Journaling on the mac and Journler replacements

I am used to a great app called Journler. It’s development has stopped, and so I am comparing the various apps that could replace it in the future, as for the meantime, I have no intention of doing so.
I have never written a comparative review of applications, and the below is far from that. It is an enumeration of features and usage of the apps that could replace Journler.The apps below are note-takers, todo organizers, file organizers, and so much more.

Most of the below applications do the same things, they can import files, they can change font attributes, save websites as webarchives, blog, and they provide a search functionality.

They differ in their interface (naturally),the kind of files they can import, how they import, how they handle the imported files, how they organize what you create (by date, by tag, by kind, etc..), how smart is the search, and how well they do what they say they do what other functionalities they offer beyond journaling / note-taking; this is especially true for SOHO notes, (which I do not review here because it’s huge and greatly exceeds my needs).

In the end whichever application suits your needs is the best one for you, what I was looking for was a clean interface, ease-of-use, organization functionality, and the ability to attach files and view them natively
It’s important to note that on a Mac lots of the missing features in one app can be solved by a workaround, because I am daily amazed by how smart this OS is

A note on why I am such a fan of nesting: let’s say I have a smart folder for everything mac related, I create smart folder and tag it mac. then let’s say I wanted to have another smart folder for mac tips, I right click on the mac folder, and chose new smart folder, name it todo, and then tag it todo. I have such composition of folders for everything else, books, diary, work, photo, etc... Now everytime I create an entry in one of the todo folders, it gets auto-tagged with todo and the upper folder in hierarchy (photo, books, or whatever). Perfect organization, very easy to use, and strangely only developed in Journler


Macjournal
www.marinersoftware.com
40$

The Cool:
Image resize possibility, if the pictures are included in notes
Starting a new note is very simple
Linking a word to another entry is possible
The PDF is displayed automatically, not in a separate window. Double clicking the file

The Uncool:
Absence of smart folder, there is a smart journal, but its not needed for me
There is no due date when you create a new entry
The pdf cannot be searched
I don’t like the interface itself, it’s too simple on the left hand, too technical on the other, and no feeling of a journal. The inspector however opens up more options for the note such as: background, template, annotation, but very weirdly, no tags option!
Imported files come as separate items, with the filename as the default topic name, and in the case of pictures, cannot be resized, unless u import them directly to the note itself.
For my personal interest, this app doesn’t really cover the journaling needs I am looking for, and can’t be considered as a file or documents manager, so I don’t see it serving the purpose of either the writer / blogger not that of a casual researcher.
It’s too expensive for what it offers.





Together:
http://reinventedsoftware.com/together/
39$

The Cool:
It has a library style like itunes, but the information doesn't show attachments, but it shows what the kind of the entry is: image, pdf, webarchive, etc...
The categorization of the notes is done according to kind.
Importing of a webpage as pdf, which is done automatically from Together: File: New Web Page as PDF
The panel on the right shows notes information: date created, modified, kind, label, rating, size, and a comments window, tags, and where.
The good thing about together is that is almost another finder, where you can have information inside that are categorized and tagged.
If you use pdf a lot, the pdf text can be searched, and the importing of the pdf is quite fast, and the file is instantly displayed in the lower panel.

The Uncool
The categorization of the entry as a note takes precedence over others, for example if you drag an image to a note, it would still label the entry as a note, no indication of an image, and the tags of the image are not imported with it. Additionally, the image cannot be resized
You can create smart groups, but they are nowhere near as smart as journler, and they do not support autotagging, which means, there is no parent-child relationship, so you can’t autocategorize your notes as you’d like, and auto-tag entries according to which folder they belong to


You can also import a folder, and the files will be automatically categorized.
For someone who likes to write or is a casual researcher, it’s not really the best option out there, but it does well what it’s supposed to do, and that’s keep files together
I think it’s too expensive for a software that does what Finder does, with a twist and it lacks a Media import service to link it to other mac apps: iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture, etc...



