Notebook 3.0: A Truly Noteworthy Update

If you are in school then you know how important it is to take notes, no matter what the class. The old way to do this on your Mac was to just create a lot of Pages or Office documents, and put them in a folder. That method starts to have major flaws once you reach maybe 15 different documents. Well, Circus Ponies brought virtual notebooks onto your computer once with NoteBook, and they’ve done it even better with NoteBook 3.0.

The first thing you will notice about NoteBook is how much it actually looks like a notebook. It has the fringes and everything! It makes it seem much more like taking notes than when done in Pages.

When you first open NoteBook you will be prompted with a dialogue that lets you create a new notebook from a starting point. You will notice that there are many options, so NoteBook is not really just for notes; it can be for anything that involves writing! The automatically selected option is Take Notes, which is what most people use it for. You can also choose to learn how to use NoteBook by just clicking Learn to Use NoteBook in a Few Easy Steps. If you uncheck the Show at start-up checkbox, you will never see this dialogue unless you go to File>New from Starting Point…

Two of the best new features in NoteBook 3.0 are Sticky Notes and Sticky Flags. These provide an easy way to jot down a little something that doesn’t have anything to do with the notes you’re taking. For example, you could make a sticky note that says “Remember to look up this person” if you are taking history notes. Then when you’re done with that Sticky Note, you just drag it off the notebook. Sticky Flags are a little bit different. With a Sticky Flag, you add a line of text to it, and put it somewhere, kind of like a marker. Sticky Flags come in a few flavors: plain old Sticky Flags, Fax Flags, Send Flags, Important Flags, Note Flags, and Urgent Flags. For all but the first kind, Notebook will put its type (e.g. Note) on the right side, and you can edit the text on the left side. With both Sticky Notes and Flags, you can drag them halfway out of the notebook to mark a certain page, and then whenever you want to get to that page, you just click on the part that’s sticking out.

Another great feature added in NoteBook 3.0 is tablet support. If you are someone like me who likes using their tablet to write on their computer, then you will love this feature. First, you should probably add Ink to your toolbar by going to View>Customize Toolbar… and adding Ink to the toolbar. Once you have done this, you can go to drawing mode (there will be a little doodle in the Ink toolbar item) or text recognition mode (there will be an “a” in the Ink toolbar item). To get to drawing mode, click once, and to get to text recognition mode, click twice. In drawing mode, you can just draw little doodles and diagrams. If you go into text recognition mode, you will want to write only text. Once you have written some text, NoteBook will use its text recognition algorithm to figure out what you wrote. It (what NoteBook thinks you wrote) will then appear right on top of the written text. If a word does not say what your wrote, then just click on it, and you will get a pulldown with other possible words. In this pulldown, you can also edit the text (what it thought you wrote), or just delete the recognition (in case you were drawing a doodle when in text recognition mode). I want to point out that this only works with tablets; you cannot just use your mouse.

One simple but extremely useful new feature in NoteBook 3.0 is the ability to rip out a page from your notebook. To rip out a page, just option-click a page in a divider page, and that page will be put in a new window. While you still have that page separately open, you cannot get to it within your notebook; you have to use the newly appeared window. Once you want the page to go back into the notebook, you just close the window, and everything will go back to normal. This can be very useful if you took notes on one page, and want to write a summary about them on another page.

These are just some of the amazing new features added in NoteBook 3.0. Here is a list of all of the new features. NoteBook 3.0 retails for $49.95 for a regular license and $29.95 for an academic license. Until October 31, you can upgrade from NoteBook 2.0 for only $19.95, and then it will go back to its normal price of $29.95. You can also download a trial from the same site. NoteBook 3.0 is an amazing update to an already amazing app, making it my favorite academic tool, and I hope it will become yours too.