Dropbox

Dropbox / Security — No Comments
28
Jan 12

Dropbox and Security, Again

Yes, the Dropbox security story is still lingering. Patrick Rhone posted an updated article about the FTC complaint recently filed against them for deceptive language in their privacy terms. Read it for yourself, but Patrick argues that all data is at risk so be cautious and accept it.

I don’t like the tone of the piece[1] but his advice is sound. Whenever I store sensitive data on Dropbox, I encrypt it myself before it is uploaded. I create encrypted sparse images that hold the files. They can be easily opened on a mac and used as any other volume. I tend to use Knox because it makes the whole process easy. Knox keeps a list of sparse images in a menu bar drop down and provides direct access to the disk compression utility. However, the images can be created, used and resized using the built-in Apple Disk Utility application.

These files are not accessible through iOS though which makes Dropbox less useful to me. Unfortunately Spideroak, which does provide real encryption, is not ready for primetime. It’s awkward and not well supported by third party developers. I’m watching it though, because I like their model better.

 

UPDATE: I guess Patrick decided to delete his post. Maybe because the referenced page is the original 2011 article from Wired. I’m not sure, but this post still tells the story I wanted it to. Encrypt your own data and do not rely on anyone else to do it for you; If you care about that sort of thing.

  1. I think the attitude that there is no expectation of privacy once someone agrees to use a service is a little patronizing. What Dropbox did was wrong and misleading. They admitted to it and now I don’t trust them. I still pay them money every month, but I also go out of my way to secure a lot more stuff on Dropbox and I use Dropbox less than I did before.  ↩
Dropbox / Mac / Security / Software — 4 Comments
8
Sep 11

1Password on MAS: Dropbox Sync Issue

I was excited to finally migrate my 1Password install to the Mac AppStore. I’ve been slowly repurchasing through the MAS so that I can quit maintaining an inventory of all of my application licenses.

Unfortunatley, there is a significant bug with the MAS version. I keep my Dropbox folder on a secondary internal drive so as to save space on my SSD. The new 1Password assumes that Dropbox is always installed in the user folder. When trying to setup 1Password to sync through Dropbox I get a hairy error message.

Further, due to the high profile launch, some of the normal support routes are closed or bogged down. The email page says the wait is over 7 days and to use the forum. Fortunately the forum is very responsive.

The real problem is that it appears that due to sandboxing restrictions the MAS version will not support a Dropbox folder outside of the user folder. I’m crossing my fingers that the non-MAS version receives updates and migration to v4 when it is released.

Dropbox / iOS / iPad / iPhone / Organization / Review — 1 Comment
13
Jul 11

More iPad Note Apps: We Might Have a Winner

There’s been a couple of new note apps 1 since my real-world review. Most of them still can not compete with Simplenote and Omnioutlner. However, I have found three very good alternatives. Notely, WriteRoom and Notability.

All three of these apps started out simple enough but they have evolved and matured into top of class text editors.

Notely; $1.99

Notely started out as a relatively barebones text editors. It had some rudimentary Dropbox syncing that required a manual sync. The last couple of updates included automatic document syncing and document sorting options that include sort by modification date (my personal favorite).

The features that really elevate Notely to the top of class for me are – Markdown preview – Markdown specific keyboard row – Send to OmniFocus

The additional keyboard row also includes keys for moving the cursor around by character or by word. There is also an easily accessible document info panel with word and character counts as well as file size and modification date. Finally, Notely has a send to OmniFocus function to drop a text note right into OmniFocus as a task. The document title becomes the task and the body of the document becomes the task note.

Notely also includes all of the features I expect in a text editor. – full screen writing mode – TextExpander integration – Font customization – Universal iOS app

WriteRoom 3; $4.99

I purchased WriteRoom from the day it became available. I’ve always been a fan of HogBay’s design style. Jesse is creative and careful and has a light touch with feature selection. Unfortunately it also meant that WriteRoom 1 & 2 didn’t really fit my workflow. I want all of my notes in one Dropbox folder. I have that folder constantly in sync with Simplenote so I can have additional options for editing and syncing. WriteRoom original had no Dropbox support and when it did gain support, it was locked to a single WriteRoom folder. WriteRoom 3 has really found the sweet spot for me. Not only does it automatically sync with any Dropbox folder, the app is one of the best designed text editors I have used. Here is a sampling of what makes WriteRoom a clear winner.