vi Journal
http://www.skoobysoft.com/vijournal/vijournal.html
27$

Probably the simplest of the bunch. It is a journal no doubt, in the very classic sense, with almost no clue of the digital needs. There are tabs in the bottom for drop box, gallery, notes, and library. The cool thing about this app is that the organization of the notes is quite useful, showing in a single pane the entries of the day, month, even year, depending on how high you go in the library view.
The pdf and rtf open natively, and the images can be imported to the notes to themselves, without however a resizing option.
There is no possibility to create smart folders, and no tagging possible.
The notes tab opens a drawer with two other tabs at the bottom: scratchpad and notes. I have no idea what the difference is between these two.
The gallery tab is of no use to me. You drag the files to the gallery tab and you get a sort of a thumbnails drawer, much like preview except it is horizontal. The pictures in the gallery do not appear in the journal, weirdly, and so aside from a “pretty” decoration at the bottom, I see little use of it.



Evernote
www.evernote.com
free or 45$ per year

This app is perfect for syncing your notes and imported files between different platforms: mac and windows for instance. I am now using this a lot to synchronize my notes between my home mac and my office pc. It does this because it stores your files online, on the Evernote servers I presume, and so enabling you to access them wherever you are.
You can drag drop images naturally, and other files as well, create an isight note.
The web clipping is also nice when you are researching.
No smart folders, and no nesting, so I do not consider this an all-in-all application. On the contrary when you are working between these two platforms, visiting a website here and there, it really is beneficial to have them available when you are going to properly process on whichever platform suits you.
The good thing about Evernote is that the free version has quite enough functions, and allows you 40mb of upload per month, which is not bad, but limited if you’re going to upload media files.
The notebook, which is equivalent to a library in other apps, catalogues the notes by date created, though you can change this to type, date updated, size, etc...
The PDF is natively opened in full view, not screen, so this is handy for reading. and the text can be searched and the results are highlighted, which is very very useful.
Another useful feature is the thumbnail view of the notes. When you use this app frequently, this becomes quite handy



Yojimbo
http://www.barebones.com/products/Yojimbo/
39$

For what it does, it’s too expensive. It’s very similar to Together, and probably to Eagle filer, though both apps are much less powerful than Eaglefiler. It organizes entries by file type, with the possibility to add a collection (folder) or a tag collection (sort of a smart folder), but the tag collection does not offer nesting capabilities
It can store passwords and bookmarks, but that’s not really unique, but it categorizes the imported files as such.
Importing images to entries come really small, double clicking them didn’t open them in their native apps. Needless to say, no resizing is possible.
No possibility to blog nor email entries.
Not much more to say about this, of all the apps, I like it the least.



Voodoo Pad
www.flyingmeat.com
40$

When first started, Voodoo Pad opens up a menus, asking you to open a document. I don’t particularly like this, then I remember that this is just a richer textedit app.
Assigning tags is possible, but creating folders for entries is not possible; you can though create pages.
The interface is like a browser, with backwards and forwards navigation.
Inserting images is done either by pasting or by linking, and I thought the link means the image would stay where it is located on your computer, but strangely it displays a hyperlink with the image name and extension in the document.
There are a lot of plugins for word editing capabilities, but that’s expected since this what VP does.
Emailing the entry is possible, but the functionality is hidden under another plugin.
There is a simplified scripting possibility, but like I said it’s because this is a text editor
Finally, the export possibilities are important, and to blog, you’d have to chose web export and pick the blogging services available






There are other apps out there, such as SOHO notes, Scrivener, Circus Ponies notebook.

I was quite disappointed with circus ponies. First it crashed frequently, so I wasn’t able to try it well, and then the interface was just clumsy for me.

SOHO notes is huge, it’s around 100mb and can store almost everything, and has so much functionality. They took the notes idea and really went crazy with it, so it is a note-taker, to do organizer, file management, screen grab, saving web receipts! audio recorder, cover flow view, integration with ical, ipod synching, who knows what else...

