23 Mobile Things #5: Notetaking

This Thing was the first I'd heard of Springpad, although a quick peek around the web shows that it's got a devoted following. Almost every article I found about it mentioned Evernote as well, confirming my suspicion that there's a lot of overlap between the two. Lifehacker swears that the two services are growing apart and that some of their staff use both, but in different ways. I am not yet convinced. Or rather, yes, I get that they're not identical. I just don't see that Springpad does enough differently than Evernote that you would need to have one if you already had the other.

Springpad and I got off to an awkward start. I set up my account on my desktop computer and managed to forget the password by the time I got to the iPad to sync the app. No problem: I'll just reset the password, right? Wrong. The app had a "Forgot your password?" link, but when I clicked it, the display just sort of slid to the lower right, partly vanished, and didn't do a thing about letting me in. I had to wait until I could get back to a desktop computer to fix it. And as it turns out, you have to have access to a desktop computer to reset it even if the app is working; you're not allowed to reset it from the app. A security measure, I suppose, but it feels clunky. How will this work for people who don't have ready access to a desktop?

Once I got in, things were much more fun. I think Springpad is more welcoming than Evernote was. Having categories like Books or Movies gave me ideas about what to start saving. It took me months to get into Evernote (a common experience) because I couldn't figure out where to start. But those same categories feel a bit limiting as well. I see I can make up my own notebooks outside of the categories, but it's not as obvious. Springpad has more visual appeal than Evernote. It's not entirely an Evernote wannabe, I've decided—more like the love child of Evernote and Pinterest. And the bit where you can follow other people's notes adds a dash of Delicious. I can see the appeal of looking though other people's notes, although I balk at letting them see mine. Lifehacker says you can "use Springpad as your new personal assistant." I'm resisting giggling at this: my iPad already has Google Now on it, trying to be a personal assistant, and if I had a more modern iPad, I'd have Siri as well. My iPhone is modern enough to support all three of them. How many artificial personal assistants does one person need, anyway?

Despite it being a "notetaking" app, I don't think Springpad is as good at letting you create your own content (like taking notes during a presentation) as Evernote. It seems more oriented towards saving things you find online as well as finding related online things that you might like to know about as well. I may need to come up with a project of some sort to test that out thoroughly. Evernote is certainly meant to save things, but I don't see it as a finding tool. I'm going to keep Springpad on my various devices for the time being because it's going to take a few months to really get a feel for it. Based on what I've done with it so far, I think it would be good for people who find Evernote more than they need (or want to deal with). It looks like its forte would be in researching for personal projects. For a professional project or complicated personal project, I would be more likely to recommend Evernote.