful and the colors quite vibrant.  The glossy screen can be disconcerting at first, but I had already grown use to a glossy screen on an iMac and so now don’t even think of it and in fact now prefer it.  When it comes to aesthetics it is hard to surpass Apple.  The machine looks more like a piece of art with the metal body, black keys, and glowing white Apple log.  But the reason to have a computer it to be able to do something with it.

The true test for me was usability when it came o the the keyboard and trackpad.  I must admit to being rather shocked at how fast I was able to use the keyboard and to type at normal speed.  I have used plenty of laptops with full sized keyboards, but they just never felt right.  For me the MPB keyboard is just about perfect, though this is quite a subjective area.  What blew me away was the trackpad. Apple has gone to a larger trackpad with no buttons where the whole trackpad is a button that you can click.  This is a trackpad that I was able to use immediately with hardly any learning curve at all.  Now I realize Steve Jobs mission to remove every possible button to excess and when it came to Apple mice I always considered this a fault.  This no button trackpad is simplicity itself, but actually usable.  I can scroll by using two fingers anywhere on the trackpad.  I can right click by pressing down with two fingers (or clicking in a selected bottom corner).  Then there are the variety of other multitouch gestures to zoom, rotate, bring up expose, etc.  I love this trackpad so much that I actually want a keyboard with a trackpad for my desktop machine.  While if they had such a keyboard I would still use the regular mouse, I would also use the trackpad a lot.  I tried out the beta version of Firefox 3.1 which supports multitouch and it really was a great way to browse.  I had been a been a reluctant laptop user, but the MPB is really a joy to use.  Plus the fact that the keyboard is backlit is quite a plus in many situations.

The hardware inside includes and Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.4 ghz with a 1066MHz frontside bus.  2GB of DDR3 SDRAM memory which Apple says is expandable to 4, but some have gotten 6GB to work fine (though others with problems).  A 250GB hard drive along with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and a 9600M GT with 256 MB.  The dual video chips are pretty cool since if you are running on battery you can switch to the less capable card to preserve battery life.  Though it is quite annoying that to switch video chips you have to go to the preference panel to do so and then log out and back in.  This should be made much easier and hopefully software can address this in the future.  The MPB is also available with a 2.8 GHZ chip, but I did not see the price tradeoff/benifit as worth it.  Other standards include 802.11n draft specification, Bluetooth, and Gigabyte Ethernet, but this is pretty standard for modern laptops.  A bottom cover allows you to easily access the battery swap out the hard drive or add memory.  This is an improvement over previous generations of the MBP where changing the hard drive took much more disassembling and was not for the casual user.

As with previous Intel Mac laptops the MagSafe power port is use.  The power connector uses a magnet and quickly attaches to the side of the laptop.  I have already found this to be a great feature since it easily disconnects if you trip over the cord and it won’t bring the laptop down crashing along with the cord.  Plus there is just the juvenile fun of connecting it and having the magnets pull it together.  One nice bit of design is that the power brick end  of the power has a couple of ways of connecting to electrical power.  The little white brick itself has 2 prongs that pop out to plug in.  You can pop this off of the power brick and connect a longer 3 pronged cord to use instead.  I found this invaluable to use in a hotel room to be able to connect up farther away.  Nice bit of design for portability and having the ability to add an extension.

One real surprise was the sound quality.  On either side of the keyboard are speakers with hundreds of tiny drilled holes for the grill.  Best sound I have ever heard come natively out of a laptop.  Though as you would expect there is not much bass sound.  The new 17″ MBP is probably even better since they have allowed even more space for the speakers.

So the hardware is quite capable and previously PC Magazine had rated the last generation MBP as the fastest Vista machine available.  No doubt the latest MBP would also make quite a capable Vista machine, but I wanted a Mac laptop primarily to run OSX in the first place.  When my wife and I would go traveling and we would take a Windows laptop I felt like I had lost so much capability.  There are so many Mac programs I have grown to love that just don’t have a Windows counterpart or an inadequate one.  I am not a MS Windows hater, it is just that I actually enjoy using OSX and the Mac shareware community turns out some really amazing software.  I find this laptop to be speedier and more responsive than my iMac which also had a 2.44 GHZ core duo.  So I definately do not feel like I have lost power when using this machine.  Though I will probably add more memory later just so that I can run VMWare Fusion and Windows 7 or Ubuntu when I need to as a Virtual Machine.  The MacBook Pro can easily be a desktop replacement machine.

Since I started using this machine I have been using Spaces a lot more.  Spaces is a virtual window program that is part of OSX Leopard and really makes handling multiple windows a snap.  I don’t use Spaces on my main machine simply because 3 monitors provide quite enough screen real estate. But for a laptop Spaces is quite excellent.  I setup programs to always run in a certain space so I always know what Space a loaded program is in and makes switching between windows quite easily.

