Due to the changes in the Evernote restrictions, I migrated all my Evernote content to Amplenote. Amplenote so far is quite good, the only thing I am not happy with is the web clipper. I can hardly clip the content with the format of the webpage itself. As a result, I come to Obsidian.

Unlike Amplenote, Obsidian works as a desktop application. If one wants a synchronization feature, then he/she needs to pay. If one wants to work with a free version, then one can setup other synchronization services such as Dropbox.

I love to write something, using computer or mobile. Then I found the Google Keep, which is wonderful because it is a web app, works on Linux and Android. Storing my notes in the cloud so that I need not to worry about synchronization problem.

I am not fan of Evernote, but Evernote is a very popular notetaking application. I doesn’t like it because (i) it does not have Linux native support, (ii) and the free plan has quite a lot of limitations. However, I am using it. I was using Zotero. Zotero is nice in terms of the service, but it does not have nice user interface, such as note editing, which affects the user experience. In terms of reference management, Mendeley works far more better than Zotero. As a result, I choose Mendeley for reference management, and choose Evernote for the sake of Evernote Web Clipper extension. The nice feature of Evernote that attracts me is the web clipper. I can highlight the text I want, and save to Evernote. Evernote will store the date, time, and URL. I can also screenshot the web page too. This is what I like most. (May be I should try OneNote as well. I also just found that there is Save to Google Drive extension.)

Previously I mentioned about Evernote on WINE in Linux. It works fine. Some minor problems I faced are upgrading Evernote requires re-install, because of the WINE compatibility with the installer, and Chinese characters are not viewable at the note list, and restricted monthly upload limit. That is why, I am looking for alternative solutions.

The followings are the notetaking applications I tried briefly,

• Basket Note Pad - Very fancy. Uses XML and text files.
• Tomboy Note, Gnote - Android version, Tomdroid notes. Cannot insert picture.
• Xournal - Doesn’t look like notetaking application I am looking for.
• Zim - Wiki format. Still active.
• NixNote - Using Evernote server.
• KJots - Does not run properly in my computer.
• WizNote - Requires sign up. It has web clipper and Android port.
• KeepNote - Uses XML.

Among these notetaking applications, most interesting one is Zim. It can insert a lot of things including picture, screenshot, equation, code, etc. It also allows using tagging. The wiki format is better than XML, since it is just a very plain text file. This mean, I can synchronise my notes over my other devices using the service such as Dropbox, and open the file as long as I have text editor. Editing XML with text editor is not a good idea. The only thing Zim is lacking of is the web clipper and a full port to Android. But this is really a powerful tool, more than notetaking.