14 DAY TRIAL // No matter if we are talking about school essays or large sized corporation projects, everyone had the ?bad luck? of remembering their tasks at the last minute. As you know, this means that the quality of your work is very, very poor.
Therefore, we could all use a reminder, a tool to take over the duty of memorizing all the important dates in our lives and to remind us of them in due time. This is why NOTO was created. A simple application, designed to look like a regular notebook, with pages, bookmarks and the usual calendar. You can even customize it to reflect your style or your mood. It comes with 6 different cover skins, and you can also change the colors of the devices that complement it: a Mp3 Player, a calculator and QuickPix (a game that tests your memory, but I will come back to it later). As I was saying, you can adjust their appearance to suit your tastes or your feelings. You know, when you are happy and feel like dancing, you can turn them pink, or when you have the impression that the whole world is plotting against you, you can just make everything black. Well, I guess you got the picture.
But let's leave these details aside and focus on the main purpose of NOTO: to record tasks and to 'tell' you when it is high time to fulfill them. First of all, try to remember all the things you are not supposed to forget ? those that are yet to take place, because no software can do anything to postpone your past missed deadlines. Next, you need to write them down in NOTO on the page that corresponds to the correct day. Then, you just need to check back every day and see if there is anything planned. Unfortunately, NOTO does not feature the possibility of automatically reminding you of certain events, it requires you to verify its content. However, you have the chance of visualizing the days individually, as a week or as a month, so you can get the overall idea as to how busy the next period will be.
Another good thing is that you can schedule your jobs, i.e. you can assign a specific hour and, depending on how long it lasts, you can already plan the next task. This is a plus because you won?t find yourself in the position of overlaying your duties, scheduling too many events at the same time. Furthermore, you can prioritize by using colors and icons: for example, all the urgent tasks will be red, so that you know you have to take care of them first. Or, in order to ensure that you solve the work-related (or school-related, depending on the case) tasks, you can attach brightly colored stars or corresponding icons (there are several types to choose from), so the next time you launch NOTO they will be easy to locate.
But recording tasks and coloring them is not everything this application can do: it will also allow you to manage your projects and to write down ideas the minute they come up. You can put down all the thoughts that have any connection to the project you are working on and later, when you?ve finished brainstorming, you can sort everything and keep only the best. I believe that?s quite an advantage, since it offers you the possibility to create to-do lists, to schedule and at the same time you can build an overview of your project, thus making sure you stick to the initial main idea.
On the other hand, at the beginning, I said that NOTO is your regular notebook, therefore it was bound to have a section for keeping addresses and phone numbers. They are sorted alphabetically and you can add as many pages as you need for each letter (unlike a real notebook). You will also be able to write down more than the usual personal information about people?s homes and phone numbers: NOTO was created to facilitate your keeping in touch with your business partners, colleagues or friends so it allows you to store an accurate record of their e-mail addresses, fax and mobile phones that you can later easily use.
Another useful part of NOTO deals with general info, such as building a timetable, creating a list with your favorite webpages (that you can launch from within the program) or managing several types of maps ? meant to assist you in your worldwide travels or simply to show you the underground routes. Nevertheless, these maps will be quite hard to handle since the only way to scroll them is to use the arrows. The world map lets you zoom in, but zooming out will reset it at the initial dimensions and some smaller countries display numbers instead of names (I couldn?t find a place where these numbers are explained, so I assume it is a mere shortcoming that will be corrected in the future versions of NOTO).
Now, let?s talk about the embedded gadgets, smart additions designed to help you relax or speed up your work. I am referring to 3 devices, the first of which is the calculator: simple and easy-to-use, nothing fancy, just the appropriate tool for your quick calculations that occur every time. Still, it has something special: you can change its appearance by pressing the upper left button (the same button is used whenever you want to change the color of any other incorporated device), turning it into a cute colorful utility.
The same statement applies to the Mp3 Player that will definitely make time go by faster when you are struggling to fulfill your assignments. You can modify its color or drag and drop your favorite audio tracks that will play in the background, even if the actual player will disappear from your NOTO display. However, I have to stress that you need to add the music using drag?n?drop, because there is no other way and you cannot add an entire folder unless you select all its files (Ctrl+A) and then drop them onto the Mp3 Player window. After this, just adjust the volume and press the play button.
Last, but not least, QuickPix. I could not quite understand its presence within a notebook for recording tasks and scheduling events, but I guess it is supposed to improve your memory so it is useful no matter where it is. This game is about matching pairs: you see the whole image for an instant at the beginning, and then you try to match each picture to its identical copy before time runs out. Not exactly my favorite pastime, but I guess everyone needs to unwind every now and then.
The Good
NOTO has an intuitive interface that is easy to handle even if you don?t listen to the ?Help? part. The color-coded tasks are definitely a good idea and the icons are very useful when you want to separate business from the leisure activities. The additional gadgets are a plus because a simple application suddenly doesn?t seem so simplistic anymore. And of course, I have to praise the numerous skins and color schemes that allow you to customize the covers, the icons, the gadgets and the maps a great deal (and you can download more, whenever you need to, as long as you have Internet connection).
The Bad
Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is that it doesn?t automatically remind you of your tasks. As I said before, you have to check your records daily so that you don?t miss any appointments or deadlines. Other minor drawbacks are that the Mp3 Player won?t allow you to add a whole folder, the world map is frustrating when you want to scroll up and down and the calculator only allows you to type using its buttons, instead of the keyboard. And maybe the game could have been a different one that would help you relax instead of being quite stressful (because of the time limit). Oh...and the price is quite high compared to the features it comes with.
The Truth
Overall, I have to admit that NOTO surprised me: I didn?t expect much when I realized it doesn?t remind me of my duties, but the great revelation was when it turned out that it runs form my memory stick, thus enabling me to have all my data wherever I find a computer. So I can have all my appointments at hand, just like the regular notebook, but I can customize its appearance according to my mood swings and I can also listen to my favorite music and plan ahead all my projects.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