  • Elegant design
  • Automatic and Manual Dropbox syncing to any folder
  • Customizable keyboard row
  • Fullscreen mode
  • Custom cursor-move tap zones
  • Full font customization

Of course there are many more little touches like an option to disable autocorrect. WriteRoom 3 for iOS is a mature text editor that will be replacing Simplenote as my editor of choice.

Notability; $2.99

Notability is a very different kind of app from the other two. If WriteRoom is a simple Moleskine for iOS, Notability is a TrapperKeeper. It is a full blown note-taking suite.

The app is pretty. The note-taking environment can be customized to suite individual tastes. Fonts and note colors are mutable and have several options to choose from. Notes can be organized into dividers. Dividers can be customized with titles, colors and icons and are displayed in a simple list view. Dividers can be further organized into folders. In this way, many different notes can be grouped in logical order and easily navigated.

The organizational options are just the icing on the cake. Notability really shines in the options for entering and later extracting information.

Adding Information

  • Add text anywhere on the left margin by tapping
  • Import an image and add a caption
  • Add a hand drawn sketch from a custom free hand sketch tool
  • Wrap text around images
  • Record audio
  • Use the built in web browser to search for content and embed in a note

Exporting Information

  • PDF
  • PDF + audio files
  • RTF
  • RTF with embedded images and audio
  • Notability native file for sharing

All exports can be saved to Dropbox, iDisk or WebDAV as well as emailed directly from the app or printed through AirPrint. My complaint with many of the alternatives was that they only provided a PDF export and I wanted access to my raw text. Notability scratches that itch.

Audio

The audio recorder is especially nice for a conference. Each recording is added in sequence to a timeline. You can also play the timestamped recording by selecting it in a list. Whether you want to record an entire presentation or quick audio notes to yourself, this is the way a voice recorder should work.

Images

Images can be added from almost anywhere. There are built in shapes, freeform drawing, access to the camera and camera roll and an excellent webclip tool. Visit any URL and it will grab the page as an image and insert it into your note. There is also full copy and paste support for images in a note. The only missing tool is the ability to rotate an image after it’s been added.

The only downside to this app is the lack of direct Dropbox or WebDAV syncing. If I am going to enter a large amount of information into a notebook, I want it to easily2 out live the lifetime of the device lifecycle.

I’d also like to see TextExpander support to more easily add Markdown notes.

Notability seems to be hitting a very nice balance between features and bloat. There’s just enough there to make it competent for taking notes in a meeting (which I have proven to myself) but not so much that you have to visit a help section every 10 minutes.

Conclusion

Here’s my conclusion: WriteRoom has replaced Simplenote on my iPad springboard dock and Notability is on the first screen of my iPad.

  1. I really only look at these apps when I see a new one that supports Markdown and/or Dropbox and Simplenote syncing.  ↩
  2. By “easily” I mean with very little effort on my part. I do not want to export and then reimport hundreds of notes when I get an iPad 3.  ↩
Dropbox / Security / Simplenote / Web — No Comments
4
Jul 11

Dave Winer's Response to Dropbox

Dave Winer: “I’ve deleted my Dropbox account.”

THAT is exactly what I was afraid of. Dave has done some very cool things with Dropbox. If you think that’s not a loss for the company then research what Dave has accomplished (apache and Dropbox web server). He’s been a significant promoter of Dropbox  and likely driven a good amount of traffic to their site.

There was no need for this. Copying Google’s or SugarSync’s TOS is not an excuse. I never thought I would say it, but Microsoft actually has better TOS for their cloud service. So does MobileMe. Perhaps larger companies can afford to take bigger legal risks. I’m not sure. But I am sure I will not store anything on Dropbox (or SugarSync or Google Docs) that I would not be comfortable storing in my public folder. At least until the TOS are revised further, which appears to be happening.

There’s an excellent review of various TOS by Ed Bott.

Here are Simplenote’s TOS to add to the group.

Dropbox / Web — 4 Comments
3
Jul 11

How to shoot yourself in the head and hand your business to Apple in two easy steps

  1. Create a temporary security hole in your cloud based document storage system.
  2. Release new terms of service like this:

“By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services.”

