Quick-Capture Notes Apps
Something I left out of my Simplenote / Dropbox / writing workflow article last week is what iPhone app lives in my Dock for the sole purpose of being the go-to for initially capturing ideas, lists, and other miscellaneous tidbits of information.
The iPhone can be pretty awkward when you need to quickly jot down a piece of information. Such as someone’s shipping address, phone number, and/or email address; a list of things to get while you’re out that your wife is rattling off to you as you walk out the door; the coffee order your co-worker wants you to pick up for them while you’re out; etcetera.
The point being, there are many occasions when typing the information into the app it belongs takes too much time and attention than you have at the moment.
For this stuff, and more, I use an app called Scratch by Sweet Mac Alum, Garrett Murray and his team at Karbon.
Scratch
Scratch is a no-nonsense “scratch pad” app for your iPhone. It launches in a hot second, and greets you with a blank text-entry pane and blue blinking cursor. You are then free to type whatever it is you need to type out right now, and leave the fiddling to later when you have a few minutes.
The reason you want to use an app like Scratch for stuff like this is all in the way Scratch handles your text after you’ve typed it in.
Once you’ve made your note, you can export the text you’ve just typed by sending it to Simplenote, Byword, Notesy, et al. You can also email it; text message it; send it to OmniFocus as a to-do item, or as the note for a to-do item; tweet it from Tweetbot or post it to App.net; send it to Quotebook; send it to Day One; create a new text file in Dropbox, or append your new text to an already existing text file.
And the export options are customizable. When you tap the export button you don’t see the entire list of every supported app, you see only what you’ve enabled in Settings. I’ve enabled Simplenote, Day One, and Email export.
Scratch isn’t just for capturing now and processing when you’ve got a minute. It’s also great for capturing disposable information, like that coffee order or your Honey Do List — why launch an app that syncs when you only need to jot down something that’s relevant for the next hour?
The Custom Keyboard Row
Scratch makes clever use of a custom keyboard row. Instead of there being a top Navigation / Title bar, the text pane goes all the way to the top. And then above the default iOS keyboard is a 5th keyboard row.
This 5th row can be swiped left and right. It sports a set of Markdown-friendly custom keys, action buttons for your current note, and access to the settings pane.
Additional power-features include TextExpander support, and markdown auto completion for links.
Drafts
Similar in scope to Scratch is another excellent app: Drafts.
A few of Draft’s main differences include:
- An iPad version which syncs to the iPhone.
- An option to always launch with a blank text entry box.
- A link mode, which takes mailing addresses, emails, phone numbers, and events and turns them into tappable links.
* * *
I highly recommend either of these apps — Scratch being one of three apps in my Dock. People have asked me why I use Scratch over Drafts. And though Drafts has a few more power features and is available on the iPad, I prefer Scratch because of the design.
✚
Sweet App: Recall
I’m becoming fond of specialized, finely-tuned, someday-maybe-list-type apps such as the brand-new app, Recall. (cf. Checkmark.)
For one, I am (as are many of you, I suspect) a fan of apps that do one thing well. Secondly, the more my to-do list is filled with items not critical to my current projects or responsibilities then the more those non-critical items can dilute the importance of the truly critical ones. This is, of course why you should never set a due date for an item that’s not truly due that day. And it’s why you should at least separate your someday/maybe items from mingling in the list that reminds you to pay the mortgage and go buy groceries. But I digress.
Recall is an app for finding various types of media and saving them for later — such as movies, books, music, and apps. When you find a book you’d like to read one day or an album you’d like to listen to, then you simply add it to your running list. Recall shows you cover art, ratings, description, and a direct link to the iBookstore. And you can set reminders for each item. Recall can notify you when a movie comes to the big screen or when it comes to Blu-ray, or when an album becomes available to buy on iTunes.
I like that Recall combines the need for researching and finding something into the same step as saving it for later. The app is ultra fast, it looks gorgeous, and the whole experience of using it is very well polished. And it’s just a buck in the App Store.
