Given the amount of people asking for alternatives in the Evernote thread making the waves right now and since I’ve been looking for one for a while now, figured I ask what others use.
OneNote, Simplenote, org-mode seem to be some popular ones.
I'm a long time Evernote user and honestly, it's great for record keeping but I find it pretty awful for daily use.
A huge improvement could be made by Evernote if they would support markdown within their notes. Currently the editor is very basic and can't handle functions like tables very well (creating them sure, but then adding/removing cells or sizing them is a chore)
OneNote has the best editor but it's also a lot heavier than evernote.
Google Keep can't be an option after what Google does with it's side projects like iGoogle and Reader.
I no longer trust Google to keep its own services - they've gotten rid of too many projects. On the plus side, you usually have time to download your data before the service dies.
By owning a Surface RT, I've used OneNote for almost a semester now. For me the only minus side of OneNote is that the PDF slides from the lecturers can't be editable inside OneNote. This is because the things that are "printed" inside OneNote are images which makes the OneNote file big. But then, after trying some alternatives, I cannot find any better one. Seems that I will stick to OneNote for now.
My 2 cents :) The trouble is that there are little or no real alternatives. There are plenty of hacks like dropbox, simple note, etc but nothing with the complete functionality and cross platform capabilities which Evernote.
I use onenote. Its simplicity and multiplatform support resulted in a lot of "is this really a Microsoft product?" reactions by people I showed it to. Definitely recommend to give it a try
Sorry, I was referring to iOS and Android mobile support. There's a webversion though accessible from https://skydrive.live.com, but I've hardly used it (so can't recommend it. Also, I suppose a desktop version is crucial for a good note taking app so I guess it's not worth trying on linux / mac).
Although I may be an extreme case, I use Dokuwiki for notes/journals/logs. I wanted something that was OSS, as I am somewhat uncomfortable providing brain dumps to a corporate entity in exchange for a license. Wiki markup is great for quick keyboard formatting, and all data is saved in flat files, so a rsync via cron takes care of redundancy/backups. Revision control works, and I can quickly create a new user with limited access if I need to share, or export to PDF.
I created a project called http://dok.io
The goal is to easily create and forget (like in gmail) small piece of info (dok). The dynamic search helps to find them if needed later.
Of course it's collaborative (like a wiki) and everyone in the team can add/edit just by typing in the dok (like in asana), no edit button or whatever. Oh and behind, it's HTML5/JS with Meteor.
Since you asked for feedback... get a native speaker to review your copy. "leverage on" - you don't need the "on" (this is in 2 places). "Notes are information that aimed at becoming knowledge" - doesn't make sense, perhaps say "aims" instead? hierarchizations - just say hierarchies.
After getting frustrated with Evernote being slow and buggy I switched to Simplenote (http://simplenote.com/).
It's simple, fast and seamless. You start typing and it automatically syncs your note for you. It does one thing that does it well. That being said it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Evernote does (audio notes, OCR, etc).
Zim is pretty decent if you like something on the desktop and like wikis. Its strength is in quickly organizing a bunch of related ideas/notes (being a wiki) but it is much faster to use than a browser-based wiki. http://zim-wiki.org/
I tend to just scribble in Vim though, or use paper and pencil.
+1 for Zim, even if you don't much like wikis. You don't actually have to use wiki markup or anything with Zim if you don't want to. You can just organize things with folders, subfolders and tags and never worry about creating links.
I find it to be sort of halfway between Notational Velocity and Evernote. Like nv it stores everything as flat files, but like Evernote you can add some structure to how your organize things.
The nice thing is that Zim uses plain .txt files without the need of a database. So you can also view and edit your notes/pages using any text editor instead of Zim itself. Making backups is also very easy this way.
I keep these text files in sync across my devices using owncloud. That way I can also use it on my smartphone by just viewing the plain text. No extra apps necessary.
Does anyone know of any note apps which support Linux, iOS, Windows, and OS X. Starts up fast. For example, vi starts up fast. Works offline and online. Always syncs without a manual step.
I don't care about pictures, or audio, or OCR, etc. I just want the basics to work and work perfectly.
On Android (and, I presume, iOS) it caches recently used files for offline access. If you don't access a file on your phone before going off-line it will show up in the directory listing but not actually be accessible.
I'm hooked to OneNote, started using it a year back. From what I've seen it's extremely intuitive. Creating a table is a breeze and so is the indenting.
