Wavebox for productivity wins

Wavebox intro

I was using Wmail for a while since I got a little fed up with using Gmail in Chrome, it was good but sometimes I found it zapping resources. I tried using Evolution, Thunderbird and a few other native email apps but missed some of the nice things Gmail does and supports. So when I first saw Wmail I thought I’d give it a try even with the slight skepticism from some around Electron.

So impressed with Wmail, that I donate to the development for it. It wasn’t long till they got in touch and said they were moving to Wavebox and as a nice extra I would get a year subscription to Wavebox pro.

The things I love about Wavebox is being able to hook up multiple gmail accounts including drive, contacts, calender, etc. Trello works great as does Slack (but I opted to keep the slack app for now). But the killer is being able to hook up any site you like. For example I use Mastodon and WordPress (the official linux app locks up a lot). I was tempted to setup Evernote and maybe laverna, standardnotes, a few other things but this will do for now.

The Verge seem to agree too

Its pretty great and the ability to add almost any site is pretty useful, especially with the lack of Linux support for some things. Yes you have to pay for the pro features but its worth it.

There is also a misconception that I won’t pay for software and thats rubbish. Its about the terms, for example Wavebox is actually open source but the terms of what you pay for are fine with me.

Replacing Evernote with …?

Dead evernote

I’ve been slowly replacing lots of the apps I’ve used in the past. I already wrote a few posts about it. But the big one is replacing Evernote. Now I’m not jumping on the bandwagon but frankly its always drove me a little nuts the lack of linux support. Especially with frameworks like Electron. Its a bit of kick in the teeth and although their webapp has gotten much better, the lack of offline support makes it a killer for everyday use. Yes there is Nevernote, which become Nixnote but Java!

So I tried switching to something else. I landed on Simplenote as its got clients for every platform and it actually syncs across them all like Evernote. This I thought was perfect then somewhere between deciding to move and actually exporting my data out of evernote (thanks to Wine – Windows emulator for Linux); Simplenote removed (?) the ability to import data from evernote exports. Yes I could do some horrible automation but it would be a real pain.

To my mind, their is two parts. The syncing part and the editing part. Most of the note taking apps seem to combine both parts. This is why I liked Tomboy notes but the client was poor.

So I’m looked for something which seperates both parts and can be replaced easlily enough (open enough to do this too). It also needs clients for Linux and Android (web would be a plus). Attachments, encryption, dataportability, etc are high on my list. These are quite different from what Tom is looking for I feel. For example I never used the evernote clipper and have other native solutions for that.

I found these and might give them a try…

  • Laverna needs a Android client, which they are working on. Uses Dropbox or something else for syncing.
  • Standard notes also needs a Android client before I use it, uses a opensource server to sync but its very early days. Although its interesting to hear the developers thoughts on Evernote. Thats a whole lot of puff but standard note does look promising.
  • Turtl has all the clients I need but uses its own sync server, however its opensource and I can later run my own (noticed theres a docker image). I’m currently trying this one out and its working quite well, but I’m still waiting for inport support of my evernote data.

I also found while browsing around Tagspaces, which isn’t stictly a note taking app but has potential to be so much more. Clients for every platform, opensource and can be selfhosted or synced via dropbox, etc.

Sure to update people once I find something which can replace evernote.