MS OneNote for Mac OS X

I have been an Evernote user since long before Evernote was trendy. I was among the first 10K users. Evernote has a prominent position in my digital life and many of my workflows.

Yesterday, I downloaded and tried Microsoft OneNote for Mac OS X. Hey, it’s free, so why not. Here are my impressions.

 

OneNote has a very nice interface. If you are an Office user (I’m not), you’ll find the interface very familiar with the ribbon metaphor. There is a lot of flexibility in the creation and content of new notes. You can place a text box anywhere in the note and include various kinds of media.

 

I would think that OneNote could be very useful to anyone who would use it principally for note-taking.

 

 

However, my main use for Evernote is capturing and organizing web content. The browser extension Web Clipper gives a number of options as to what exactly you want to capture and what you can do with it.

 

Unfortunately, OneNote falls woefully short in this regard. You capture a web page using a simple bookmarklet which creates a new page in OneNote consisting of a static ‘screenshot' of the web page which is not editable and contains no live content. Any links are the page are not functional. You cannot select and copy or delete text. Maybe Microsoft will add more capturing features in future versions, but right now it comes up short.

 

OneNote syncs through a MS OneDrive account. My experience was that it was slow updating. Web page captures did not appear in the app for a few minutes. This could be just an early-days glitch.

 

Also, some pages didn’t render very faithfully. The proper positioning of page elements was lost. Be aware as well, that there appears to be no simple way to import your existing Evernote data.

 

At this point, OneNote doesn’t have the extensive integration with other apps to match Evernote, but that will likely improve over time.

 

After these experiences, I didn’t try out much else, because I realized OneNote was not going to work for me. But, that’s me.

 

It’s FREE, so if the issues I noted are not deal-breakers for you download it from the App Store and give it a try.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 2-3-2014 Grapher

Grapher is a free tool bundled with Mac OS X (10.4+) that enables graphing and analyzing implicit and explicit equations in two or three dimensions. The results can be visualized as an animation or image. 

 

Grapher is a graphing calculator, capable of creating both 2-D graphs including classic (linear-linear), polar coordinates, linear-logarithmic, log-log, and polar log as well as 3-D graphs including standard system, cylindrical system, and spherical system.

 

 

You can find Grapher in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. The easiest way to launch Grapher, though, is using Spotlight.

 

 

To use Grapher, first choose the type of graph you want to create. You can select from a variety of 2-D and 3-D templates. Choose New Equation to create your own equation, or choose New Equation From Template to add parametric equations, differential equations, vector field equations, or series from templates. Select an equation in the equations list to edit or delete the equation.

 

 

Grapher supports multiple equations in one graph, exporting equations to LaTeX format, and includes several pre-made equation examples. It is capable of easily exporting vector art for use in printed documents. QuickTime animation of graphs is also supported in both 2-D and 3-D. 

 View Using Macintosh OS X Grapher Program to plot 3D points 

Grapher’s equation menu includes functions for evaluating equations, performing integration, and finding intersections. You can click any point of an equation to view its evaluation or find an approximate intersection.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Extra: Transloader [OS X/iOS]

Transloader is a handy tool that lets you download a file, a video, an image you found on the web while using your iPhone directly to your Mac.



Enter download URLs in the Transloader app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Transloader then uses your iCloud account to transfer the URLs you enter on your iOS device to your Mac for download.



The Transloader app on your Mac then will download them once you’re back on your Mac.

The Transloader process requires two apps. The iOS app is free. The OS X app is $2.99 (USD) from the Mac App Store.

Note: Transloader uses iCloud as means to transfer URLs you enter on your iOS device to your Mac so you must have an active iCloud account.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

COD - 10/4/2012 - Kitabu [Ebooks]

Kitabuis a simple, easy-to-use, free Mac OS X desktop reader for Ebooks in ePub format.


Simply drag-and-drop any book in the widely used ePub format into Kitabuand start reading. The book will be added to your Kitabu library.

Kitabu features:

• Attractive, clean UI.
• Drag-and-drop support.
• Popup context menus.
• List and cover views in the library.
• Slider and percentage indicator for position.
• Table of Contents sidebar
• Books can be viewed in one, two, or three columns.
• Choose from a variety of fonts and backgrounds.
• Plays embedded audio and video.
• Open HTML links.
• Lion Full Screen mode.
• QuickLook plugin allows ePub file metadata previews in the Finder.

A significant shortcoming of Kitabu is the inability to search the text. Nor is bookmarking supported.


Kitabuwill be part of a cloud based service scheduled to be released to the public this year. Kitabu requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later running on a 64-bit Intel processor.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0