.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Organize your day’s notes with DayNotez
.AUTHOR Heather Wardell
.SUMMARY Natura’s DayNotez (for Windows, Palm, and Pocket PC) is a replacement for the right-hand page of your planner, providing organization options and easy ways to access your information. But is it something to buy? Heather Wardell discusses a good program that has some strange problems.
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Back in the olden days, before I got my first Palm, I had a paper planner, using the left-hand pages for appointments and tasks and the right-hand pages for notes and journaling.
When I became Palm-obsessed, I tried to use the Memo pad to replace the right-hand notes and journaling pages, but it just wasn’t the same. Keeping those memos organized, and remembering where I’d put what information, seemed like such a bother.
I eventually gave up on journaling entirely. Natura’s DayNotez (for Windows, Palm, and Pocket PC) is a replacement for the right-hand page of your planner, providing organization options and easy ways to access your information.
.H1 Overview
Figure A shows a day’s journal entries in the Windows application and the Palm version. Naturally, the Windows application shows more information, but both are clear and easy to understand. Each type of entry can have a color and an icon assigned to it to distinguish it from the others.
.FIGPAIR A This combination picture shows both the Windows and Palm screens, which are both well designed and make good use of the available space.
While DayNotez can, of course, handle free-form notes, to my mind it’s the template feature that really shines. I created a template for the writing journal entry shown in Figure A. This uniformity makes it easier and more productive to compare notes over time.
.TEASER Is DayNotez for you? Heather Wardell discusses a good program that has some strange problems.
Speaking of time, DayNotez can keep track of how long you spend on a particular entry. I like how this feature has been implemented; the duration is left at zero minutes until you click on the ‘edit’ button beside the duration, at which point you can either enter a number of minutes or set an end time. As my writing journal entry shows, I used this feature as I worked on my novel to see how much time I was spending on each task and whether I was going to get to the end of what I’d planned in time.
DayNotez also allows you to generate statistics on how many entries you’ve made in each category, and how long you’ve spent overall on each category. Both of these features would be great for someone who needs to bill time to different projects.
The Palm version of DayNotez also provides a calendar view, to show you which days have entries. Figure B shows a month, and the icons associated with my entry types, on my Palm. The desktop version does not display the icons.
.FIGPAIR B DayNotez’s calendar view makes it easy to see which days have which kinds of entries.
.H1 Synchronization and deletion
My concern with applications that operate on both the Palm and the desktop is always synchronization. I changed the same entry on both platforms and then did a HotSync, and was impressed with the results. A dialogue box, shown in Figure C, appeared, asking me which entry I wanted to keep.
.FIGPAIR C When an entry is changed on both platforms, DayNotez recognizes it and allows you to choose which one to keep.
There’s also an option to always use either the handheld or desktop’s version in the case of a collision, or you can skip the record for this synchronization (although the same dialogue box will appear on each HotSync until the issue is resolved).
Oddly, though, when I changed a record on one platform and deleted the same record on the other, the record was deleted without the dialogue box. On the Palm, I was warned that the deletion would be permanent, but not on the desktop. While an accidental deletion is probably less likely than inadvertently editing the same record on both platforms, I think it would be better if DayNotez warned me that I was deleting an entry I’d edited.
DayNotez does not offer a feature explicitly intended to delete old entries. However, you can choose to archive entries without specifying a location to save them, which is supposed to delete them. I did this on my Palm and did a HotSync, only to find the entries still on the desktop. When I did a second HotSync, they did disappear, but I’m not sure why it took two HotSyncs to make it happen.
.H1 User interface
For the most part, both the Palm and Windows versions behave as I would expect. The only exception was for days with no entries.
When I click on a day with no entries on the desktop, I would expect the ‘Entries’ tab to give me a ‘New’ button to allow me to start an entry. The first time into a date, it does do this, but if I leave and then return, I instead get the next entry in the list. For example, if February 10th has no entries but February 12th does, pressing ‘edit’ on February 10th’s date will bring up the entry from February 12th for editing. This concerned me, as I could easily have ended up editing the wrong day’s entry. Clicking on a day that does have entries always showed them, as I’d expect.
On the Palm, blank days also present a problem. Clicking on a blank day and then pressing the ‘edit’ button (which is, by necessity, small, and also right next to the ‘new’ button, so accidental clicks are a fact of life) again brings up the next entry in the list.
In all cases, the correct date and time of the entry is shown, so keeping a careful eye on the date means you won’t accidentally edit the wrong entry. However, the software should not be showing me entries not applicable to the date I’ve selected. If there are no entries on that date, the ‘edit’ button should give me a new blank entry.
To make good use of the limited screen size on the Palm, DayNotez changes its buttons depending on the view you’re in. For example, when you’re looking at a list of entries, the first button will take you to the details of a particular entry. Once you’re in those details, though, the button changes to the list button. It took me several days to notice this happening, and I think it’s an interesting method of providing functionality.
.H1 Additional features
The application can record voice memos (on a Palm that provides this functionality) and store them as an entry. When recording directly to my Treo’s SD memory card, the memos were choppy and unintelligible. Not going directly to the card worked properly, but I found it took a long time to transfer a completed memo (even one of only a few seconds) to the card.
Here again, I needed to HotSync twice to get the voice memo to appear. On the first synchronization, the entry came across but not the voice memo itself. On the second one, it was present.
You can also take pictures (if your Palm has a camera built-in) and include them in an entry. These pictures do not appear in DayNotez; instead they will be in the Palm Desktop’s Media section.
.H1 Summary
DayNotez has been available since 2000. The overall implementation is strong, the software didn’t crash once during my tests or lose any of my data, and I see real benefits in continued use of the program.
At the same time, I am surprised at the inconsistencies and odd user interface decisions in such an otherwise strong product. As a result, DayNotez’s rating is a three.
.RATING 3
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.H1 Product availability and resources
Visit [[http://www.natara.com/DayNotez/|DayNotez]].
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.BIO