JOURNLER

Why I stuck with Journler, and still use it, and will keep on using it as long as I have Leo installed.
The last point is important because some have reported problems on Snow Leo, and since Journler’s development has stopped, this is an important note to consider. However, the forums are quite quite helpful and some users are die-hard fans of the app, they intend to solve bugs and problems as they appear

Like I said, Journler helps me with my casual researching I do. What exactly to me is casual researching. Well I’m no student or professor, but I like keeping items I read in newspapers, pictures, websites, etc... Journler helps me with that, but so do the others. Most of these apps have services integrated into OS, so you can immediately save / import what you want.

The real difference for Journler, is that you can import them to your smart folders, and then other smart folders inside those. Because of this functionality, and the fact that the files aren’t duplicated, I have separate repositories for entries with media, to do, pdf, and website links. These then have their separate divisions: for instance, I have a Photox smart folder that has other smart folders for ideas for future shoots, tutorials, trials (for photoshop) and a todo folder. Depending on the content in each, the media or the notes inside these folders are automatically stored in their corresponding repos. That way my smart folders can organize my entries, according to their content, the file attachments, or whether they are todo items. The small calendar on the top left, means I can also view my entries as a calendar, which means I can write my diary and view the entries day by day. There is also the option for a tabbed view but I rarely use it.

I can link words inside entries to other smart folders, other entries, or to whatever I want. But I don’t need to do this.

Journler has a unique feature called Lexicon. This contains all the words used in my journal, and so if I click on a word, it will show me all entries it resides in, which is faster than a search, smarter (because you often don’t remember which words you used) and quite handy when researching.

It can also save websites as pdf, and though in the entry the pdf file is viewed only according to the size you set in the preferences. So if it’s not set to full size, you have to click the tab on the left to view it in full screen. This is more of a nag than a problem.

Another cool thing is the search functionality. Journler can no doubt search inside pdf files, but very surprisingly, inside a pages file! Probably the search bar has the same functionality and coding as that of spotlight, I don’t know, all I know is that it’s very useful.

It ingrates well with mac: ilife importing, email with mail or other app of your choice, sync to ipod, etc...

The image resizing and text wrapping is not available. Though you can cheat by pasting the image inside a table and writing the text in the adjacent cell. For sure Journler is net a desktop publishing application, so this basic functionality comes quite handy

The interface of the application is very clean, very simple, no drawers, no hidden tabs or panels and everything is quite visible.

If it had a corss-platform integration I would ditch Evernote and stick only to this, but it’s not the case and never will be, so I’m probably going to reply on Evernote for this. I can cheat by having my entries here emailed to my office mail, and then vice versa...

Of Woods @ Night

IMG325
Originally uploaded by conjure1

Thanx to a lot of fashion-editorials-obsessed onliners, I was able to collect the below, and without too much text, just observe how every photographer / magazine team interpret the above them differently than each others:

IMG325

IMG325
Originally uploaded by conjure1

Scotland: Ian Rankin

I finished Rankin's Fleshmarket Close. I started it a year back, and then stopped it. At some point, I didn't find the story interesting to pursue reading; I think it's because of the volume of the book. It's almost 500 pages, and I wondered everytime I picked the book to continue reading, what possible new plot twist is going to be revealed to keep me going on for 500 pages.

This time however, I wanted to learn more about countries, as I mention in my previous post, and that was what shileded my sight away from the volume of the book.

The story of course maintains the big revelations to the end of the book, and sadly enough it has some little bit of action going on towards the last pages. It is sad to me because it is such a cliche, and it felt like it had to be there, as a sort of a requirement to crime novels.
The plot of modern crime fiction, even of televised crime series, suffer from a lot of politics that almost dictate how the characters are to act. This is probably due to the reason that a lot of this fiction actually borders on the non-fiction. There is almost an obsessive attempt to make the story look as real as possible, which is why oftentimes the book looks more like a movie being read than a true fiction. This unfortunately makes the character present in the movie, because they have a job to do, rather than the other way around, in which you see the job obtruding on the lives of the characters. This is perhaps a characteristic of the modern man, and is, as a consequence, reasonably justified in a modern novel. To me however, it felt short from grabing my attention.