 

That last sentence tries to make the new TOS seem benign, but the first sentence hand the Dropbox folks the rights to use your data for pretty much anything.

Dropbox / GTD / Mac / OmniFocus / Tips — No Comments
30
Jun 11

Some OmniFocus Macros

In light of my previous post about controlling my work environment with Keyboard Maestro, I thought I would share a few more handy macros for OmniFocus.

Clean and Sync

This is a pretty simple macro. Most of the work is done by two lines of AppleScript. The macro tells OmniFocus to clean-up the front window and then perform a sync. It’s simple but handy.

OF Sync Macro

Get to the tasks

This one I use whenever I sit down at my Mac to clear some tasks out of OmniFocus. I have a OF Perspective that is for when I am at my Mac. The perspective has a hot key set for triggering it. This KM macro does a few things. It brings OmniFocus to the front and then executes the Clean and Sync macro shown above and then simulates the key combination to activate the perspective. Finally, it moves the window to take up the left half of my primary monitor.

OF Mac Macro

Todo Files

I posted previously about my Mail rule that can automatically create an OmniFocus task for an attachment and share the file with a link through Dropbox. It’s pretty handy, but at the end of the week I need to process those tasks and files. I do it often enough that I created a simple macro that just opens the finder to the folder in Dropbox. That’s it. I said it was simple.

Todo File Macro

 

Dropbox / Mac / Programming / Tips — 4 Comments
26
May 11

Screenshots to Dropbox with Keyboard Maestro

Continue reading →

Apps / Dropbox / iOS / iPad / Review / Simplenote / Software — 11 Comments
25
May 11

Real World Note Taking on the iPad

I recently attended a four day conference. The subject isn’t all that important (generally, the interface of science and IT). What is important is that I decided to take the opportunity to test a number of iPad apps that I had only noodled around with previously. The experiment was really about testing the idea that the iPad can replace both a laptop and a pad of paper for taking notes. I’ll always be a pen-geek and a notebook snob. I love the feel of a fountain pen on heavy weight paper and the smell of ink but I also love the practical use of the iPad for something boring like conference notes. Let’s face it, these notes aren’t going to the Smithsonian.

Notes Folder

The Test

The testing was simple. Use an app to take notes on the iPad 2 and see how long it would last before I needed a pad of paper or another app. The apps in this review are arranged in approximately most useful to least. I also include the price of the app at the time of this writing and the number of total hours I was able to use the app. Think of it as a more practical star rating system.

The conference was a series of lecture sessions that lasted 1-2 hrs at a time. I was seated at a table the majority of the time. There were approximately 8 hrs of meetings each day with regular breaks.

I do most of my notes as nested text lists. Even when I am working with pen and paper and use a very simple style of note-taking. I’ve evolved a custom version of the Columbia style that fits my needs. Here are a couple of my requirements of my notes.

  • Portable text
  • I write in Markdown. Given the deep hierarchy of the iOS keyboard, I need either TextExpander support or a customizable macro bar to quickly access special characters used in Markdown.
  • I use little to no text coloring or highlighting. If I need to mark up my notes, I’ll do that later in another app. Again, Markdown is enough for me.
  • I like to diagram if I am brainstorming a large project. If I need to visualize my notes, I can easily convert plain text bullets to a diagram later.
  • I separate groups of notes in different documents or pages. For example, each page may contain related talks rather than a chronological set of notes covering all of the conference talks.

Just the Text

Simplenote; Free; 10h

I’ve worked in Simplenote since they introduced the iPhone app. I really prefer Simplenote syncing over Dropbox sync since it is quick and seamless. It gives me more peace of mind that my notes are backed up no matter where or how I leave off.

Simplenote also provides document ordering by modification timestamp. That means all of my working documents are right at the top of my stack. Even better than that, Simplenote gives me an option to pin specific documents to the top of the stack. That means my reference documents are also easily accessible regardless of when they were last modified.

Simplenote does not have many other big features. There is no custom keyboard. Notes are plain text and markdown documents can be exported via email and copy paste. However, it’s a low friction app that keeps me focused on the presentation and not fiddling with formatting or widgets.

