The OneNote blues

Yesterday should have been a really exciting day. I've been pestering Microsoft's PR people for ages about when the iPhone version of their notebook software OneNote would be available in the UK. It has taken then around 6 months to convert from US to UK English (I know it's difficult guys, but you've had enough practice) and now it is available, and currently free.

So I zapped OneNote on my iPhone, and it should have been like Christmas, only it wasn't.

I'm a very heavy user of OneNote on the PC. I have a dual screen setup and most of the time I've got what I'm working on filling one screen and OneNote filling the other. OneNote is my work repository. If I see a scrap of information that could come in useful for a book I'm writing, I slam it into OneNote. I keep the books themselves there too, and all the articles I write, and checklists and goodness knows what. The thought of having it accessible on my iPhone filled me with delight. But it hasn't worked out. For two reasons. One is the way I work, the other the way OneNote works.

The thing is I've got vast quantities of stuff in there. Including plenty of full length manuscripts as Word documents and goodness knows what. It's my filing system. And it just won't translate into the mobile OneNote. It's really for a totally different purpose.

So if I'm going to use OneNote for iPhone, I really need to split off from the morass the useful bits of information that I might need anywhere any time. They're in there, but mingled with all that stuff that wouldn't work on the phone. Now I could put this stuff into a separate folder and just share that. But if I do, here's the sad, thing, OneNote isn't the best way to do it.

If I did separate that stuff off, it would work much better in Evernote, which I'm already using for notes on my iPhone and iPad. Why? Well:

Evernote has both iPhone and iPad versions already. OneNote will run on an iPad but only in a little iPhone sized window.
Evernote automatically wirelessly synchronizes with all versions every time I make a change. With OneNote I would have to buy and install OneNote 2010 for my PC (as the iPhone version doesn't work with the 2007 I have), set up an online account, link the various bits and, if I'm lucky it'll all start talking to each other.
In principle OneNote should be better than Evernote because it has nice features like tables and urgent markers that I use a lot. Guess what? Tables and urgent markers don't come through to OneNote for iPhone.

I haven't given up. It is too early to be certain and I have no intention of writing off OneNote for iPhone at this stage. But the experience could have been so much better. Maybe it's my fault. Perhaps I used OneNote the 'wrong' way. But the honeymoon has not gone well.

P.S. I'm not planning a Paris trip - these are Microsoft's sample screens

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

Search This Blog