Springpad

Springpad is a cloud-based note-taking and organizing application, along the lines of Evernote (free to $45 per year for Premium, 4.5 stars), but with a visual pasteboard feel to it. Its big draw is that you can save ideas in the form of Web clips using a one-click plug-in for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Browse for visual ideas about your next vacation or how you want to redesign your home, and you can cobble them together into a digital scrapbook. You can sort and tag clips into various notebooks, create items with due dates, and more. Springpad offers mobile apps for both Android phones and Apple iPhones, as well as a Springpad M. site for users of other smartphones.

While Evernote, our Editors' Choice note-taking app, also offers a Web-clipping feature, it doesn't display all your clips visually the same way Springpad does. Springpad's board is a freeform space where you can move clips around as if you were arranging them on a posterboard. Although I find Evernote to be more functional for everyday use, especially for typed notes, Springpad isn't half bad. The visual representation captured my attention from the get-go. But the app just isn't smooth to use. It lacks the polish needed to wow new users, even though it's a decent Web clipper.

Registration
Anyone can sign up for Springpad, which is free, by providing an email address and creating a password. You have the option to provide additional information, such as your full name, ZIP code (in the U.S.), photo, as well as connect to Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, or Gmail accounts.

Springpad does have some sharing and social features, although they're off by default. With permission, you can watch another user's activity and share notes with others, too, although how and how much you can share is limited (read more below in Features).

The Web version of Springpad is entirely online, so you can access the app through any browser, although it performed best in Chrome when I tested it.

Design
As you use the app to create notes, to-do items, or Web clips, you'll have the opportunity to organize them into notebooks. Each notebook can have its own name and color theme (12 colors to choose from). The home screen always shows you all your notebooks laid out visually, in a little grid, with the total number of items in each notebook displayed along the top of each one. Springpad finds a nice balance between form and function on this home screen.

As you dive into some of the other features?creating and tagging notes, adding due dates to items, clipping part of a Web page by highlighting it or the whole thing?the app starts to get a little messier. Inside any notebook in the left column are a few actions, a list of the types of notes being used (types can be note, task, movie, product, bookmark, etc.), and a list of active tags. In the center are the actual notes. If you're not using a certain type of note or tag within that particular notebook, it doesn't appear in the list, which bothered me. For consistency's sake, I'd rather have the option to see all my tags so I can remember the words and phrases I used in other notebooks without having to jump into them to find out.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/HEULmdqyLgI/0,2817,2388197,00.asp

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