OmniOutliner; $19.99; 10h

OmniOutliner is a new addition to the iPad app cast. I was pretty dissapointed with the lack of Dropbox support but it’s a great tool for taking notes. While it is definately more than a plain text note-taking app, my usecase was primarily focused on simply getting text into the app. Formatting on the fly can be tedious and require lot’s of time for tweaking. If you’re trying to pay attention to the presenter, you are really going to want to ignore the formatting options until you have some down-time to fiddle. I really wished there was a way to set formatting by outline level? That just makes sense to me.

The app produces high quality outlines. I’ve mentioned the lack of syncing services so it can be risky if your entire conference notes are only on your iPad. One hack-y work-around is to export via plain text to email. Then copy the text and past into Simplenote. This is what I did.

OmniOutliner

Where OmniOutliner really shines is the note support. Each outline item may have lengthy notes with pasted images. This was the feature that really put it up there with the Simplenote. I was able to take notes and then pop over to a sketching app to play with an idea. I could then copy the sketch and paste it back into OmniOutliner. This really is the killer feature.

OmniOutliner image support

OmniOutliner also supports an inconceivable amount of export formats. The pasted images are handled well during export. For plain text the images are just skipped and you get what looks like a Markdown bulleted list.

I really ended up enjoying this app. There are some really efficiency boosts with OmniOutliner too. You can easily reorder your items by drag and drop. For the most part, it is faster than making bullet lists with Markdown. Speaking of Markdown, you can still use tags throughout the text and then export to plain text. The tags are retained if you want to import the plain notes into Simplenote or Nebulous Notes. It’s kind of the best of all possible options.

Nebulous Notes; $1.99; 4h

Nebulous Notes was recently updated with new features that moved it right to the top of my text editor app list. For example, they added “Sync” with Dropbox rather than the previously implemented download/upload mechanism. The new sync feature is great. While it is not automatic like the Simplenote app, it is very well done and easy enough to do. I used Nebulous Notes for the remainder of the first day of the conference and the entire second day.

The macro keys in Nebulous are very convenient. I’ve configured my macro keys to be formatted Markdown tags, for example “[ ]: ” for link references. It was very convenient and I could use Nebulous Notes for all of my notes if necessary. However, I found it easier and faster to use the TextExpander shortcuts that I have memorized for iOS markdown snippets.

The note editor layout is nice and the text formatting is easy on the eyes.

The lack of note-sorting options created difficulty when trying to switch between notes. Nebulous Notes sorts all documents by name. I had to prefix “aaa” to the titles of all of my working notes to give me quick access at the top of the note list. This trick worked fine but it forced me to change my workflow to fit the app.

Others

Before I get a deluge of suggestions, I’ve probably purchased and tried every plain text editor for the iPad. Here’s a brief run down of the apps I purposely elected note to test (in the approximate order of utility to me):

Side Track: Sketching Notes

One advantage OmniOutliner has over Simplenote is its support for adding images inline with the notes. When I need to sketch some application interface ideas, I have many options on the iPad (more on that later) so I do not need my note taking app to directly support sketching. However, being able to paste a sketch into the notes for reference is a nice option and that’s where OmniOutliner beats Simplenote. Simplenote is optimized for text, but occasionally, images are nice too.

Sketch Portability

Several of the iPad free-form sketching apps allowed me to create some useful output. Unfortunately only a couple allowed me to copy the sketch out of the app. This is crucial for my use cases. Sometimes I just want to play with an idea and then add it to an email or paste it into another app. I don’t necessarily want a PDF as the output.

OmniGraffle; $49.99

I’m an OmniGraffle for Mac user and I have been using OmniGraffle for iPad since the first day it was released. It’s a great tool for advanced users but can seem a little overwrought for new users. Like OmniFocus there’s a lot of controls available but you only need to use the features that are useful to you.

I’ve tried several iPad apps for sketching and I keep returning to OmniGraffle. It’s a nice balance of polish stencils and rough note taking in one. For example, I can layout UI elements using stencils but I can also draw over-top to make notes or sketch ideas quickly. I can also add legible text notes anywhere on the sketch.

OmniGraffle Sketch

Importantly, OmniGraffle lets me select any single element or screen area and copy it to the clipboard. I can then paste it into any other app, including Mail and OmniOutliner. Bingo!

