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Unlike iOS s Notes, OS X s built-in app for quick notes,Stickies, goes beyond simple text. Still, it feels dated thesedays, and perhaps its biggest flaw is that it doesn t sync acrossMacs or with your iOS devices. If you re looking for something abit more modern that lets you create and manage text notes, andaccess those notes anywhere you ve got an Internet connection, Justnotes ( Mac App Store link ) may be the solution. Justnotes s main window uses the now-familiar two-paned interface:a list of your notes on the left, with the content of the selectednote on the right. (You can choose to show a preview in the listfor each note s contents one, two, three, or four lines.) Thefirst line of each note is displayed in bold as the note title, andnext to each note s title is the date the note was last modified;for items modified today, you see the time of the last change. Asearch field lets you quickly find all notes containing your searchstring; instances of that string are highlighted within each note.You can sort the notes list alphabetically or by creation ormodification date. Select a note and you can immediately edit it in the right-handpane; double-click a note to open it in a separate window forediting. To create a new note, you simply click the pen-on-paperbutton, press Command+N, or choose File: New Note. Justnotes alsooffers a handy, systemwide keyboard shortcut that brings Justnotesforward and creates a new note, making it easy to enter some quicktext regardless of which app you re currently using. The notes window Justnotes stores notes as plain text, which means that noteformatting is limited font and size, alignment, and a few otherbasic tweaks and those choices apply to all notes. What makes Justnotes so useful is that it syncs your notes acrossdevices, and it offers two sync options. The first is to sync yournotes database using Simplenote , a free text-note-syncing service. (A premium Simplenote account,which costs $2 per month or $20 for a year, offers a number of features beyond simple syncing .) In addition to keeping your notes in sync between multiple Macs,Simplenote also provides Web access to all your notes, and it makesyour notes accessible using the Simplenote iOS app and a number of third-party apps that support Simplenote syncing. Alternatively, if you re running OS X 10.7.3 or later, you canchoose to store your notes as plain-text files in a folder on yourhard drive. If you use Dropbox , and you choose a folder inside your Dropbox folder, this meansyour Justnotes notes are automatically synced across all yourDropbox-enabled devices, and they re also accessible from anyDropbox-enabled text editor or notes app for example, an iOS texteditor. With folder syncing enabled, Justnotes automaticallyincludes in your notes list any .txt files in your synced folder,although you can configure other plain-text file extensions (suchas .md and .markdown) that you also want the program to recognize. My favorite sync feature, however, is that you can sync with bothSimplenote and a local folder, and you can even configure multiple Simplenoteaccounts and multiple local folders, letting you store, say, worknotes in one Simplenote account, shared family notes in another,and personal notes in Dropbox. Each account or folder gets its ownheading in the notes list, with that account or folder s noteslisted below it. A given note can sync to only one location, and new notes appear inthe first account or folder you configure the one at the top ofthe list. (In Justnotes s preferences, you can change the order ofaccounts and folders in the list.) However you choose to sync,Justnotes syncs automatically, or you can force a sync by clickingthe Last Sync text at the bottom of the window notes that haven tyet been synced display a small, gray circle to the left. Becausenotes are plain text, formatting is handled locally, so only notecontent is synced. Sync preferences You can transfer notes between Simplenote accounts and synced localfolders by simply dragging a note from one section of the list toanother. I experienced an occasional glitch with this feature,especially when dragging a note from a Simplenote account to asynced folder sometimes Justnotes wouldn t move the note but itgenerally worked fine. One feature I d like to see is thecapability to collapse an account or folder s section of the noteslist to hide that section s notes. Justnotes provides a number of actions for managing notes. You cansend any note, regardless of how it s synced, as the body of anemail message or export it as a PDF file. For notes synced usingSimplenote, you get additional options: You can mark a note as afavorite (which moves it to the top of the list), and you can addtags to notes; these designations are synced only acrossSimplenote. Tags are useful mainly in that searching for # tagname lets you quickly view all notes with that tag. If you no longer need a note, you can right-click (Control-click)the note in the list and choose Archive (or select the note andchoose Note: Archive oddly, there s no archive/delete button inthe window). Rather than deleting the note, this action saves it toJustnotes s archive. You can view the archive by clicking theArchive button at the top of the window. This view mimics the mainnotes view list on the left, selected note on the right but listsonly notes you ve archived. You can restore an archived note toyour main notes list at any time. Alternatively, in archive viewthe Archive command is replaced by Delete, which permanentlydeletes the selected note. If you ve already got notes stored elsewhere, Justnotes can importplain-text files and Evernote notes. It can also export your notesas plain-text files, although the app crashed every time I tried touse the export option. I do have a few quibbles with the ap. For one, I m not a fan ofthe way Justnotes names new notes created in (or moved to) a syncedfolder: Rather than use the first line, or first few words, of thenote as the file name, Justnotes gives these files names like D91A41ACDAB9A5B76499C9EAE7432189.txt. For those of us who want to open our notes in a Dropbox-enablediOS app, this naming convention makes it impossible to figure outwhich note is which. I d also like to see a Duplicate command formaking a copy of a note, and I d like to be able to delete a noteimmediately, rather than go through the intermediate Archive step.And though Justnotes does offer full-screen mode, the width of thewindow is set on my 27-inch iMac, I couldn t make the windowwider than roughly one third of the width of the screen. Finally, apie-in-the-sky wish is for Markdown support for basic note formatting. Nevertheless, Justnotes s interface is simple but effective,mirroring the elegant look of the Simplenote iOS app andwebsite if you re already using Simplenote, Justnotes is ano-brainer purchase. But it s also a very nice OS X notes app, andits sync options will make it especially appealing to those withiOS devices and multiple Macs. (Justnotes is currently $6, but the price will increase to $10after an unspecified introductory period. Justnotes works with anyversion of Lion, but the developer notes that syncing to a localfolder requires OS X 10.7.3.) [Dan Frakes ( @danfrakes ) is a senior editor at Macworld.] Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to yourInbox. You can also follow Mac Gems on Twitter . We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Mid 10.1 Tablet PC , Samsung Galaxy Protective Case Manufacturer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Google Android Touchpad Tablet PC.
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