Fair chance is that plethora of use-cases covered by Evernote are not covered by any other alternative. OCR, Web Clipper (favorite bit of mine), audio notes, location-aware notes, sharing, cross-platform support, awesome note indexing and subsequent search, offline caching, 3rd (as well as 1st) party app ecosystem integrated with their API... You name it. Even their free as well as premium tier give you a lot of bang for buck.
Which is kind of explanation of why they can get away with some issues in their service - they own the space. Period.
Text files on dropbox, using native editors is definitely the most portable solution with no vendor lock in. Dropbox's web site even has an online text editor.
I have dropbox aware editors on all of my devices, and have a good directory layout for storing and working on ideas as text files. BTW, I use the same setup so I can work on my book projects on any of my devices (using leanpub).
I use Dropbox a lot for clipping web articles, taking pictures of bills and records, etc.
Yes, it's a chinese product, so the servers will be in China. Hopefully the NSA has a bit of a harder time, and the local gov. doesn't have that many people reading English notes :)
Features are amazing, but more than anything I like the fact that everything is html, with headings assigned to shortcuts. Proper outlining.
Mac's TextEdit (a rich text editor) has been what I've ultimately chosen after using Evernote, OneNote, SpringPad, Simplenote, Notational Velocity, and Mac's Notes.app. Let me explain some of its benefits.
- Notes are placed in Finder (the file system). This is the biggest benefit. This means that I can store notes separately in folders, according to their specific purposes. For example, I can categorize my notes by project, AND store files of any type alongside them, since they're just placed in the Finder. I generally don't like using specific notes apps, because what if you want to attach a real file (not a shortcut to a file) which is of a type that's incompatible with the notes app? You can't, because notes apps can only categorize notes. That's very limited. With Finder, everything's categorized according to your own purposes, and any file type can be moved into/out of each purpose. The more I use Finder, the more I love it.
- TextEdit is very simple, but also very powerful if you know how to use it. It generally has all the features of a typical notes app. It has rich text editing, and you can put in pictures as well. When you're searching for a note or its content in Finder, it'll look through all the text within the notes, not just the file names. If you want to quick look notes, just click on a note in column view.
- If you use a certain note more often than others, you can use Alfred (a smart search app) to launch it really quickly just by typing its name, without needing to load an entire notes app filled with notes you don't need, and then find it yourself.
- Unlike Evernote, you can easily password-protect as many notes as you like by storing them in an encrypted DMG, since this feature comes with the Mac.
A downside for some people is that you can't edit your notes on a phone/tablet. For me this hasn't been a problem because I'm ten times more productive on a laptop. I can always view my files with the Dropbox app, and I can always make some quick notes on my mobile device if I ever need to. For most people, your laptop is almost always with you, and it doesn't take long to pop it open.
If you're on Windows, I think WordPad would be the right way to go. Not too sure about Linux though.
In conclusion, the TextEdit/Finder combo is the simplest, fastest, and most functional, notes tool that I've ever used.
Icebergs (https://icebergs.com/) is one of the prettier ones I've seen. Not really an avid user myself, but then again I'm not using Evernote either. Sublime+Dropbox does it for me at the moment, but would love to find a better alternative.
+1. I also find Google Drive very convenient for this. The great search within my drive just lets me litter a large amount of new documents and not worry about it. I usually either view the most recently edited or search.
I use JustNotes on OS X, which is built on top of Simplenote. It syncs wonderfully and is very, well, Simple. The reason I switched to Evernote: rich text.
For me, I've been using Basecamp for practically everything. It's so useful and reliable, and the mobile site has the best most functional interface I've ever used.
The problem with these (and all the other alternatives I've seen in this post so far) is that they ignore the one thing that locks people into Evernote despite the bugs, poor interface etc: scanner-support and OCR. Sure, if you have your information in digital form already, there's a bunch of decent solutions, but in terms of killing the paper mountain I am not aware of anything that supports that workflow, certainly not that easily.
A huge improvement could be made by Evernote if they would support markdown within their notes. Currently the editor is very basic and can't handle functions like tables very well (creating them sure, but then adding/removing cells or sizing them is a chore)
OneNote has the best editor but it's also a lot heavier than evernote.
Google Keep can't be an option after what Google does with it's side projects like iGoogle and Reader.