I still wish the OmniGroup would get onboard with the Dropbox train. It would be nice to easily use Dropbox with their apps but that’s not going to stop me from recommending their apps.

 

Adobe Ideas; $9.99

Adobe Ideas was one of the first sketching apps that I was really drawn to (pun intended). The line smoothing makes my sketches look better and the object scaling means I can add a lot of detail to a drawing at any time. The zooming is fluid and feels natural. I still use this app pretty regularly when I just want to quickly sketch a project or sometimes just to doodle. The recently added in-app purchase of multiple layers is nice too. It certainly gives me more control for detailed drawings. It’s a quick in-and-out experience.

Unfortunately Adobe Ideas does not have the ability to select an area and copy to the pasteboard. That makes it far less useful for my needs.

Multimedia Notes

There is a whole class of iPad apps for taking notes with multiple input methods: text, audio, handwriting recognition and sketching. I tried a few that had reasonable reviews and features.

NoteTaker HD; $4.99, 3h

This a really great app for taking notes. I’ve tried a number of these note apps that allow you to sketch, paste images and place text boxes. Most are pretty horrible. Note Taker HD, however, has a number of nice features and is easy to use. Unfortunately, the UI needs more polish. It feels like it was made for an HP Windows Tablet. The touch targets are very small and the icons are difficult to decipher.

On the other hand, being able to quickly sketch ideas and annotate with typed text is great. I started the conference with this app. I made some hand-written notes and sketched out an interface idea. While it was terrific to sketch, all of my text notes were stuck in a format that was pretty unusable. I could export to PDF but that’s not very useful for creating a conference report. I gave up after two sessions on the first day.

If you don’t mind getting your notes exported as a PDF then this is probably the best option. The shape template are abundant and extremely flexible. There are also some very nice features like drag and drop timestamps.

NoteTaker HD might actually be better described as a sketching tool. The drawing tools are nicely done and there are many options for adding detail. There is also a obvious and easily accessible way to copy a selection of a sketch to the pasteboard. As I mentioned in the OmniOutliner section, this is a must have feature for me now.

What’s more, the app is made by a fellow that we owe a lot to. Dan Bricklin created VisiCalc. Without VisiCalc the PC revolution may have never occurred or may have been delayed by many years. VisiCalc showed the small business world that the PC was a tool worth having.

NoteTaker HD Templates

smartNote; $2.99; 2h

Don’t let the horrible icon fool you. smartNote is a very capable app. It uses a spiral notebook metaphor with custom cover images. It’s pretty. It’s also powerful. The sketching is smooth and it supports custom “smartWrite” technology which recognizes character patterns to create typed text. If you remember the Newton or the old Palm devices then you know exactly what I mean.

There are several features that really make smartNote an all in one tool. There is a built-in audio recorder and calculator for example. The recordings are not locked to your notes either. You can export them to a perfectly portable audio file that can be emailed along with the notes. You can also select a portion of sketch and copy it to the pasteboard. The smartNote implementation requires navigation through a “widgets” menu but it is useable.

smartNote

smartNote Copy

smartNote made some interesting decisions for note layout. There is a narrow vertical strip always visible in landscape mode for typing notes. You can add text notes to the main page along side the sketches, but I really like the idea of a persistent note area.

Just a couple more features that push this app up to second place in this category:

  • Password protection
  • PDF Annotation
  • Document autosave
  • Export to PDF
  • Widgets

Paperdesk; $2.99; 1h

PaperDesk and smartNote both have audio recording capabilities and both allow you to share the audio files via email attachments. There are legal restrictions to recording audio at a meeting or conference. I also never used audio recordings in my workflow as I found it to be a crutch that made me soft on taking good notes. Good contemporaneous notes are better than a good audio recording any day.

I tend to like the pen performance in PaperDesk better. There is a bit of acceleration detection that translates to line thickness. The overall effect is more realistic ink performance.

No way to copy a selection of a sketch.

UPAD; $4.99; 1h

UPAD is simply a sketch pad. It has some nice feature implementations, like a convenient magnifying box for writing with your finger. The magnifier let’s you write with detail but see more of your entire notepad. You can also annotate PDF’s if that’s your thing. It has the best palm rest feature of any handwriting app I have used. No way to copy a selection of a sketch.

