Pen and/or pencil and paper. Mead, Moleskine, Rhodia all make great paper notebooks along with Staples, OfficeMax having house brands. Pens and pencils are available from a variety of sellers as well.<p>Lacks text searchability, distributed backups and portability (it's not on your phone all the time).<p>Has multiple tactile benefits. Can always be scanned for digital backup if need be. Far less likely to be hacked, never has a version that randomly deletes a note. Forces you to keep notes in an actual place not essentially a series of memory addresses of local and/or remote computer.<p>As someone who's played with nearly every item on this list from tiddlywiki to vim wiki to the mind mappers evernote, .plan files, etc etc. Paper is still the most flexible. I just think differently when I'm not limited by keyboards and/or almost OK drawing interfaces (aka penultimate, paper (the app), etc).<p>A little DoxieGo scanner and paper is the place to be. Otherwise you'll find yourself looking back at your vast cache of notes in cloudnot.es (or whatever new YC15 startup comes up with the new hot note app that revolutionizes your life) that document your thoughts from 2014-2019 and you'll end up wondering... what really mattered here? How do I save this... Why did I save this? Do I need this note on what I wanted to buy my ex-boyfriend for valentine's day 2017? Etc etc.<p>The ephemeral nature of paper is perhaps its biggest feature, forcing you to save it or delete it. Or just go full Warhol and save everything: <a href="http://edu.warhol.org/aract_timecap.html" rel="nofollow">http://edu.warhol.org/aract_timecap.html</a>
Tomboy¹ with Tomdroid² and Rainy³ for sync. I know, mono, but it's free, open-source, self-hosted, and a Gnome classic.<p>EDIT: added <a href="http://www.slant.co/topics/697/viewpoints/12/~what-is-the-best-cross-platform-note-taking-tool~tomboy" rel="nofollow">http://www.slant.co/topics/697/viewpoints/12/~what-is-the-be...</a><p>¹ <a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy</a><p>² <a href="https://launchpad.net/tomdroid" rel="nofollow">https://launchpad.net/tomdroid</a> (.apk, not the Play version)<p>³ <a href="http://www.notesync.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.notesync.org/</a>
Workflowy is one of the best I've come across and one I use personally for text. The interface is super productive and the degree of depth possible with that simplicity is just stunning.<p>The real downside for me is that my notes are on <i>their</i> server. I really hate that. So .. I keep getting back to org mode .. which isn't available everywhere.
For those looking for a physical alternative that also converts to digital notes (and synchronizes notes with a audio recorder on the pen), LiveScribe is particularly amazing: <a href="http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/" rel="nofollow">http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/</a><p>It uses a special dot matrix notebook (5 pack for like $25-30) that allow it to record all notes written and synchronize with audio so that you can press the pen anywhere in your notes and replay what was said while you were taking notes. Comes with some smartphone app integration and desktop sync stuff.
This submission looks like it's to promote slant (and checking, the submitter is from slant). Nothing wrong with that!<p>I think because comparisons often cause a flurry of opinions, experiences and religious wars, slant seem to have instant publicity baked into the very essence of their idea (of comparisons).<p>Interestingly, nobody has commented on slant itself - suggesting that the interface is seamless, invisible. Arguably, the very best feedback possible!
I am making use of StackEdit <a href="https://stackedit.io/" rel="nofollow">https://stackedit.io/</a> - brilliant and works fine across devices.
Does anyone know of a good tree structure notepad for OSX? Something like MyNoteKeeper [1] on windows. The key features I have been looking for are a tree structure where each node can have text and files associated with it, and can have children nodes.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.mynoteskeeper.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mynoteskeeper.com/</a>
One nice option is KeepNote (<a href="http://keepnote.org" rel="nofollow">http://keepnote.org</a>). It's written in PyGTK and is portable across Linux, Windows, and OS X. It stores things in HTML. It's pretty flexible and has a handy screenshot tool built-in. It's not sexy, but it's flexible and does the job.
Check out NoteCasePro. It's the only solution I could find that allows me to sync an encrypted file myself that I could open in Android and Linux (/windows/mac). It has a ton of advanced features, but I just use the basics like hierarchies and image embedding.
<a href="http://www.markdownnotes.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.markdownnotes.com/</a><p>would be perfect if it's packaged as an offline chrome app. and can sync with online server of users' choice (s3, dropbox, ... etc)
One interesting aspect of a paper notebook is that you know exactly what information you're carrying across a border. Of course paper notes have security issues, but all of those issues are known and easy to understand. The front door is open, but there are no back doors.
This is a nice design for reviews where each product has individually voted features.<p>Would be cool to be able to facet search on aspects like you might on an ecommerce website. (So you could compare products from different perspectives.)
Not fucking Evernote. This poll is already tainted by Valley startup Mac hipsters moving to Vietnam taking only their iPad Mini and a pair of trousers.
Vim to Dropbox with markdown files.<p>You get encryption for free with :X.<p>You can also easily set up Vimwiki.<p>You can do real-time collaboration with Floobits.<p>You can store them in git repo and access them via Github (or <a href="http://prose.io" rel="nofollow">http://prose.io</a>), and manage with git-flow.