Now I come to the part of the review where I come out of Apple fanboy mode into a more critical mode.  When it comes to ports Apple seems to be always looking for the next best thing, unfortunately they do it before anybody else heads that way.  To hook up an external monitor you need to use the Mini DisplayPort.  Yes Apple could not even use the fairly small DisplayPort connector that is slowly being adopted, they had to make it smaller.  While Apple has said they will license this smaller port for free to other manufacturers it has quite a long ways to go before it will be supported by monitor manufacturers.  To add insult to injury Apple does not include a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter which you have to buy separately.  I guess they want to encourage you to buy a $799 24 ” Apple Cinema Display that supports Mini DisplayPort (along with pretty much acting as a dock ).   This annoys me even though I am unlikely to hook up an external monitor to the laptop anyway since I have the Mac Pro desktop.  The machine also has only 2 USB ports which is less than most Windows laptops you will find out there.  The fact that there is only 1 Firewire 800/400 port doesn’t bother me though and the number of USB ports is not a concern for me  either.  Right now I can only foresee using USB for a backup hard drive and a thumbdrive anyway.  Apple goes quite minimal on ports, but considering just how thin the MPB is it is amazing how much they do manage to get what they have in.

When I had previously gotten an iMac it came with an Apple remote which I came to use quite often.  So does the MPB come with one?  Why of course not.  After forking over the money for a MBP in the first place you have to buy a $19 Apple remote separately. Apple does this sort stuff all the time.  The iPod use to come with a dock and a little powerbrick to charge the iPod using a regular socket.  With each generation of iPod you got less and less external peripherals which of course are sold separately.  Come on Apple what does the Apple remote cost to make – 2 or 3 bucks?  Or how about a year of MobileMe with the purchase of a new Mac or at least at a discounted price? How about iWork with a Pro machine. Apple at times wants to nickel and dime you to death after you have already put out some serious cash for a Mac.  Though on the bright side OSX with iLife really provides a lot of capability and software that you would have to pay extra for in the Windows world.  Not only that you don’t get all the crapware that comes with almost all Windows machines.

So I am quite happy with the Mac Book Pro and find it the first laptop that I can really enjoy and most of all can use constantly without feeling the laptop compromise.

A couple of days after I bought this machine Apple announced at Macworld the new 17″ Macbook Pro.  At close to $900 dollars more than I paid for the MPB I bought, I am not feeling any buyers remorse.  Plus I think the 15 inch is just the right size for both portability  and still having sufficient screen real estate.  The 17″ does come with slightly faster CPUs and can handle 8 GB of ram.  The new technology battery is suppose to get 7 to 8 hours of battery life (whatever that is in the real world), though it is not user replaceable.  I must admit that the 17″ MBP is a pretty serious machine for those who need the size and it is pretty amazing that is is only 6.6 pounds which is only 1.1 pound more than the 15″ model.

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Jan 7
2009

This is my current setup and a setup I will be using for the next couple of years at least.

mycomputer

Obviously a Catholic geek setup.  The monitors are mix and match.  A Samsung 19″, Samsung 24″ Widescreen, and an HP 22″ Widescreen.  The microphone is a Blue Snowball. Computer is a 2008 Mac Pro along with a 2008 15″ Macbook Pro.  Though the laptop is only in the picture since I was transferring data and it normally resides in the bedroom.  Wireless Logitech keyboard with Mac keys.  Logitech 5.1 sound system, though nothing fancy. Behind the monitors is a DirectTV DVR which I play through a EyeTV Hybid USB Tuner.  And yest I spend way too long in front of this setup.

Catholic stuff includes.  Sacred Heart Statue, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Statue. St. Thomas Aquinas Statue.  Divine Mercy picture.  Sacred heart Picture, and a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary (associated with the Miraculous Medal I believe), plus of course a crucifix.

The Guitar is a red Ibanez SG knockoff, also nothing fancy – but I just dink around with it in the first place when in the mood.  Alas my dreams of heavy metal guitarist are beyond me.

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Jan 6
2009

This weekend while at Costco I noticed that they had LED flood lights.  In the front of my house I have use for two flood lights that come on at nighttime.  I had read though that LED lighting for the time being is fairly expensive.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that these LED flood lights were $16.  While that is 2 to 3 times more than a normal 100 watt flood lights I thought it would be much more convenient considering that having to change these bulbs required dragging out the ladder and they never seem to last much more than six months to a year.

The fact that they only use 5 watts a power might mean that they might actually pay for themselves over time in energy saving and they are rated for 30,000 hours.  So for the time they would be on that is close to almost seven years of use.  Though these hour ratings in real life might be much different.  CFL bulbs are often rated for five to six years of use, but in experience I find that in reality it is much less.  While some of them might actually survive that long, I seem to replace them much more often than I should have to.  Though LED’s being solid state should be their very nature last much longer than  previous bulbs.

So I bought two fo them to try out to see if they would give enough light to illuminate the front of the house at nighttime. I was quite happy with how well they did illuminate the yard with a much whiter light than other bulbs.  Quite amazing that they only use five watts of electricity for the amount of light they give.  Now I am a global warming skeptic, but am more than willing to use devices that use electricty because I am not a skeptic when it comes to the electric bill.  I have enough electronics drawing current that I am like an energy efficient device.  If I get three years out of these bulbs I will be happy, if six years or more ecstatic.

Now just waiting for affordable indoor LED lighting.

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