4 ms·

What are some good use case for this app? I have downloaded it couple of years back, but didn't find any use of it.

by pavs 13y ago

jongold 13y ago
I use it for text all the time - blog post drafts (that I tend to finish in iA Write), scratchpads, things to remember… The search interface is absolutely fantastic and it stores files as .txt which is great and much more lightweight than Evernote.
drhayes9 13y ago
I use Evernote for all my serious text storage needs, but nvAlt (a really great fork of NV linked elsewhere) is just so damn fast that capturing whatever random bit of information is frictionless. I tend to use it these days as a scratchpad: git SHAs, URLs to check out later that I don't want to save to pinboard, tasks for the next hour (try putting @done at the end of a line!)... Make nvAlt save its notes as txt files to your Dropbox to get syncing across computers.
8ig8 13y ago
For me, it's my text file junk drawer. And I mean that in a good way. Often I need a file to reformat some text or a file to temporarily hold a snippet of text. All this goes into NV. It's _frictionless_ so, for these files, I don't have to think what to name them or where to save them. Just open the app and start typing or paste. The text is there and it is automatically saved. Instead of composing longish text in the browser (textarea), I now use NV and don't worry about losing stuff due to browser crashes, etc. Pre-NV, these text files were throwaways. They'd typically be saved on my desktop for a few days or not saved at all in the case of a quick dump. Now they are saved (without me thinking about it) and on a number of occasions it has been helpful to have the archive. Lately I've been trying to add a little organization to some notes with inspiration from this idea of Semantic Notes [1]. BTW, I use NValt as many others have suggested. [1]: http://www.abolish.me/blog/semantic-notes http://www.abolish.me/blog/semantic-notes
jonheller 13y ago
I use it for pretty much everything in life that I want to remember. I use a trick Merlin Mann mentioned in one of his podcasts, where he prefixes each note title with a category. So I have life, work, snippets (for code), and a few others. But I rarely browse, as the search functionality just can't be beat. Some example notes are - trip planning (hotel, flight info, museums) - meeting notes at work (tons of these) - electricians I've called to get quotes from - list of conferences I want to attend this year - names and phone numbers of my neighbors - gift ideas - favorite wines - favorite quotes I have the app bound to command-shift-tilde so it's always very easy to access. Then I use the app Notesy on my iPhone which searches just as quickly. What I like best about this system is - super fast search - quick synching - plain text (not some proprietary locked in format) - keeping (almost) everything here means I don't need to load up different apps (a meeting notes app, a wine list app, a snippet app) or think about where to store things
moe 13y ago
I have bound it to alt+space and use it for everything. Try binding it to a keyboard shortcut and just using it for a bit. It quickly becomes your extension brain.
pixelcort 13y ago
It's great for maintaining a personal wiki; notes can have links to other notes. In plain text files mode, syncing via Dropbox works great.
taude 13y ago
I don't read much on the interent without taking notes on it. I have contexts of knowledge groupings that I maintain over time. NV makes is really quick (cmd-m) brings the window to focus, and I start typing to search for existing files, or I (cmd-l) and create a new file. I was an evernote user, but i like the plain text storage, the DropBox syncing, and the abity to access my files from my phone/iPad. I use FlickNote on my Android phone to reference the documents. Some of my favorite things I store: 1) Business words/term I'm not familiar with 2) Marketing/industry buzzwords 3) I have files on different technologies where I link to different articles, short summaries of things I've learned in articles, etc... In short, I use it almost like a custom/manual index of my internet. Edit: I use nvALT, btw. Just realized my comment might be out of context of this.
- taude 13y ago
  One other tip that I use all the time: I have cmd-shift-e bound to open MOU markdown editor for those notes that will eventually need formatting (things like documentation, blog posts, etc.)

What are some good use case for this app? I have downloaded it couple of years back, but didn't find any use of it.

by pavs 13y ago

What are some good use case for this app? I have downloaded it couple of years back, but didn't find any use of it.

I use it for text all the time - blog post drafts (that I tend to finish in iA Write), scratchpads, things to remember… The search interface is absolutely fantastic and it stores files as .txt which is great and much more lightweight than Evernote.

drhayes9 13y ago

I use Evernote for all my serious text storage needs, but nvAlt (a really great fork of NV linked elsewhere) is just so damn fast that capturing whatever random bit of information is frictionless. I tend to use it these days as a scratchpad: git SHAs, URLs to check out later that I don't want to save to pinboard, tasks for the next hour (try putting @done at the end of a line!)... Make nvAlt save its notes as txt files to your Dropbox to get syncing across computers.

8ig8 13y ago

For me, it's my text file junk drawer. And I mean that in a good way. Often I need a file to reformat some text or a file to temporarily hold a snippet of text. All this goes into NV. It's _frictionless_ so, for these files, I don't have to think what to name them or where to save them. Just open the app and start typing or paste. The text is there and it is automatically saved. Instead of composing longish text in the browser (textarea), I now use NV and don't worry about losing stuff due to browser crashes, etc. Pre-NV, these text files were throwaways. They'd typically be saved on my desktop for a few days or not saved at all in the case of a quick dump. Now they are saved (without me thinking about it) and on a number of occasions it has been helpful to have the archive. Lately I've been trying to add a little organization to some notes with inspiration from this idea of Semantic Notes [1]. BTW, I use NValt as many others have suggested. [1]: http://www.abolish.me/blog/semantic-notes http://www.abolish.me/blog/semantic-notes

jonheller 13y ago

I use it for pretty much everything in life that I want to remember. I use a trick Merlin Mann mentioned in one of his podcasts, where he prefixes each note title with a category. So I have life, work, snippets (for code), and a few others. But I rarely browse, as the search functionality just can't be beat. Some example notes are - trip planning (hotel, flight info, museums) - meeting notes at work (tons of these) - electricians I've called to get quotes from - list of conferences I want to attend this year - names and phone numbers of my neighbors - gift ideas - favorite wines - favorite quotes I have the app bound to command-shift-tilde so it's always very easy to access. Then I use the app Notesy on my iPhone which searches just as quickly. What I like best about this system is - super fast search - quick synching - plain text (not some proprietary locked in format) - keeping (almost) everything here means I don't need to load up different apps (a meeting notes app, a wine list app, a snippet app) or think about where to store things

moe 13y ago

I have bound it to alt+space and use it for everything. Try binding it to a keyboard shortcut and just using it for a bit. It quickly becomes your extension brain.

pixelcort 13y ago

It's great for maintaining a personal wiki; notes can have links to other notes. In plain text files mode, syncing via Dropbox works great.

taude 13y ago

I don't read much on the interent without taking notes on it. I have contexts of knowledge groupings that I maintain over time. NV makes is really quick (cmd-m) brings the window to focus, and I start typing to search for existing files, or I (cmd-l) and create a new file. I was an evernote user, but i like the plain text storage, the DropBox syncing, and the abity to access my files from my phone/iPad. I use FlickNote on my Android phone to reference the documents. Some of my favorite things I store: 1) Business words/term I'm not familiar with 2) Marketing/industry buzzwords 3) I have files on different technologies where I link to different articles, short summaries of things I've learned in articles, etc... In short, I use it almost like a custom/manual index of my internet. Edit: I use nvALT, btw. Just realized my comment might be out of context of this.

taude 13y ago
One other tip that I use all the time: I have cmd-shift-e bound to open MOU markdown editor for those notes that will eventually need formatting (things like documentation, blog posts, etc.)