It seems like I can't walk down the hall in my house without tripping over note-taking apps. It's the first thing that new programmers tackle when they decide to make an actual program, and as such there are thousands of options available when looking for a note taking app.

It's a bit harsh to say so, but the honest truth is that the vast majority of note-taking apps out there are utter crap. Most don't even do a reasonable job of differentiating themselves from what comes preinstalled on your computer. The Mac app Notational Velocity, on the other hand, is very useful.

A couple of caveats here: Notational Velocity is for people that need to take notes on their computer, but don't require access to them on a mobile device. It's not web based, doesn't sync with the cloud, and doesn't have a companion iPhone app.

Notational Velocity also isn't for people that need a complicated categorization or tagging structure to organize their notes. Simplicity and speed are what NV is all about.

If I haven't turned you off, there's a good chance that you'll find a lot to like in Notational Velocity. The app is cleverly designed to make adding and finding notes incredibly quick. The app has a single search field at the top of the app's window that allows you to search for content, or instantly add a new note simply by pressing Enter. Searching filters down your list of notes based on content and title with title taking precedence, and the filtering happens instantaneously even with thousands of notes stored in the app.

The app's makers suggest using Notational Velocity to create many very specific (and therefore shorter) notes instead of a few long-form ones. That allows you to more quickly find what you are looking for later on.

Here's hoping that cloud syncing and an iPhone version are just around the corner.

[via Daring Fireball]

If you're not one of the 125,000 people who got a chance to try out the cross-platform note capture app Evernote during its private beta, don't despair. Evernote has launched an open beta, so now everyone can give it a try. If you were already in the beta, does this change anything for you? Yes, indeed it does: there are now two types of Evernote accounts, free and premium.

Free users keep all the features of the closed beta, with the caveat that you're now limited to 40mb a month of uploaded notes. If you're a power-user, or someone who's really sold on the Evernote lifestyle, go premium for 5 bucks a month or $45/year and get rid of that cap. Premium also comes with the option of SSL for all your uploads (for all those pictures of the enemy base, we guess) and priority access to the queue for Evernote's text-recognition features.

We've got the hot scoop on Yahoo spicy update to widgets; their newest release of Yahoo! Widgets 4. This version offers users and developers improved features and capabilities including a new Widget Dock, new and improved widgets, improved performance, streamlined installation, improved authoring tools and automatic updates.

I recently had the opportunity to load up this new version and take it for a test drive. The big differences noticed in this release are the Widget Dock, Improved performance, and some intuitive new widgets from the Yahoo team.

Check out some great screen shots after the jump...

Wishroll has a service on right now for Valentine's Day where you can set up your own special Valentine's inbox. The service is called Valentinr, and takes the form of a widget, button or link on your web site. This link directs friends and site visitors to your personal Valentine inbox where they have the chance to write a customized Valentine's Day love note to you. When Valentine's notes are sent, you get to see how many you have received, but the notes only actually come into view on Valentine's Day, February 14th, at 6am for you to read. I know this is late notification for this neat tool, but bookmark it for next year, and have some fun with it.

UPDATE: Sorry for the typo..Valentines day did not get changed to the 4th this year! Thanks Toothpick Guy!

Loopnote is a way to keep everyone in the loop. You setup your group of friends, fans, band members, family, whatever, and Loopnote will basically broadcast alerts to everyone via RSS, SMS, Email, or IM. Fused with the ability to search or browse loopnotes socially, you can subscribe to notes from other users. Honestly, I am not quite sure what the value is to that right now, unless you already know the person. Most of the loopnotes available for perusal are podcast-wannabes it seem like. A way for people with too much to say to say stuff across multi-protocols and people will want to receive notes like this? Doesn't quite make sense, but this isn't the service's focus, simply the content that exists in the directory. I could see many bands using this as a free way to let fans know about upcoming shows and other such applications.

We mentioned Stikkit, a new sort of online PIM with a twist, earlier this month, and one of my favorite bloggers on all things Mac and design, John Gruber, has gone and reviewed the crap out of it. It's a long read but worthwhile, especially if you're interested in the finer details the company focused on. John explores the format of the notes and the syntax with which they're created, pointing out the differences, for example, between bookmarks, notes and lists, and offering examples of how these notes are written.

If you're the cliff-notes type, however, I'll just skip to the end: while John reveals some cleverness in Stikkit, he ultimately finds it to be "a very good implementation of a flawed premise." Strange UI features (such as AJAX Everywhere™ technology in favor of linkable pages and notes) and behavioral limitations (like not being able to add more than one bookmark to a note) deflate an otherwise interesting concept.

Personally, while it admittedly isn't a free solution, I still find a Backpack account combined with the excellent syncing/offline Packrat client (Mac OS X only) to still be the king of the hill. If you haven't signed up yet, check out John's revue for more than you need to know about Stikkit.

In the seemingly never-ending quest to add stuff to my Tablet PC desktop, I've been playing with a cool little application called Stick from iWonder Designs. This free utility lets you add a number of small tabs to the edge of your screen that pop open to reveal some really useful tools like:

• Explorer Tabs that show the contents of folders. These mini-explorer windows provide true explorer context menu access for folders and files as well as full drag/drop support.
• Note Tabs that are linked to a text file on your disk and provide a mini-word processor with a single click.
• Calendar Tab (surprise) displays a simple calendar.
• Internet Tabs provide a lightweight browser that's perfect for sites you reference many times a day.
• Quick Launcher tab lets you launch any application on your PC by pressing the Windows key and spacebar and then typing a few letters of the application name. As you type, the list of programs narrows.
• RSS Tabs (in the latest beta version) show the latest posts from your favorite blogs (like DownloadSquad) any time you like.

Stick is for Windows XP and 2000 only.