As a consultant and blogger, I keep a pretty full plate.  There's always a client project or a post I'm working on.  Staying organized is key to me getting everything done.

So I live by my Outlook calendar.  I schedule project milestones, blogging deadlines, etc.  I've always known that I was pretty dependent upon my calendar, but didn't realize how much until my computer crashed a few weeks ago.  Lucky for me I didn't lose much. 

But where I really felt it was in the notes I kept on my calendar.  I lost some of the data I had been collecting for future blog posts or business ideas I wanted to research.  I was able to recover quite a bit via my iPhone, but not everything.

That's when I realized it might be time to find a note taking application that could not only make my life easier but provide a better way of collecting information.  So when the folks at Workshifting were looking for someone to test drive a few note taking apps, I jumped at the chance.

The three I looked at were Simplenote, MobileNoter, and Evernote.

Couple of things worth a mention:  all of the apps I looked at offer some kind of tutorial whether it's a blog, user guide or video.  Kudos to them for helping users get the most out of the app.  All of them also offer a free account as well as a premium account.  You have the flexibility to get what you need.  I'd suggest checking out the free versions, see what you like best and then decide if you need the premium model.  None of the premium models I looked at seemed cost-prohibitive.  And they all have the ability to sync to the web.

Simplenote is exactly that...a place to create simple notes.  On their blog, they do mention a challenge with notes that contain hyperlinks.  This is a bummer for me because many times my notes are reminders to visit a website.  Hopefully they will quickly get that fixed.
Once you create a note on your phone, you can sync it to the web or email it.  The email did seem a bit redundant, because I can send myself an email.  But maybe I'm not thinking broad enough and there would be a time when I need this feature - just can't figure it out right now.
Where I saw Simplenote working well for me was for things like errand lists or shopping items.  It's a great place to jot things down - versus if you want to cut/paste a file for reference later.

MobileNoter reminded me of Microsoft Word.  So if you are familiar with Word, you'll find MobileNoter very similar and easy to learn.  With this application, you can create notebooks that contain similar ideas.   It also gives you the ability to share a notebook.  I thought this would be very cool for my volunteer projects - many of the people I volunteer with have iPhones.  We could have a shared document for an event and all contribute to the notebook.
In addition, it was very convenient to cut/paste.  With MobileNoter you can add not only text but entire files.  You can also insert maps, photos, images, etc.

MobileNoter connects to MS OneNote.  That means once my MobileNoter files are synced with OneNote.  I can create tasks within Outlook from my notes. 

In Evernote, you can set up folders and collect information for each (similar to MobileNoter).  But one of the things that Evernote really highlights is their search capability.  You can attach keywords to your files (whether it's a text file or an image).  This would be especially helpful when I find an image that inspires me but I don't exactly know what to do with it.  I want to keep it but I don't want to forget about it.  Having the ability to attach keywords would be great because I can do regular searches.

And speaking of searches, Evernote allows you to save searches that you do on a regular basis.

As you can see, there's a lot to choose from in the note taking app department.  And I'm sure I've only scratched the surface with these three apps.  What I realized in looking at Simplenote, MobileNoter and Evernote, is the decision of whether an app is good or not belongs to you.  It's what you do with it.  If it makes you successful, then it's fabulous.

What note taking apps are you using these days?  Drop a note in the comments


Photo Credit: ChicGeek