I don’t usually write about anything here except my complaints, my crappy life, and everything meaningless in between. But that has to change, I suppose. I’ll start a new chapter in this blog by writing about a tiny portable-application to manage our notes. That’s right, notes. You know, that little scrap we wrote everywhere, sometimes even on our palm if not on your forehead. What I’m gonna write here is about pure text notes, no image, no multimedia, no fuss.

Before we jump right in to review CintaNotes, let me tell you my journey before I encounter this little piece of software. Ever since I knew computer, there are only two places where I put my notes: text files, and papers (my palm is not included). Those two were so great in terms of simplicity. I used to write different notes in different files with the title of the notes as the filenames. The reason is for when you need a specific notes, I could use my operating system search features to find it. Clever uh? Not really. This, has made my notes folder full with more than 200 text files. Not only it’s not efficient in storage, but it’s getting more difficult to search with those obscure titles. I know, I could also search the text inside my files for more specific items, but that’s usually slow, and not simple anymore. That’s how all this start.

First, on Mac I used a commercial products: Mémoires. It’s a great small application (1,4 MB), with a lot of features, maybe too many for my needs. Hell, it’s not even a note manager, it was intended as a Journal keeper. Along with its beauty, it is very easy to use, powerful search with date category, and can even store images. But now that I migrated back to Windows (because Windows 7 is awesome :p), I have to say goodbye to this great app. I start looking for similar application but usually they failed miserably, whether filesize is too big, too ugly, or the combination of both.

I usually prefer small (portable when possible), and beautiful applications. Here are the list of those great application I tried but not so great in my opinion:

• Evernote (42,5 MB – Bloated – Try to be everything)
• Microsoft OneNote (Comes with Office 2007, Bloated)
• RedNotebook (14,2 MB – Nice but too big)
• KeepNote (7,35 MB – Still big and ugly)
• ResophNotes (7,1 MB – Nice and simple, maybe too simple but uses Qt: very big)
• Tomboy (2,2 MB – Still big for such functionality and ugly)
• Snippely (232 KB – Air based – Nice and simple but no Import/Export and you need Air installed, so it’s not that small actually)
• QuotePad (900 KB – Nice but got it replaced by ShirusuPad for smaller size, same feature, more customizable)
• ShirusuPad (569 KB – Nice and simple, in fact I still use it along with CintaNotes to serve different purpose: SP as “always on” reminder/alarm and some very small notes such as special characters/umlaut I use often but not available on my keyboards, including Lorem Ipsum text etc).

Sheesh, what a long opening. Still with me? Okay, here we go. All about CintaNotes:

• Small, only 620 KB (I use the portable one). Checked.
• Portable & Fast: single executable, one db file, one settings file. No dll hell, no framework. Checked.
• Beautiful, easy layout with nice icons and colors. Checked.
• Import/Export notes. Checked.
• Easy to use, powerful tag as category, powerful search. Checked.

Among other things, the search capability is what I like most, none like it have I found in other application. I quote the following from its website:

Fast as-you-type searching

Retrieving information is also trivial: just open CintaNotes and start typing! Only notes containing the typed phrase remain in the list. More sophisticated search criteria are supported, like searching by title or by URL the note was taken from.

And it really works as well as stated. The phrase we typed is also highlighted nicely. This make it very easy to spot the information we want. A plus is also rewarded because the developer has make it very easy to give feedback such as ideas for improvement.

Albeit all those sweet features, I still have something to ask form this app. Unfortunately, It can not import plain text just yet. A feature to Import/Export multiple text file is not too much to ask right? How about plugin support to highlight code snippets? :)

Peace. Out.