Circus Ponies Notebook 2.0 Product Review

On Thursday, as I walked to the little refrigerator in our office to grab a soda, Holly, who was with Hapy and Carey going over new products, asked me if I’d write a review of Notebook. She knew that I’m one of the few people here who use it regularly, since I’m always saying how much I like it. So, here goes!

Originally, I used the Notebook 2.0 just as a basic note taking app, and to use as a phone log. The interface is designed as, obviously, a notebook. It’s easily customizable to suit individual taste, as a spiral, pad, or perfect notebook. But the more I worked with it, the more uses I found for it. Pages can be set up as text (in no particular format), outlines, or just plain lists. I communicate with a number of Small Dog’s vendors, customers and, of course, all of Small Dog’s employees. Notebook allows me to attach files (i.e. Excel, Word, photos, graphs, audio notes etc.) in their original format and relate them to conversations or projects right on the page with my notes. Having the ability to have weblinks, photos, and Address Book cards on the pages are also all great time saving features. Aside from the drag and drop method of adding images, Notebook also allows direct loading from digital cameras and scanners. And if you forget where you’ve put any particular file, it has a great Super-Find feature, similar to Tiger’s Spotlight, which allows you to find files by text, keywords or date created, among a few others.

The number of uses this software has are innumerable. It’s simple to use, easy to customize and is loaded with features to make organizing large projects stress free, and even fun.

Buy Notebook 2.0

Similar Posts

  • Got Perpendicular?

    Hard-drives that store data on the platter in an upright fashion are all the rage. In fact, as I read in this blog…

  • Revenge of the Apple Set-Top Box!

    In the mid-1990s, Apple developed a set-top box. It was black, had the multi-colored Apple logo on the front, and was shaped like…

  • Protecting Your Photographs

    Let me ask you a few questions: Do you have a digital camera? How many megapixels does your camera shoot? How many years and how many photos do you have on your computer? Now imagine this… tomorrow morning you wake up and turn your computer on. It boots slower than normal and all you see is a flashing question mark on a gray screen. Your heart drops and you start to think about all of the memories that made up your iPhoto library.

    The purpose of all this is to get you thinking about how many pictures you take every week and what would happen if one day you lost all of them. Could be 10 days or 10 years of photos; either way your losing all of those precious memories. Your best solution is to backup your files. The key to a true backup is to have your files in two places. My suggestion is to purchase a pair of identical external hard drives. Several hard drive units ranging from 250 gigabytes to 2 terabytes are becoming more and more affordable.

    Click here to see Small Dog’s selection of external hard drives.

    When you’re finished with your photo shoot, birthday party or vacation, store your photos on your computer and then back it up to your external hard drive. It may also be good to store your external hard drive in a different location than your computer and pull it out once a week to backup your new work. I like to go one step further and backup my backup. My setup includes my MacBook which is backed up onto an external hard drive which is then mirrored to a second external hard dive. This allows me to delete some photos off my MacBook to free up space while still leaving my photos on two different locations.

  • Avoid Accidental Damage! Why Protection Is Important

    With many schools and colleges back in session, we are seeing the usual and predicable spike in accidental damage repairs in our service facilities. It’s very important to remember that a dropped computer, one with a broken screen, or one with any type of liquid damage–no matter how new–has no warranty coverage.

    Small Dog has a ton of products to protect your Mac or iPod from impact and liquid damage. Keep in mind, though, that you still should avoid dropping your laptop or drinking anything near it. Here are my favorite protective products for Apple laptops.

    “Speck cases”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=speck are hard shells that are form-fitted for a precise and tight fit to your laptop. Available in many colors and textures, they are the best-selling and best-performing protection against impact damage.

    The second part of protecting your laptop is a well-padded laptop bag like “those from Timbuk2.”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=Timbuk2 These messenger-style laptop bags have lots of storage, look good, and provide great protection. If you prefer a sleeve-style laptop case, know that they provide less protection, but are still better than carrying around a naked computer. My favorite is the new “Hammerhead line,”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=hammerhead named for CEO Don Mayer’s bulldog.

    Jeremiah Johnson, assistant manager of the South Burlington store, likes the Incipio Feather line of cases, and has a review a little later in this issue of Best in Showroom.

    The third element of a good protection plan is a keyboard cover. “KB Covers”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=kb+cover makes a line of form-fitting super-thin plastic covers that’ll save your bacon if you spill a small amount of liquid on your keyboard. It only takes a drop of water to make it through your keyboard and onto complex (and very expensive) circuitry below. If you must drink near your laptop, you owe it to yourself to get a keyboard cover.

    If, despite your best efforts to protect your machine (or if you didn’t protect it), your computer is dropped or spilled in, it is best to discontinue use immediately to prevent more damage. A dropped computer should have its hard drive preemptively replaced in most cases, and a computer that’s been spilled in should have a thorough inspection by a good technician. Our Technical Service team can often revive a damaged computer for hundreds, or even over $1,000 less than the same repair at an Apple store.

  • Early Thoughts on My iPad

    I am love with my iPad. It is easily the coolest gadget I have ever bought. After having spent the last few days playing with it non-stop, I have a much better sense of what it is and what it isn’t, as well as what its potential can be. I think the best way to explain my sense of this devil is to tell you about how I’ve been using it.

    This is hands down the best device I’ve ever browsed the web on. The other night My roommates were out and I spent the evening chilling on the couch with my iPad just surfing my usual sights and listening to some iTunes. There was no TV in the background or anything. It felt every bit as intimate and cozy as curling up with a favorite book and enjoying peace and quiet. I’ve never had that homey feeling with my laptop.

    The potential for games is also amazing, especially social games. The iPad was made to be passed around. Some friends and I were chatting in the living room while idly passing around the iPad and playing Worms HD. Each person would simply take their turn and then pass it to the next while the conversation simply filled the spaces in between. It didn’t have the dominating presence of a TV.

    I’ve been using the Pages app as much as possible to see what kind of working potential this device has. I’ll admit that if I needed to really get a full paper done, referencing lots of sources and actively researching at the same time, I would choose a full computer anytime. But I have my iMac or MacBook Pro for that.

    However, for writing a simple review like this one, or responding to quick emails, the iPad is a pleasure to use. Basically I’ve learned that the iPad is not a laptop. If you need to multitask with lots of windows and things going on, you want a computer. But if you just need to be able to reference or adjust documents, or keep in touch, or search the web on the go, the iPad has the possibility of replacing a laptop in a multiple computer set up. I have not opened my laptop once since I got this thing, though I did use my iMac once to write up a paper for school.

    Most of all though, I’m loving the simple things. Listening to programs with the NPR app, or browsing the gorgeously simple New York Times editor’s choice app is great over breakfast, and feels much more natural than sitting in front of my computer. Streaming ABC or Netflix videos is incredibly easy, as is downloading and reading Marvel Comics.

    It may sound like this is turning into just a list of my favorite apps which all do things I could do before, but that’s the point. The iPad is not about innovation in content, it’s about the experience and that experience is provided by the apps that developers put out. I hope developers keep up the good work, because so far the experience has been simply wonderful.

  • Synchronization 102

    I received a question from a longtime reader asking me how comfortable I was with Wi-Fi synchronizing of apps versus using a cloud…