In a recent article I gave you the run-down on how I’ve set out my own group of Writing Notebooks, including an organisational approach towards finding stuff I’ve scribbled in them. In that article I readily admitted that I wasn’t one to normally walk around with – or be near – a real-life notebook when that eureka moment took place, but that I did use technology to help out. #
I made mention of my iPhone 3G, and here you will find how I use it for note-taking (with two options).
Online Notebooks and iPhone 3Gs
Normally for general note-taking and planning I use Microsoft’s OneNote which comes with Office. As it came free, I use it, and I actually like many of the features found within. However, OneNote is a desktop client app with no ability to store notes or note databases elsewhere, either online, or via the iPhone.
However, for the sake of compatibility between a mobile device for note-taking, and a database, nothing can beat Online or Cloud storage. The iPhone, as much as it is fantastic, still does not have a blue-tooth keyboard, so I can not suggest that writing more than a few sentences at a time is feasible on the touch-screen keyboard supplied. However, when I’m in town shopping, or out on the local dog field running my dog, and an inspiring idea emerges, I can cope with thumbing this into the phone knowing I can access these notes later on from online.
1. Evernote and the iPhone 3G
With EverNote’s latest version, users have access to a website database of their notes, a desktop version (both Mac and Windows) and the iPhone app. All three synchronise quickly between them.
Evernote as a desktop version, has been around for a few years now, and the ribbon of notes searchable by keywords and dates are relatively well-known. With the new Evernote Plus, accessing and storing your notes just got even easier, and more mobile. With your notes stored in a cloud online, you can access these from any PC out there, should you not be at home or work. And with the iPhone, you can create new notes and edit these also.
The free version (create an account at Evernote online) provides 40MB upload allowance with some limitations on file types for synchronisation but access to all three versions to download or setup (web, desktop and iPhone). If you require more storage or allowances, the Premium account ($5 per month / $45 per year) will provide this.
Evernote notes can take the form of text notes, web clippings (using browser plugins for Internet Explorer or Firefox browsers), Audio notes, High Resolution photos or mobile snapshots.
On the iPhone, the ability to take photographs as a note is excellent, perhaps beaten only by the voice recording aspect. This is particularly good when some inspiration hits you while you’re out and about and you need to note it down quickly into a notebook or somehow.
Notes can be encrypted for security off the cloud base (or website where everything is stored). Inside of the webside, you can send individual notes via email, or attach files to these. With the geocoding side of the iPhone, notes can be mapped through Google Maps with location of where they were created.
The Desktop Client is where you have copious searching and sorting abilities. Printed and handwritten text within images can be found using recognition technology also.
The iPhone application has an additional favourites function, allowing you to save some of your notes, for offline access. Whilst offline, or away from your connection, you can create new notes, and these go into a Pending area until synchonised across the cloud. Once you’ve signed onto Evernote the first time using your account userid, the iPhone remembers these details, meaning you can create a new note very quickly – as soon as you hit the elephant icon.
On the iPhone, Evernote gives you the expected way of getting your notes off the phone – via email.
LinkMe : Evernote Website for Signup and Details
2. SpringNote and the iPhone 3G
SpringNote is a completely free online Notebook application based on wiki principles. For a Review of this, please see the article here.
Along with free multiple online Notebooks, there is a SpringNote iPhone application. Currently this only integrates with your first personal notebook setup online at SpringNote, but there are plans for a new version coming out this year, which will allow you to integrate with your multiple notebooks.
Notes (pages) in SpringNote are text-based only, due to the wiki format online. Signon uses an OpenID and I found the signon via the iPhone application particularly difficult. Refer the full SpringNote review for this.
However, once setup, and signed in, creating a new page or note on the iPhone is very easy, both while you are near a wireless wifi connection and offline. You can also use some markup language for some simple text formatting functions.
The iPhone system also caches all your notebook pages for you when connected, synchonising any changes between your web-pages and the iPhone, including new pages from both sides, when you can. If offline you can access and edit these pages, create a new page / note and then upload or synchronise these to your website once connected.
Once the multiple notebook feature is added to the iPhone application, using SpringNote to add writing notes to a Writing Group or shared SpringNote you maintain will be a very creditable service for consideration as a mobile / web-based notebook application. At the moment, however, the inability to export out to rich text or similar, makes getting at your notes away from online or the phone difficult.
