Category Archives: technology

Notational Velocity

It is hard to describe Notational Velocity without describing what it doesn’t do… It does not do styles. It does not store pictures or movies. It does not do fancy outlines, link to documents or address book contacts. It does not have a fancy interface or cool features. As a matter of fact, it does not do much at all… That is what makes it so great!

All Notational Velocity does is allow you to record and search text notes. That’s it. But it does this is such a simple way and has an interface so devoid of complexity that it is almost a little bit erie when you see how powerful it is in concept. Basically, It does this by using a single text field for both searching and creating your notes. I know this sounds strange but keep trying to follow. When you start to type, it starts live searching all of your notes and their contents. If you want to create a new note just hit “return” and it will start a new note with whatever you just typed as it’s title. I know, I know, I did not grok it at first but once you get used to it you will be blown away.

It is a cocoa application so it does support all of the stuff that other cocoa applications do such as spell checking, services, etc. It also saves on the fly (i.e. it saves as you enter) and stores everything with 128 bit encryption. Oh yeah, and it is freeware so it is worth the price to download it and give it a try. It might take a little getting used to at first but once you “drink the kool-aid” it will be hard to give up.

We continue highlighting the applications I use on a daily basis to keep my busy life organized. This week we feature:

Mariner Write

Sure, I have Microsoft Word on my Powerbook but I find that, in general, it is way too much for my needs. It has a one size (XXL in the case of Word) fits all mentality that makes it slow and bloated and non intuitive for my tastes. Many of the most useful features are either not well documented are buried needlessly in the depths of the program and I could easily grab a cup of coffee during the time it takes to fully launch. I need a word processor that is fast to load, takes up very little hard drive space, has just the features I need and makes those features intuitive and easy to find.

I have found what I look for in Mariner Software’s wonderful word processor, Mariner Write. It can handle all of the tasks most people would ever need in a word processor. Not only that but it can also Open, Read and Write Microsoft Word compatible files so there is no need to worry if your friends, clients and coworkers send you Word .doc files (or you need to send one to them). An added bonus, and one that helps me a great deal, is the ability to save files directly as a PDF file. Mac OS X has built in support for PDF files and Write leverages that ability seamlessly. Let’s get that straight. I am not talking about saving to PDF from the Print dialog. I am talking Save As: PDF! It also has multiple text selection, a split pane view that allows one to see and edit two separate sections of the same document and all of the other features one would expect from a full featured word processor.

If you are looking for a word processors with 80% of the features of MS Word but none of the bloat, look no further.

Google X is a cute little way to access googles services in a very Mac OS X Dock sort of way. Click on the link below and then roll over the icons above the search bar and you will see what I mean. Yet another fun little innovation brought to you by Google Labs. Even the tagline at the bottom is cool. It reads, “Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you.”

Google X