✚
Sweet App: Junecloud’s Delivery Status
Do you buy stuff on the Internet? I thought so. That’s why you’d probably like Junecloud’s Delivery Status apps.
Delivery Status is both a universal iOS app and a Dashboard Widget for OS X. You paste the tracking number for a shipment you’re expecting, and Delivery Status will keep tabs on it, letting you know where the package is and what day it will arrive. The apps and widget stay in sync via Junecloud’s sync service.
Delivery Status supports 7 languages and over 35 global delivery services. I’ve used it for tracking packages from UPS, USPS, and FedEx and it has always been accurate.
When you get your shipment notification from Amazon or Apple or whomever, there are a few ways to add the tracking number to Delivery Status:
From the Dashboard widget, simply hit the “+” and enter in the tracking info. All you really need to do is paste in the tracking number and give your shipment a name. Junecloud is will know the carrier based on the tracking number.
The iOS apps are clever enough to recognize if you’ve got a tracking number on your device’s clipboard. If so, when you launch the app you’re asked if you want the tracking number to be used to create a new delivery.
Assuming you’ve signed up for the Junecloud sync service, you can forward your shipment notification email to
track@junecloud.comand their servers will attempt to identify the tracking number and then add the shipment to your list of deliveries.I found that when I simply forward the email I get from Amazon, Junecloud isn’t able to find the tracking number. But by first highlighting the tracking number before forwarding, then only that information is sent, and Junecloud was quickly able to add it.
When adding a delivery via email, whatever the subject line is will be the title of your item. Since I don’t want a delivery item called “Your Amazon.com order of “Contigo AUTOSEAL Stainless…” has shipped!”, I change the subject line to a more accurate description.
If you want push notifications in the iOS apps, you can easily set them up. They rely on your Dashboard Widget and your Junecloud sync account, which means that your iOS device will receive a push notification whenever your Mac notices the status of a delivery has changed. It would be nice if there were a more granular control about which statuses to send notifications about — I’d prefer to only receive notifications when an item is out on the truck for delivery and when it has been delivered.
To sum up, for someone who gets a fair amount of stuff delivered, Delivery Status is a superb way to track it. I haven’t seen the UPS or FedEx sites in months.
✚
Sweet App: Favs
Between Twitter and my RSS feeds I come across a lot of things I want to bookmark for future reference. Some are articles to read for later but some are actionable items (like check out such and such app). And so I’ve established this habit where I “favorite” or “like” something as my way of bookmarking it. I also “like” most articles in Instapaper if they’re something I want to link to later.
Favs (pronounced fayves, I presume) is a nifty little Mac app that collects all your “favorites” and “likes” and into one place. It’s interface is not unlike an RSS reader, and it pulls your favorites from nearly 20 different services.
The app was in public beta for a while and so I’ve been kicking the tires on it for the past several weeks and like it quite a bit. It hit the Mac App Store just a few days ago — it’s polished and useful and definitely worth 5 bucks.
For a more in-depth review, check out Federico Viticci’s article.
✚
Sweet App: QuickShot
QuickShot is like DropVox but for images.
I found this iPhone app by spying on David Barnard’s Home screen. You use QuickShot to take a photo and it will then upload the image to Dropbox for you. It uploads in the background too, so you just snap a pic and close the app.
David explained how he uses the app to take pictures of all his tax-deductible, business expense receipts when on the go. When I read that, I thought to myself, what an extremely clever idea.
I keep my business receipts in Yojimbo, and so I’ve set up a folder action on my QuickShot Dropbox folder to run the below AppleScript. What the AppleScript does is: when I take a photo of a receipt using QuickShot the image will be tossed into Yojimbo with the tags “receipt” and “viaDropbox” and then the original image is deleted from my Dropbox folder.1
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
repeat with x from 1 to the count of these_items
set theFile to item x of these_items
set theTags to {"receipt", "viaDropbox"}
try
tell application "Yojimbo"
set newItem to (import theFile)
add tags theTags to newItem
end tell
end try
end repeat
tell application "Finder"
delete these_items
end tell
end adding folder items to
QuickShot is universal and just $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.
