OneNote Wonder
The folks at Microsoft aren't renowned for innovation, but it's time we took our hats off to them for OneNote.
OneNote (
www.microsoft.com/onenote) is a note-taking and organizing program that came out last year, and is about to be revamped with a new release due soon. OneNote is a step up for Microsoft in several ways and we, who tend to be somewhat rude about the Redmond, Wash., crowd, should be big enough to acknowledge it.
First off, OneNote has solid origins: a simple idea. Why, its developers, led by Chris Pratley, asked, wasn't there much software to deal with information that is not yet a document? (You can read the story behind OneNote on Pratley's blog at tinyurl.com/5qumd). To put it another way: What do you do with doodles, stuff that you create or find, if you don't already have a place for them in a spreadsheet, a Word document, a Web page or whatever?
GIVING USERS WHAT THEY WANT
Another departure for Microsoft with OneNote has been the manner of its upgrading. The about-to-be-released OneNote Service Pack has been developed as part of an open dialogue between, on one side, Pratley and his teammates, and on the other, the outside world.
A lot of the new features were requested by users who placed comments on Mr. Pratley's blog, and he has gone to great lengths to maintain that dialogue, explaining why certain features have been included and some haven't. It's an impressive bout of openness for Microsoft, signaling hope for the way future products are developed.
The improvements are significant: OneNote can synchronize smoothly with Pocket and Windows Smartphones; it does a better job of integrating with other Microsoft programs, especially Microsoft Word, and it is able to do online shared sessions in real time, where several people can scribble and alter stuff on the same page. Oh, and you can capture bits of other windows and screens and slot them into a OneNote page. This is less a "service pack" than it is OneNote 2004, a whole fresh release.
It doesn't, however, mean that OneNote is perfect. I like it, I like it a lot, but I don't use it as much as I expected I would. It's good as far as it goes for small chunks of text, images, doodles or audio. But unless you have a huge screen, it's not kind to larger chunks, which easily swamp the space. Although you can reduce a chunk to just a little bar, it's not as elegant a process as I'd like.
I also don't think that OneNote makes the best use of the graphical opportunities: For example, why not allow users to draw links between chunks, a bit like a flow chart, to indicate relationships? It's as if OneNote has broken the shackles inhibiting users, but then cowered in the winds of freedom, scared of moving too quickly away from the safety of the barn. One final plus: In response to customer gripes, OneNote is now selling for half of what it used to. As of August the program is now available worldwide for $100, against $200 previously.
But you should try OneNote if you haven't, as it may suit you more than it suits me. If you're not a naturally organized person looking for a way to keep stuff in one place, OneNote might be it. And if it matters to you, just pretend it's not made by Microsoft.
Microsoft isn't the first to consider this problem. There are several different kinds of programs trying to tackle the idea of data wandering around homeless. There are, for example, digital Post-It notes: One to try if you haven't already is Quick Notes Plus from India's Concept World ($30 from
www.conceptworld.com). Then there are the outlining programs I reviewed earlier this year and mind-mapping programs like TheBrain. But these aren't flexible enough for doodling while you're in meetings, on the phone, or, if you're that kind of person, in the bathroom.
OneNote brings some key strengths to the table. For one thing, it's very flexible. You can start typing anywhere in the program and OneNote will not complain. Instead, it will create a new little box, which you can then move around at your leisure. Think about it: It's kind of sad that we regard as a major innovation the ability to write something anywhere on the screen. The inventors of paper are laughing at us.
The layout of OneNote is another major innovation (at least, I haven't seen it used before), where tabs line both the vertical and horizontal planes, giving you a lot more flexibility in organizing and finding pages. Each horizontal tab -- think of them as the tabs in a filing cabinet -- is a folder, whereas the tabs on the left are individual pages within that folder (think of address book tabs separating the As from the Bs). This is intuitive and enormously useful. Naming and renaming them is also easy and fast.
Indeed, that's another strength of OneNote, and another reason to congratulate Mr. Pratley's team. There are very few pop-up windows when it comes to entering data (and it's a shame that Pratley didn't extend some of these ideas to Word and other Office stalwarts). The result is that not much gets in the way of your brain-storming.
OneNote was originally envisaged largely as a tool to accompany the TabletPC, so it works best with pen-writing PCs, where you write directly onto the screen with a stencil. (OneNote will recognize handwriting, for example, though understandably it couldn't make much sense of mine.) But that shouldn't stop those of you with ordinary PCs. OneNote has wonderful formatting features for moving around text, and it also lets you record snippets of audio (and, in the new version, video) which are stored as little snippets on the page. Great for recording a pitch, or a note for yourself, or humming a tune you can't remember the title of.
From what I can gather, everyone uses OneNote a little differently. Some use it as a sort of holding pen for ideas until the idea takes shape into a real document. Others use it for storing bits and pieces they need to get to easily -- phone numbers, credit-card details, the name of their spouse. OneNote works well for both approaches and anything in between because loading the program will load all your tabs and whatnot automatically: In other words, you don't need to remember where you put something or what name you gave the file. OneNote is the file. Another smart move.
