PigPog

I’ve enjoyed having a Mac, ever since I made the switch. Now, though, my Mac is unwell. I’ve booked in at the Apple store to take it in – I think it needs a new hard drive. Until then, though, I only have my old Windows XP Tablet PC. It’s quite old, and slow, with a small screen, and no access to any of the data on my Mac’s hard drive, or any of the external drives I used.

So. How’s that working out for me?

Surprisingly well, really. It’s not pleasant, but it’s usable for a while. I think I miss the hardware more than the software, though I certainly prefer Mac OS to Windows XP. The screen is so small and so low down that I’m feeling the risk of neck ache, and it doesn’t feel good for my eyes. I’ve been spoiled with that 24″ screen, though!

One of the first things I did was to install ResophNotes, which gives me access to my writing and ‘thinking’ space – the same data I’d normally access through Notational Velocidy on the Mac. I have DropBox, so many of my current files are still available. Although I use Apple’s Mail app for my email, it’s all stored in Gmail, so I can just open a browser tab and I have my email all up to date. I’m a little in limbo at the moment for calendars, but Google Calendar is currently my ‘master’, so I have that available.

I keep my notes in Evernote, so I just updated that to the latest version and let it sync. I’m using the web version of Twitter instead of the Tweetie (or Twitter official) client. My tasks are all in Remember The Milk, so they’re online anyway.

I had access to all of my most important data very quickly.

I’m still missing all the data on my external drives. Windows would be able to access them if they weren’t in Mac OS Extended format, but that would mean I wouldn’t be able to use Time Machine to keep them backed up. And since it’s Time Machine that means I’ll be able to bring my Mac home with a new hard drive and get it back up and running to pretty much where I was, I’m happy with the trade-off.

As impressive as Evernote’s ability to read handwriting (even my awful scrawl, occasionally) is, there was always something about it that didn’t seem quite right. Firstly, that it could recognise writing in situations that nothing else can. Also, it seemed odd that it would convert your writing to text, but not give you access to that text afterwards.

Evernote themselves only ever said your text was made searchable – they never said they’d convert it to text.

I’d suspected for a while what was really going on. I figured it might be working out what the images could match, but not being too specific – knowing that some images could match various different combinations of letters is probably a lot easier than working out which ones they actually match.

I wasn’t sure, though, until I searched on two completely different words, and both highlighted the same bit of text. I’d written ‘Tuesday’, and scanned the page. It matched for a search for ‘Tuesday’ perfectly. It also highlighted the word ‘Tuesday’ when I searched for ‘Testing’.

Evernote has no idea what the text says, but it can still make it searchable. They’ve been very clever, and realised that they don’t need to actually read handwriting in order to make it searchable. They just have to match to anything that might say what you’re searching for, on the grounds that false positives will be fairly rare, and don’t actually matter.

The technology behind it isn’t as amazing as it first seems, but the thinking that went behind the technology is brilliantly simple.

• Evernote

Long, long ago, my dad upgraded his flatbed scanner, and gave us his old one. It was a perfectly decent Canon CanoScan N650U – nice and small, and runs entirely from USB, without needing a power supply. It sat in a bag, in the spare room.

I finally got around to digging it out today, only to discover that Canon have never made any drivers available for Intel Macs.

Fortunately, though, VueScan can use it without the need for a driver. It means having to pay around $40 to be able to use the scanner, but it works well, and that’s a lot cheaper than buying a scanner.

In testing, I’ve scanned pages from a notebook, with my own handwriting, and dragged the resulting file into Evernote. A short time later, Evernote’s servers have had a look at the image, and worked out what much of my writing actually says. A handwritten note I scribbled on paper is now searchable.

Sometimes it’s fun living in the future.

I have something of a love/hate relationship with Evernote. I love what it can do. I love that it can handle so many formats of data, at least when just pasted into a note. I love that there are real native clients on every platform, rather than relying on web-based ‘apps’. I love its ability to read text in pictures. I love the way it makes the 40Mb of monthly data transfer you get for free go such a long way – I haven’t needed to upgrade to the paid service yet, even though I use it quite a bit. I love the fact that there’s even a neat syncing client for my iPod.

I hate the Windows client, though, which feels so clunky compared to the Mac client. I hate the way the iPod (iPhone) client just closes itself regularly when you’re using it. I hate the way it can’t access anything offline unless you’ve manually marked it as a favourite on the iPod.

I stuck with it, though, because it was the only thing that did what it did.

Then, a few days ago, things got worse. The iPod client just stopped syncing, claiming it had an error connecting to Evernote’s servers. The sync managed a few stages, so it obviously could connect to them. I tried logging it out and back in, and still had the same problem.

I decided it had to go.

I worked out what I really needed from a note-keeping app, and went on the hunt.

It turns out that Evernote is still the only thing that does what it does.

I plugged the iPod in, unticked Evernote, and synced. I ticked it again, and synced. I then ran Evernote, and it worked fine. Rather annoyingly, I’ve lost all of my favourites – they seem to be a local setting on the iPod. Still, I have my notes back, and I guess I’ll just have to live with the stability issues.

I do get the impression that Evernote (the company) keep working hard to improve the apps, so I’m hopeful that the Windows version will start to catch up to the excellent Mac version, and the iPod/iPhone version will get more stable with updates and server changes.

I finally came close to my free account limit last month, so I’ll probably be upgrading to a paid account soon.