Penultimate; $1.99; <1h

I know Penultimate is the darling of the iPad sketching world, but I just found the ink system to bulky. I had a difficult time adding any detail to sketches. All of my sketches were enormous as if I wrote on a post-it with a Sharpie. No way to copy a selection of a sketch.

I think the idea of custom paper (most are in-app purchases) is cute but impractical for my needs.

Notepad Pro; $2.99; 1h

Another app with a terrible icon. Notepad Pro is a decent buy at $2.99 but some of the features are just not polished enough and the app has not received many updates to keep it in step with the other offerings. No way to copy a selection of sketch.

Notes Plus; $4.99; <20min

Notes Plus still has a way to go. I noticed several bugs when using the audio recorder and attempting to playback audio. It’s a nice looking app with some interesting gesture support but not quite ready for full time use as a note taking app. No way to copy a selection of a sketch.

Handwriting Recognition

PhatPad; $7.99; 1h

For overall handwriting recognition support, PhatPad is by far the best note taking app. Not only does it have text recognition but it has some very good shape recognition for diagramming. There is a built in audio recorder but unfortunately you can only create a single recording for each notebook. Email export does output a PDF and audio file.

PhatPad Recording

PhatPad Export

WritePad; $9.99; 0h

WritePad is PhatPad’s serious big brother that never had time for girls. It’s made to be the best handwriting recognition app. If you really just want excellent text recognition, then look no further than WritePad. Unfortunately, that’s about all it has. I found PhatPad to be more practical since it had shape recognitions and support for other sketch objects.

The one thing I wish these apps had was a history of the handwriting as it appeared before translation into text. Misinterpretations are not uncommon and if you are taking notes quickly you might end up with a completely incomprehensible mess. There’s no way to look back and see what you actually scribbled down

Side Track: TextExpander

Writing in Markdown has some major benefits. I can easily convert all of my conference notes to formatted text, PDF, or HTML. It’s also readable and easy to remember the markup tags. Unfortunately, the characters used for tagging (#, -, *, :, [ and ]) all require quite a bit of keyboard gymnastics on iOS. TextExpander for iOS makes me much more efficient in Markdown. I would not have even attempted this test without TextExpander on the iPad. I would have simply used my MacBook.

Conclusion

In my experience there is no general method of taking notes. Each person has their own style and needs. Notes are also a very personal product (unless you are a personal assistant or stenographer). Each person has their own needs for the final product but I think my use cases are fairly typical.

I need my note-taking experience to be low friction with no fiddling. I also need to extract the text at the end so that I can refine and polish the notes without having to transcribe every word again. Finally, I need the ability to doodle and sketch during a meeting.

For my next conference I will most likely stick with the OmniOutliner, Simplenote, and OmniGraffle combination on the iPad. That’s a pretty steep price tag but I would like to remind you how much a good notebook and pen cost. I’ll also add that while everyone else at the meeting was lugging around a backpack or computer bag, I simply had my iPad and a small case.

Dropbox / iOS / iPad / iPhone / Mac / Organization / Productivity / Review / Simplenote / Tips — 1 Comment
22
May 11

Can You Get It Out?

I’ve been enjoying Dr. Drang’s tales of file format lock-in and his crusade against closed formats for his data. His stories always feel eerily familiar.

I bounce back and forth between Macs and Windows machines in my daily life. My OS polytheism goes way back. I started with an old custom built 386 PC in high school. In undergraduate, I took advantage of the steep Apple student discount and acquired a Mac IIci. During graduate school, Windows was the cheaper and logical option so I moved to a Dell (and regretted every minute with that brick). Finally, I moved back to a Mac after grad school. Much of my day job is spent on Windows still. Inevitably I have files created in Office for Windows and older files created on Word for Mac. Of course these files are not smoothly transportable. Specifically, documents with considerable formatting and embedded images generally fail horribly when moving from one version of an OS to another.

I don’t have a good solution for fixing my old files, but I do have a motto that reduces the chances it will happen with new files.

If it’s not portable, it’s not permanent.

I love new apps as much as the next guy. I was using Evernote before Phil Libin propelled the product into the top tier of Mac and mobile apps. It’s a truly wonderful application and service. I paid for the premium service for a couple years and used the heck out of the iPhone app.