微软OneNote带来惊喜
微软(Microsoft)的员工在革新方面向来乏善可陈，但是这次他们开发的OneNote值得我们向他们脱帽致敬。
OneNote（英文网址：
http://www.microsoft.com/onenote；中文网址：
http://www.microsoft.com/china/office/onenote）是微软去年推出的一个笔记记录和组织程序，其新版本将很快问世。从许多方面而言，OneNote都标志著微软向前跨进了一步，尽管我们对位于华盛顿州雷德蒙德的这些人时常吹毛求疵，但这次我们应该承认他们取得了巨大的进步。
首先，OneNote渊源纯正：一个简单的想法。克里斯?普莱特利(Chris Pratley)领导的开发团队问道，为什么处理非正式文件资料的软件这么少？（你可以在普莱特利的网络日志tinyurl.com/5qumd上面阅读OneNote背后的故事）。换一种方式说：如果你随手写下或无意发现了一些内容，但是你却没有现成的数据表格、Word文档或网页等诸如此类的东西把它记录下来，你该怎么办？
微软并不是第一个考虑这一问题的公司。目前有数种程序尝试解决零散的数据资料没地存储的问题。比如数字报事贴：你可以试试印度Concept World的Quick Notes Plus（在
www.conceptworld.com的售价为30美元）。还有一些我在年初评论过的要点记录程序和诸如TheBrain之类的灵感记录程序。但是这些程序都不够灵活，不足以处理你在开会、打电话时或者在浴室中（如果你有这个习惯的话）突然浮现出的想法。
OneNote给我们带来了一些强大的功能。首先，它非常灵活好用，通过这个程序，你可以在任何地方进行输入，在这方面，OneNote不会有任何不如意之处。相反，它将会生成一个新的文字框，你可以方便地将其随意移动。想想看：我们将能够在屏幕上随处书写的能力看作是一项重要革新是一件有些悲哀的事情。纸张的发明者会对我们嘲笑不已。
OneNote的布局是另外一项重要革新（至少，我没有在其他地方看到过），便笺既有水平排列也有竖直排列，这让你在组织或寻找页面时具有更多的灵活性。每一个水平排列的便笺－－将它们看作是档案柜中的便笺－－是一个文件夹，而左边的便笺是这个文件夹内的单个页面。（想一下通讯录中将A字打头的人名与B字打头的人名分开的便笺一样）这很直观而且极为实用。给文件命名或重新命名也同样简单和快捷。？
实际上，这是OneNote的另外一个强势，也是向普莱特利的开发团队表示祝贺的另外一个原因。当输入数据时，几乎有没有弹出窗口出现（普莱特利没有将OneNote其中的一些想法扩展到Word和其它办公软件上是一件比较遗憾的事情。）。这样，你的思维灵感就不会遇到太多的阻碍。
OneNote最初主要被当作一种应用于TabletPC的工具，因此该软件在手写电脑上能发挥最大功效，借助于模板你可以直接在电脑屏幕上写字。（OneNote能够辨认手写字体，尽管出于可以理解的原因它可能辨别不出我的笔迹。）但是这不应该妨碍普通个人电脑用户使用这一软件。OneNote对文本有很棒的格式化功能，它还能够让你记录一段音频（在新版本中还可以记录视频），所录内容可以作为摘录存储在页面上。这对于为自己录制一段音乐、或哼一个记不得名字的曲子来说真是棒极了。
从我能收集到的信息来看，每个人使用OneNote的习惯都不同。一些人将它作为写文章之前记录想法的一只笔。其他人将它用来储存他们必须能轻松找到的字节和信息－－诸如电话号码、信用卡资料、配偶的名字等等。OneNote对于这两种用途以及其它类似用途都非常有用，因为装载该程序将会自动装载你所有的便笺和一些乱涂乱画之物：换句话说，你不需要记住你把什么东西放在何处，或者你给文件起的名字。OneNote就是这个文件。这是微软的另外一个聪明之举。
想用户所想
微软在OneNote中的另外一个变化是改变了升级的方式。即将公布的OneNote Service Pack是在普莱特利和他的团队与外界进行公开对话以后开发的一个程序。
用户在普莱特利的网络日志上面留言，要求提供许多新的功能，普莱特利则花费了很大精力保持这种对话，他解释为什么某些功能有，而某些功能没有。这是微软少见的开放态度，带给人们关于微软未来开发产品的方式的遐想。
其效果非常显著：OneNote可以顺畅的与PocketPC和Windows Smartphones同步；它能与其他微软程序更好的融合，特别是Microsoft Word；它支持网上实时会议，数个与会人员可以在同一个页面涂写和修改。你还可以提取其它窗口和屏幕的一角，然后将其放在一个OneNote页面。这简直不是一个“Service Pack”，而是OneNote 2004，一个全新的软件。
但是这并不意味著OneNote是完美无缺的。我喜欢这个软件，非常喜欢，但是我使用它的频率并没有我期望的那么高。对于处理内容较少的文本、图像、涂鸦或音频，它非常管用，但是除非有一个大屏幕，否则这个软件不适合处理较多的内容，因为屏幕很快就会被填满。尽管你可以将所写内容缩小成一个小条，但是这种做法在我看来只是泛泛之作。
我还认为，OneNote对绘图的处理没有达到最佳：比如，为什么不允许用户在内容块之间连线以说明它们之间的关系，达到类似于流程图的效果? 看起来，OneNote打破了禁锢用户的枷锁，但是在乘著自由之风飞翔时却又畏首畏尾，担心走的太快偏离了安全轨道。最后一个不足，OneNote应该成为Office XP的一部分，其零售价应该比目前的200美元再低些。
但如果你没用过OneNote，你应该试一下，因为它可能会更适合你。如果你天生不是一个有条理的人，并且在寻找一种把东西放在一个地方的方式，OneNote可能就是你想要的。如果你介意，你可以假装这不是微软的产品。
