Does Awesome Note Live Up to Its Name?

Two favorite ProfHacker applications are Things, which manages to-do items, and Evernote (see also here), which keeps track of everything else. And both have handy smartphone & iPad applications that extend the services’ functionality in a variety of ways. Having separate apps for to-do lists and notes makes sense, but it can also be a little confusing–how, exactly, did I classify that bit of information? Did I put the book’s call number in Things or in Evernote? (Hardly an earthshattering conundrum, of course, but everything really is a pebble.

Awesome Note (by BRID) is an iPhone app that addresses this problem. It offers easy ways to take and organize notes, to convert them into to-do lists, and then to process them to done. (It does everything you’d expect an iPhone notes app to do: you can incorporate photos and maps into notes, and can send things via SMS or e-mail.) You can view your notes all at once, in folders, or arrayed against a calendar. The application also supports syncing to Google Docs & Evernote.

Here’s what Awesome Note looks like on startup:

You can see already the power and weakness of Awesome Note. On the one hand, it gives you quick access to an awful lot of organizational capacity. The ability to easily store notes and to-do lists in the same folder, yet also to abstract those to-dos into a calendar view, is very convenient. On the other hand, there’s a lot to absorb here. Did I promote that one bit of information to “Quick Memo” status? Do I want to record a note or fiddle with my settings?

The single best feature of Awesome Note is that you don’t have to decide what something is when you enter it. You simply enter an item, and then decide whether it’s a note or a to-do. Here’s the Quick Add interface:

Once you’ve entered a note, it’s trivial to turn it into a to-do item:

And, once you’ve decided that it *is* a to-do item, Awesome Note provides all the usual ways to schedule it:

This screencap is a good illustration of Awesome Note’s design approach, which is to make sure you can always see just about everything you’d want to do with an item. Once you’ve decided to schedule an item, it’s clear from this (somewhat crowded) screen that you can pick a date, set repeats, and set alarms. By contrast, an app like Things encourages you to make one of those decisions at a time, on separate screens (click for an example).

Awesome Note wants to be a one-stop app for all the bits of information and actionable items that float through your day. But it really is a iPhone-only app–unlike Things or Evernote, say, there’s no desktop client lurking in the background. So it’s not unreasonable to wonder how you’re going to get that information off your phone. The documentation suggests syncing frequently with iTunes, so that there’s always a backup, but that’s not great. Awesome Note provides you two other options for syncing: Google Docs or Evernote. (If you use the latter already, you might be wondering, “why not simply use the Evernote iPhone app?” The main answer: The Evernote iPhone app doesn’t let you create new To-Do items.)

While syncing with Google Docs and Evernote sounds like a great feature, it comes with a caveat. The only thing that gets synced is the basic text content of the note in question. (You can set Awesome Note to sync all or selected folders and items.) Here’s an example of one of my recurring to-do items:

Here’s what gets imported into Evernote (click for full-size):

As you can see, a lot of information falls out during that sync. I would only use Awesome Notes sync capabilities to sync notes for future reference, rather than items that are to be done.

Awesome Note comes in free and $3.99 versions. The free version only gives you 10 notes, so it really is designed to let you try the interface before committing wholesale. (This is important, given the usual reaction to paid apps.)

Strengths: Awesome Note is good at universal capture, and makes it easy to turn a random note into an actionable item. The folder interface is familiar. Syncs, to some extent, with Google Docs and Evernote. Can share notes, via Bluetooth, with other Awesome Notes users.

Weaknesses: Interface can be busy–and the ability to tweak it may encourage obsessive fiddling rather than productivity. Syncing is basically text-only, as noted above, and Google syncing is to *Docs* only, not Calendar. No cloud syncing yet.

Awesome Note is a good contender for a ubiquitous capture app, although the syncing/backup question is worth thinking through.  If you are particularly committed to David Allen-style Getting Things Done, the web-based Nozbe might be worth exploring.

[Image by Flickr user meddygarnet / Creative Commons licensed]