LinkMe: SpringNotes website for signup and details
Other iPhone Applications
1. TextGuru
TextGuru is another option for iPhone 3G owners. Not really a notebook application, TextGuru is more a feature-rich word processor, which has copy/paste functions (rare on the iPhone) and saves files in several formats. And TextGuru allows you to upload or download your files from or to your computer when synching up your iPhone.
For those who like to have access to a fully featured word processor with built in synching to the desktop.
LinkMe: Available through your local iTunes Store.
2. Notes
Notes comes as a standard application pre-installed onto all new iPhones. It’s a sim
ple text note-taker, but with the addition of a Send function, you can use your iPhone’s email ability to send as an attachment to your own email address. From your computer you can then access emails, download the attached text file, and do with it what you wish.
LinkMe: Available pre-installed on your iPhone
3. Jott for iPhone (U.S.)
The Jott iPhone application records your voice notes and transcribes them into text for you. The voice recordings are transmitted up to the Jott server where the transcription takes place. Then the text notes are sent back to your iPhone. You can also get these notes off the Jott website.
The process takes a few minutes, and is not error-less, but it’s a great way to utilise those voice recordings. The Jott service is available for the U.S. and it has been suggested by users that Jott iPhone works well with the Evernote voice recorded notes also.
LinkMe: Available through your local iTunes Store.
Writing a Novel on the iPhone 3G
The interface for the iPhone 3G is wonderful – for games, actual phonecalls, text messages, even a quick Twitter or Facebook update. But thumbing my way through the touch-screen keyboard is not one of the ways I want to approach my own novel writing projects. For me, the iPhone makes an excellent writer’s notebook for quick thoughts, and notes. But not for writing a novel in it’s entirety or even partially.
However, take a look at The Writer’s Technology Companion website where writer Dustin Wax was contacted by published author, Cheryl Kaye Tardif, who told Dustin that she had started off her latest novel on an iPhone, and was continuing to do so, given the amount of publicity she’s received in doing so.
In Cheryl’s communication, she makes a good case as to the iPhone being an appropriate media in the context of her diary-like story. Others have used the latest technology to both create and publish entire novels from – the many Twitter novels are one case in point, and so is the Japanese hobby of mobile-novelling, where entire novels have been written on mobile phones, and later successfully published as best-sellers.
Lastly, scroll down and read the comments on The Writer’s Technology Companion’s post. There you can find an author who has published her latest novel as an ebook – and it’s available for not only the expected Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle formats, but for both the Blackberry and iPhone.
What I Use
Currently I use a double approach to capturing notes on my iPhone. I use both the SpringNote application and Evernote. As a long-term Evernote user, I like gathering notes in this way, especially with the new web-cloud storage and synchronisation through to both the desktop and web database.EverNote will be my first recommendation, and choice.
SpringNotes (see the review elsewhere) is less quick to get into, needing me to signon to the application via a browser and OpenID signon. This means quick note-taking is difficult unless I’ve already prepared myself for this early on in the day. I’m also not convinced about SpringNotes as a research or knowledgebase online for myself unless looking at administering a group resource.
I particularly like the voice recording ability within Evernote, on my iPhone. This makes quick thoughts and ideas incredibly easy to manage, although I then have to transfer these to text or somewhere else manually at a later time. Perhaps if I lived in the U.S. with the Jott iPhone application also, then the combination would be even more powerful.
These posts may also be of interest:
January 16th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Michelle: Thanks for the mention! Having played around with an iPhone for a short while (a loaner unit for a story I was working on) I have to agree that the iPhone is probably best suited for capturing short notes and thoughts, maybe the odd outline here and there. The idea of writing an entire novel on that screen fills me with dread! When Cheryl Kaye Tardif told me she was doing just that, my first response was “I don’t know whether to applaud you or pity you…”. What she has that, I think, will get her through what I can only believe will be a painful process is a) a good reason for what she’s doing, and b) a plan about how to do it. And that’s what I’d suggest to anyone about *whatever* they’re doing to get their writing done: why have you chosen this tool or tools or technique, and how are you going to use it to get from page 1 to “The End”?