One day I decided to do a little experiment and tried to export all of my Evernote files and import them into Devonthink Office Pro. Both applications do OCR. Both render HTML very well. Both also support a variety of file formats. I thought it would be an easy project. I ended up with a mess of poorly rendered files that were all missing their underlying OCR data. To be fair, Evernote is probably doing the best it can with exporting to a universal file type. I’m also confident that the source files were not always the best either.

I was quite disappointed, but it motivated me to make some changes. For long term note-taking, I gave up the convenience of Evernote in favor of alternatives that provide more portability.

Text

I maintain all of my text notes as Simplenote/Dropbox text files. I use the Simplenote iPhone and iPad apps. I also use Notational Velocity (actually, I use NVAlt) on the Mac and Resophnotes on Windows.

These text files are portable and can be edited on any OS. I typically write in Markdown so I do get some basic formatting for making lists and I can export to a variety of formats easily. The real downside is that I can not include text formatting without using Markdown tags. The upside is that it is highly likely the text will be accessible for my lifetime.

Images

Evernote was great for taking photo notes. Snap an image of a whiteboard and you get a photo plus searchable text. That’s pretty powerful and I still use that feature occasionally. While OCR of a handwritten whiteboard is pretty impressive, it’s rare that I actually need that. What I need is the content from the meeting easily accessible and portable to other apps. For example, I may want to zoom in on the image and add some additional notes or markup. I also usually transpose the content into Simplenote so that I can start defining tasks or projects. I’ve settled on a couple alternative iPhone apps that do a spectacular job of capturing the image and sharing it with other apps (and Dropbox).

Genius Scan (website) is my preferred app for snapping photos of white boards, scanning documents or remembering a parking spot. The $2.99 upgrade from the free version gets me Dropbox upload too, so the photos are available to all of my devices. A very good runner up is the iPhone app Scanner Pro

If I need to convert a document to text then OCRkit beats Evernote hands-down. Not because the OCR is better (I don’t think it is) but because it actually outputs text that I can copy and edit. Evernote really just does the OCR to support searching and when you export from Evernote, you lose the OCR.

Benefits

There are two significant benefits to my note-taking system:

  1. Text notes and PNG files are portable and can be used across multiple OS’ and applications
  2. By not relying on Evernote to do my note-taking for me, I am more thoughtful about what goes into my notes.

My Evernote archive was overflowing with dendrites shoveled in through the years of web browsing, brain storming and living life. When there is zero friction to adding content to a notebook, the notebook will become a junk pile. Curation is the path to high quality notes.

Dropbox / Security / Web — No Comments
21
Apr 11

Data Privacy and Dropbox

There has been a bit of excitement over the Dropbox security standards and controls. This is nothing new, but it might be a slow news week.  Dropbox has responded with a lengthy blog post. Most of their arguments make sense to me. For example, they must decrypt user objects if they are to be available through the web application:

“The reason is many of the most popular Dropbox features — like accessing your files from the website, creating file previews, and sharing files with other people — would either not be possible or would be much more cumbersome without this capability.”

I’m not one to make the Schmidt-y argument about data privacy but I would remind folks that if you put something out on the web without manually encrypting it, then you are not securing your data. As I have pointed out several times, I encrypt all of my confidential data in DMG files BEFORE uploading to Dropbox or placing on an FTP server. It adds a few limitations and requires significantly more bandwidth, but it provides significant piece of mind and is just good practice.

Dropbox / Hardware / Internet / Mac / Software / Tips / Windows — No Comments
13
Apr 11

More Dropbox Fun (FTP Access)

Tinkering

Dropbox is incredibly useful and I enjoy extending it’s utility whenever I can. I also enjoy choosing projects that will teach me something new about my Mac. My latest project was to provide SFTP access to my Dropbox account. For security reasons, I am not allowed to install Dropbox at work. I considered several options for direct access to my files (email, webdav) but FTP is the most simple and universal access I could develop.

The Mac Mini Setup

There are many advantages to having an always on local server. In particular, it means the various Apple TV’s in the house always have a movie library available without having to go to another room and start a computer. It also means I can tinker with server projects locally with a Mac rather than strangling myself with a remote unix server on Amazon or my web host.

To create a Internet accessible Mac server you will need to make some minor changes to your Mac and your broadband router.

