Interesting: Notational Velocity + SimpleNote (And DropBox)

March 16th, 2010

In an earlier post I mentioned playing with Notational Velocity on two Macs, synced with DropBox. This worked really well, but I then wondered if I could edit the same notes using the iPhone. The great DropBox iPhone app only lets you view files, not edit them.

The missing piece turns out to be the iPhone app and associated service: SimpleNote. The SimpleNote iPhone app is similarly, refreshingly minimal as Notational Velocity: a search field, a list of notes, and tapping on any note in the list opens it for editing.

After downloading the app to your iPhone, sign up for an account to the SimpleNote website. Your iPhone app will then sync with the website, where you can edit notes via a web interface.

Then you can get Notational Velocity editing these same notes. Fire up Notational Velocity, go to Preferences, and the Synchronization tab, and enter your SimpleNote account info. Do this for all your copies of Notational Velocity, and they’ll all remain in sync, editing the same notes.

Note: You can’t have two copies of Notational Velocity syncing both to SimpleNote and a DropBox folder (as I suggested in an earlier post), or an endless loop of documents will be appear. Make sure only one of your Notational Velocity apps is syncing to a DropBox. I set Notational Velocity on a Mac Mini syncing to DropBox, and reassigned the MacBook Notational Velocity to a folder in Documents.

So the end result: Notational Velocity on two Macs synced, plus an iPhone using SimpleNote. You can create and edit documents on any of the above and they remain in sync. Plus, all note files are backed up into DropBox.