I'm always looking for the practical application of technology. Well for me one of the most practical applications seems to be the Grocery List. Why? First of all its dynamic. every time I go to the store and I think I have the list down right I always get a call. "Honey, I was thinking you should get some cilantro for the salsa we are making for the guests we are having over tomorrow night". Second, details are important. "not the garlic hummus, the garlic red pepper hummus". Finally, I'm not a mind reader. I've been married for almost 14 years now and I can't seem to get it down. So, the dynamic, detailed grocery list can improve my relationship with my wife instead of adding to the stress.
I've been working with 3 different applications to figure out which one performs best. I've been using 1.Microsoft Onenote with Skydrive 2.Google Drive and Docs and 3. Evernote. The winner is? Evernote hands down. Why? it comes down to ease of use and device synchronization. Evernote is super easy to use and you don't have to worry about synchronization once you have it set up. First of all I want to make it clear that I like all of these products for different reasons, however, for this purpose I love Evernote. When I want to make a list or take something down, I don't want to have to wait for an application or worry if it is going to synchronize. I don't want to have to search for a file or an application within an application. That is the beauty of how Evernote behaves for me. Here is an example: Last night I was heading to bed and my wife says "hey honey can you remember this number for me? My answer was yes, and by the time I responded I had Evernote open and ready to roll. So what do the other Two applications offer? Well Onenote from Microsoft is great for meetings where you bring your laptop. My only problem with Onenote has been that it is kind of slow to start up. also, more of a manual process when it comes to synchronization while being less intuitive. So, I use Onenote for meetings at work. Onenote feels more like a notebook with tabs then a note pad where you can take a quick note or a list. What about Google docs. I've been using this for years. In fact, when I was interviewing for this job I had my resume uploaded and could send it on demand from my phone. My wife and I keep our budget on Drive from Google Docs. It works great. we can share the document and make changes that update as we do. It is just more of a document repository than a notebook. So, these are all great products but Evernote wins out for the grocery list.
Thanks for reading.
~pz