The charatcers are loosely drawn, and I question how a female author would portray Siobhan; often I confused her with a man carrying a woman's name. Perhaps as well, this is a characteristic of modern story-telling, and if the reader of this blog is attracted towards such modernity he or she might find the book pleasurable to read.
The writing style is better than what I've read in commercial novels, aside Harry Potter perhaps. It's been quite some time since I stopped being impressed by modern English writing. It's because I find the English language too vulgarized and stripped of its essence by its commercial uses. I find lots of words are freely used in the mass media, around the office, in movies and songs, that stumbling upon them in books makes me imaginarily urge the author for different vocabulary.
It should be noted however, that my judgement is based upon my preference for the classical construction of the novel, the nineteenth century's construction of the sentence, as well as a fictional portrait of characters and events. It is why I prefer Sherlock Holmes to Rankin's Rebus.

I did like some aspsects of the book, and if success is measured by such books as the propensity to buy another book from the same author, then yes, I believe this book to be successful.
In some scenes one identifies with Rebus, but this is because the book is not far from daily life. The light humor that I enjoy in British literature is undoubtedly present. I admired as well some of the juxtaposition between the old and the new in Scotland that extends from bricks to attitudes.

I am currently finishing A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. I am much more pleased by this book, which I started reading as I was still reading Fleshmarket Close, once there was not much more to discover. I will write my impressions of that book once it is finished.

Crime Novels From The World, 1- Henning Mankell, Sweden

I love to read. But I develop an addiction for a single author, and can easily spend a year reading no other book than by him/her. So this year, I'm going to chose a genre addiction, and the choice fell on crime novels.

I chose crime novels, because they're portable. Their reading can be taken to Starbucks, to Second Cup, to a parking/restaurant/theater/ waiting for an unbelievable tardy companion. I also love to learn more about cultures, since I've never traveled outside Lebanon, and yes, countless other "serious" authors probe their societies, or their childhood memories in search for an explanation, an understanding or an elucidation of some social norm, I find crime authors, when they themselves are "serious" to bring a more objective look on society, with a wider scope of people and places, albeit at the detriment of a less detailed social and psychological study.

This is one of the rare times in which I know what I actually want to do, or, what I actually want from reading.

Proceeding with the blog's title, I got a book of Mankell, Les Chiens de Riga (The Dogs of Riga), as a Christmas gift. Even though I asked for it, having finished the book, I regretted my choice.

The reason for this, is that the book feels like a journal, more than a novel. It is a very detailed account of what Mankell's Inspector Wallander does every minute of the day. It's like an omni-present camera.
The character is modern, which means single looking for something in life, a meaning or a purpose, with a complicated relationship with his father.

The book is long, long as in unecessarily long; to me a crime novel, if it exceeds 200 pages, is just fishing for boring details and cliched plot twists. This is exactly what the novel degrades too after the essential plot givens are established.

Even though I just finished this book 2 weeks ago, I can't remember much of the details, and I didn't retain much that interested me, except for the writing style, which could have been mirrored in the characters as well. I felt the writing to be in blocks, with no smooth transitions between Wallander's inner thoughts and his present surroundings. Even though I'm used to this technique, I find it in Mankell to be too mechanic, and, consequently, I found the characters to be mechanic as well. I'm not sure if that is a representation of Swedish writing, or of Mankell's, but it is this particularly strange writing technique that might push me to get another book by him; definitely another book by a Swedish author, if I can spot one here.

I have now re-started Ian Rankin's Fleshmarket Close. I will post my thoughts once I finish it.