Franz,

I enjoyed reading your reflections on 2014. One possible solution for your digital, mobile, instant-on writing quest:

I recently bought a ClamCase bluetooth keyboard for my iPad Air, and so far I've liked it a lot. It basically turns your iPad into a mini laptop.

Pros:
- Reasonable typing
- Can be bent behind so that it gets out of the way for more typical tablet use
- Good battery life (I've charged it once and haven't charged it again in almost a month)

Cons:
- Makes the iPad more bulky and a little heavier
- Even though it does have a long battery life, it does need to be charged
- Sometimes there seems to be a missing keystroke... not sure if it is my typing or a "hole" in the bluetooth

http://clamcase.com

Good luck with your 2015 goals.

Steve Z.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Hi.

Best wishes to everyone here for 2015.

In 2014 ...

1) I was on a quest for for a digital, mobile, instant-on writing
machine for writing down ideas and short snippets when not in my office.
I.e. when traveling to the nearby city in a suburban train or the
underground, when at home in bed or in the living room (I do not want to
set up a computer in the living room).
I have tried a lot. But nothing really works for me:
- Pen and paper: Instant on but requires retyping the notes/snippets,
which I often postpone, some notes even got lost.
- iPad: always with me when commuting because I read Kindle books on it,
but the on-screen keyboard is a PITA.
- The Windows RT tablet/keyboard is a good notebook with the tablet
safely fixed to the keyboard, but no real instant-on (unless I don't
shut it down but then the batteries don't last for several days as in my
iPad, Dropbox was unusable.
- Windows 8.1 tablet/keyboard: instant-on vs. quick battery drain, no
way to safely combine tablet and keyboard.
- Windows/Mac notebooks: to large and heavy to always carry around,
instant-on vs. quick battery drain.

Haven't found a viable solution so far (I am now even considering an
"antique" Psion Netbook Pro as writing machine, but am afraid that I
will end up with another piece of hardware that is not THE solution).

2) I switched part of my work to a Mac Mini (up to now mainly for
running Windows in VirtualBox) and bought a used Macbook Pro for blog
writing. And - guess what - I got a lot of apps for it (Scrivener and
Scapple, Ulysses III, Devonthink Pro, Curio, Tree 2, Papyrus Autor),
which I am slowly exploring now.

3) I lost my trust in Evernote. Which is bad because right now I use it
as one of my 2 repositories for notes and saved web pages and because I
have access to the repository from my Windows and Mac machines and my
iPad. But twice I was not able to access notes I had downloaded to my
iPad without internet connection (usually that works fine but there were
2 times that did not work when I was travelling "lite" and the iPad was
the only machine I had with me). What is more: I find handling data in
Evernote cumbersome. E.g. setting up "folders" within notebooks is a
nuisance.

So, on my Macs I moved to Devonthink Pro where I imported the Evernote
notebooks I need on the Mac; once a week I import new Evernote notes I
entered on my Windows machines or saved from the web while on the
Windows machines. On Windows I keep Evernote and OneNote (my second
repository). Processing Evernote notes is mainly done on the Macs.

4) I do most of my writing and formatting in LibreOffice Writer on
Windows, which I found the most convenient tool. Some writing (for my
magazine) is done in Word because I have to preformat the articles in
Word stylesheets. For spelling, grammar and style checking I use Papyrus
Autor, which is unique in that field. So far Papyrus has not replaced
Writer as the writing tool.
I do hardly any writing in Scrivener any more, I mainly use it to
structure long manuscripts and to collect notes and snippets. For some
weeks I used Scrivener to plan and structure my 2 blogs and kept the
Scrivener project in my Dropbox. However, something got wrong (I guess
the Scriv project was not completely closed on the Windows PC when I
opened it on the Mac) - so I am no longer able to open the Scriv project
on the Windows machine, only on the Macs.

5) There are so many interesting cloud apps (Workflowy and Gingko in
particular) but I have been reluctant to make the move to a net-only
solution without a viable business model. As soon as there will be a
Windows or Mac app for Workflowy or Gingko I will immediately give it a
try. I want to be able to access my data whether there is an internet
connection or not (on German trains you often have no internet
connection, the same with a place where I go every few weeks for a few
days).


In 2015 ...

6) I plan to reduce cloud storage usage (Dropbox, OneDrive) and install
a private cloud on a new NAS system.

7) I will give a few cloud apps a try: A colleague I plan to collaborate
more with uses Nimble as her CRM system, so I will probably switch to
Nimble.

8) I will do more work on my Macs (writing and planning for my 2 blogs,
ebooks) and use my Macbook as a DJing machine for seminars. I just
started exploring Curio and like what I have seen so far. The 13"
display of the Macbook is a bit small for it, the 24" monitor on the Mac
Mini is just right.

9) I will give Notebooks by Alfons Schmid another try as a
cross-plattform notetaking/web clipping tool (thanks to Bill's
continuous recommendations).

Regards, Franz