I store some of my stuff in Evernote, but it's not convenient for writing. It's too cluttered and distracting for that. I'd like to make something with the storage facilities of evernote, but a much less distracting writing interface.
Considering now many to-do list websites and apps there are out there, I'm surprised the isn't more competition for this kind of note-storage app.
Every time they release a new version I see item after item that's of no interest to me. I really just want a simple place to store to-do lists, notes, etc. and have it available on every machine and phone I use.
They do a lot more than that now, but yet you still can't edit a to-do list with checkboxes on the iPhone!
Though it is an interesting perspective. It just says that market is large and like in all large markets there is a niche of users who are dissatisfied because top solution doesn't fit their specific needs. So yes for a startup looking to enter the market, it is great to solve that specific need and then grow from there.
I wonder if someone could take Evernote API and create text-only client with more polished editor?
This fork of Notational Velocity adds a third pane which shows formatting using markdown.
If you are willing to learn markdown, and it's pretty darn easy, you can add formatting while maintaining raw text format.
I like markdown enough though that I find I write in markdown, and just hide the preview pane that includes formatting. I just don't really need it.
Here's a few, "I could solve this in a weekend" solutions:
* Write notes with vim and archive them with git. If using github, you get website publishing for free.
* Write notes with nano and automatically upload to S3 using inotify (Python: http://pyinotify.sourceforge.net)
* Write notes with emacs and mail() it to your gmail account.
* Write notes for future reminder (+dates) with ed. Via cron, parse the dates using GNU date, and mail() yourself a reminder.
If we are the target market, so few of us are willing to pay for the service.
Just my 2 cents...
* Rudimentary search is solvable with OSS tools nowadays (Solr, Sphinx, Lucene).
* OCR however, seems fun! I never pay attention much on character recognition software. I wonder how good is this project: http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/
Install Dropbox's linux client on my Ubuntu slicehost instance (could be one of the free Amazon instances, now).
Create a home/Dropbox/t/ .
Keep all my active notes as textfiles in there. Have an archive/ subdirectory. Spend most of my time in t/todo.txt.
I'm always logged into the slice with screen running. Terminal 0 is always todo.txt, which is just a text file open in vim with foldmethod=indent: I only unfold my current tasks, and move anything I've done to a fold for today's date.
I can search this with grep (or spotlight from my mac). I can get into it from anywhere, though: blackberry, iPad, or any web browser. The Dropbox clients will all display textfiles natively.
There's not tagging. There's no categories. There's no web clips or OCR. I can get to it from anywhere.
Works great, and theoretically free if I ditched Slicehost for Amazon.
+ nicer writing facilities
+ accessible from any computer/phone (like evernote)
+ searchable (like evernote)
+ can save any filetype (but they aren't searchable...)
+ 7GB storage
- not collaborative (maybe google docs?)
- can't search handwriting (v. cool - but is it often used?)Yup, it can save any filetype. However that doesn't mean much if you have to download every file before you can find out what they contain. With 200 different images and documents for example, it is much easier to find the right document when you either can look at the thumbnails or search directly in the content.