T11M

I don’t often take to a new application instantly, but this app has been great ever since I installed it.  Quick, free, and open-source, Notational Velocity (NV) allows me to quickly create, edit, and search through my notes.  I’ve been using TextMate and Spotlight for this purpose, but it gets very difficult to manage all the different text files and often Spotlight doesn’t immediately pinpoint the correct file.  NV however has proven to be incredibly fast, stable, and efficient for managing all of those little notes I want to jot down and keep but not manage.  While being a very simple app it has a couple key features that I like.  First you can choose whether to store your data in an NV database or divided into individual text files.  Second you can enable encryption to securely store your notes – allowing you to manage passwords and other more sensitive information without hesitation.  Lastly there are a number of easy keyboard shortcuts that help speed the creation, search, and formatting of notes.  All in all I’ve found Notational Velocity a complete replacement for my old text file storage method.  Unfortunately it is Mac only and currently has no built in syncing (However you can change the storage location for the notational data it would be very easy to sync via a third party app like DropBox or even iDisk).  Check it out here and as with any open-source project they are also looking for contributors.

OS X, Software