- Thanks to my pal, Brett Kelly, for a bit of AppleScript debugging to get the script to work right. Actually, especially thanks to him because it’s a script that works with Yojimbo and we all know he’s an Evernote guy. ↵
✚
Sweet App: Goodfoot for iPhone
Goodfoot is an iPhone app that helps you find cool, nearby places. And it does so by using the Gowalla API in one of the most clever ways I’ve seen.
I came across this app while doing research and preparation for our Creatiplicty episode with Trent Walton.
Goodfoot works by taking the most popular spots on Gowalla and then sorting them by distance (walking, biking, or driving distance) from where you currently are. Then it removes all the non-interesting spots from the list (such as big-brand locations, doctors offices, grocery stores, etc.) and does a pretty good job at only showing you worthwhile locations.
As you’re looking at each location Goodfoot has its own built-in Awesometer®. Goodfoot’s Awesometrics System rates the likelihood of that location being awesome by looking at how many total check-ins the location has compared to how many of those check-ins are unique. So, for example, a place with 100 check-ins from 100 unique people is probably a tourist hotspot and thus not that awesome (unless you think gift shops are awesome). A place with 100 check-ins from 20 people is clearly a local favorite and thus more likely to be awesome.
Once you find a spot that you want to go to, you can view that site in Gowalla or use Google Maps to get the exact location and directions.
Goodfoot is just a buck in the App Store and works wherever Gowalla users have been.
✚
Sweet App: Airfoil for Mac
I heard about Airfoil via Twitter one day when I was wishing out loud that I could play the music from my Rdio desktop app through my home stereo which is connected to my Apple TV.
By default, I can only play music in my iTunes library through the Apple TV. Therefore, if I am listening to Rdio or Pandora while working in my office, I have to play the music through the laptop speakers. But that is where Airfoil comes in.
Airfoil acts like a middleman for my audio and video by taking the audio from any source and send it to any speaker on your network. It certainly has many more use-case scenarios, but this is what I use it for and I am quite happy with it.
Moreover, Airfoil has its own EQ. This truly seals the deal for making it perfect companion to Rdio because Rdio does not have any way to adjust EQ. Even if you’re only using Airfoil to listen to Rdio on your laptop, it’s practically worth it to get a perfect EQ setting anyway.
I even adjusted my Keyboard Maestro macro for launching Rdio to now launch Airfoil first, wait a couple seconds, and then launch Rdio so that Airfoil can have the slight head start it needs in order to hijack the Rdio audio.
✚
Sweet App: Hues for Mac
This Sweet App review is the first in a new type of post I’ll be writing for the site: short, mini-reviews of apps that come across my path. I’ve had it in my head that the only valid software reviews I shall ever publish to shawnblanc.net are ones which exceed 3,000 words. Moreover, I shall only write about apps which have become an integral part of my day-to-day computing life.
Well, that’s baloney. What about the apps I like but which don’t change my life? What about the apps I want to talk about but don’t have 3,000 words for? The weekly Sweet App review is the answer to these conundrums. Enjoy.
Hues
Hues is a simple and useful color finding tool for your Mac. I came across this app when its developer, Zach Waugh, emailed me to let me know about it.
I like Hues because it has the familiarity of the built-in OS X color-picker tool, yet it with a few special modifications of its own:
- It gives you the HEX, RGP, and HSL values for any color you pick. Since I design live in a browser having a light-weight app that helps me find colors and their HEX values is super helpful. I’m embarrassed to admit that used to launch Photoshop for the sole purpose of finding a color I liked and copying its HEX value. Needless to say, Hues is much more economical for that purpose than Photoshop is.
- It has 5 rows for saved swatches instead of one. (Update: news to me is that if you click and drag the little dot underneath the swatch palette you can adjust how many rows of saved swatches are visible.)
- In the app’s preferences you have the ability to remove any of the color pickers from the toolbar that you don’t use. I, for instance, only ever use the color wheel, so I removed the Sliders, the Palettes, and the Crayons.
- It works, looks, and feels just like the native color picker, just better.
