I Need a Notepad …
So it all started when I was working for this Big Four firm. I occasionally found a piece of interesting information while at work and I wished that I could store it somewhere and come back to it later. Don’t get me wrong – I worked really hard, but in spite of that, intriguing thoughts and ideas do sometimes cross one’s mind, right?
The problem with “storing it somewhere” was the fact that when you are working with confidential data (as we were), your computer is pretty tightly protected against accidental (or malicious) data leakage. In human speech, this means that I could not save or copy anything from my computer to an external medium unless it was an encrypted USB stick.
Encrypted USB sticks, however, are usually bulky and not exactly user friendly. Not only do you always have to enter your password when you connect one (obviously), but there is usually a lot of work-related stuff on your stick, plus it gets shared among team members. This way, organizing gets messy and you are risking that your colleague or client will open your notes – not good…
I normally take notes in – you guessed it – Notepad. I very much like plain text because it stores just what you need and does not get confused with any sort of formatting or automation.
… Not Email …
You may ask – what about email? Well, emailing yourself is, in my opinion, a little silly. Plus, there is this overhead of opening the email client, entering your address, etc. What is worse, though, is the fact that emailing yourself will leave you with multiple versions of the same message. While this may be nice if you need to access an old copy, it has the tendency of “drowning” or crowding out your normal email. Put simply – email is email. I needed something else.
Some people use email drafts – that’s more like it, but accessing and editing your drafts is not always as comfortable as one would wish. In Gmail, for example, it is a little bit impractical to have multiple windows open. Plus, the rich interface again tends to convert links contained in text which – frankly – is a little annoying when you want to edit them often.
… Nor a Bookmarking Service …
Most bookmarking services are also quite silly, what you think? You can only store a link, you can add a rating, you can add a description – how amazing. But try to order your links, add custom attributes to them, or just leave them laying around without a title. Or, hmm, what if you don’t even have a link, just a piece of text, a snippet, a song name or the name of your new acquaintance? There is no bookmarking service out there which could be as flexible as plain text. This is simply impossible by design.
Of course, in case you do have links, it is nice if you can click them. Who would want to copy and paste? OK, I’ll keep that in mind…
… Just Plain Text!
As I mentioned above, I like plain text better than rich formatting. Using monospace font (such as Courier New) simply gives things this neat image of order. If you have programming code or HTML code, it looks much better when displayed in monospace. It is the pristine beauty of plain text that is so appealing. No surprises.
Among the many other advantages of plain text is also the fact that it is absolutely light-weight, simple, and can be very easily rendered on virtually any device. Even your cheapest cell phone can show you plain text. This omnipresence and simplicity gives it a huge potential, in my opinion.
Having considered all the above options, I realized that my requirements were probably too particular for any existing service to satisfy my needs. Therefore, I decided to develop a sharing tool myself. And I thought that while I was at it, I might as well make it usable for others. That should not be a big problem, right?
Stay tuned to read about how I devised the plan behind Scribz.net™.
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