Open the System Sharing Preferences and turn on Remote Login. I limit access to a single user account for a bit of added security. I’m the only one that needs to access the server, so this works fine for me.

SharingControl.png

 

Open the Network Preferences and locate your IP address.

networkControl.png

The Router

Connect to your broadband router and locate the Port Forwarding configuration settings. This will be different for every router. The main point is that this needs to be configured at the router that connects your home to the Internet. If you have additional routers between your computer and the broadband router, you may need to enable additional settings. My Mac Mini is directly connected to my router through a LAN.

Configure the SSH port forwarding on the router to go to your Mac Mini IP address. The SSH port is generally set as port 22.

While you are in your router’s admin portal, write down the IP address of your router. This WILL NOT start with “192.168″ but rather will be a unique IP address that your ISP is providing to your router. You will need this for the next step of this tutorial.

portForward.png

The Secret Sauce

Getting to your Mac Server on your local LAN is easy. Getting to it over the Internet is a bit more complicated but there is a very easy way to enable a DNS alias to your home Mac.

Go over to DynDNS and sign-up for a free account. From within your free account you can configure up to TWO new hosts. Importantly, you can choose host addresses that are memorable, rather than 10 digit IP address. For example, “myawesomeserver.dyndns.org.” I use the “Host with IP address” option. This is where you will enter the IP address of your broadband router. Once complete, you should have a static IP address that now maps back to your Mac server at home. The only problem is, when your ISP changes your home IP address, everything will break.

DynDNS has a nice solution to help resolve this issue. Go to the DynDNS Update Client page and download the Mac Updater. Install this on your Mac Server and enter your account credentials. That’s about it. Make sure this application always starts up with the server. Now when your local IP address changes, the DynDNS Updater will notify the name server of the new address.

dynDNSControl.png

 

Finally, install Dropbox on your Mac Server.

Connecting

There are several options for connecting to your new server. SSH terminal connections give you direct access to the shell of the Mac. This is quite powerful. Unless you are accustom to using the terminal on your Mac, I do not recommend experimenting from a remote location. However, SFTP is a fairly safe way to access files on your Mac Server.

On windows, I use Filezilla for SFTP. It’s far from the quality available on the Mac with Transmit, but it is free and simple to use. From within Filezilla, create a new server connection using the DynDNS host name you set up. Provide the user credentials that are defined for the Mac Remote Login settings. Finally make sure to use port 22 (which you mapped in the router settings). This port is generally reserved for SFTP connections.

That should be all you need to connect to your Mac. Now you can navigate to your Dropbox directory and manipulate files until your heart is content.

Voilà, Dropbox FTP access.

References

These are links I found useful or interesting while building this service.

http://www.macinstruct.com/node/152
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_build_your_own_online_cloud
http://www1.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_enable_ssh_your_mac
http://www.dyndnscommunity.com/questions/3849/mac-osx-snow-leopard-bt-homehub-2-and-ftp-server.html

Dropbox / iOS / Mac / Simplenote / Tips — No Comments
11
Apr 11

What's not in a name

I had already been testing a new iOS app named Notesy when the boys over at the B&B podcast started to recommend it. I have to say, I really like the app. However, I started to see some funny business while I was test driving new note naming systems. I’ll post about that experiment later. However, I discovered some interesting limitations when using Dropbox for taking notes. Dropbox limits the characters used in note titles.The Notesy blog has some good succinct information.

The short and not so sweet of it is that Dropbox prevents or changes several characters when used as part of a note title. The following characters are not allowed as part of a Dropbox note file:

\ / : ; ? * < > |

For example, I am syncing Simplenote and Dropbox. Simplenote allows me to save a note named as follows:

blog::review::Notesy 2011-04-10.txt

However, that same file shows up in Dropbox as follows:

blog–review–Notesy 2011-04-10.txt

The double colons are replaced with double dashes. I’ve confirmed the same behavior with several Dropbox based note taking applications so this is not specific to Notesy. Notesy does have a setting to allow the use of Windows non-prefered characters, however, that does not fix this issue.

This will definitely impact my file naming experiment. That short exclusion list includes several characters I was considering for use as tag separators in note titles. It can be frustrating when limitations are purely technical. The mind is willing but the API is not.