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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/7575
MacDirectory 129
COMPANY PROFILE
CIRCUS PONIES SOFTWARE >
IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEARING CLUTTER AND SAVING TIME
WORDS BY MATT MARQUEZ
The jumbled mess of files, notes and
stickies known as "cluttered desktop
syndrome" can afflict even the most
organized person in the world. Thankfully,
Circus Ponies Software manufactures the
cure with its award-winning NoteBook
program.
Founded in 2003, Circus Ponies produces
software exclusively for Mac OS X, and its
flagship product, NoteBook, uses a familiar
notebook interface to house your
wandering stickies and important e-mails.
The application uses notebook pages,
tabs, sections and subsections to make
organizing your desktop detritus a snap.
Simply add your notes and other text or
drag in files and folders without leaving
the application you're working in.
NoteBook can even manage Web site
clippings, spreadsheets and voice
recordings. When you're ready to locate
something, NoteBook's patented Multidex
system lets you find the right snippet
based on its name, the date you entered
it, a keyword you assigned or anything else
you remember about it.
"We created NoteBook for all of the Mac
users out there with the cluttered
desktops, the sticky notes covering their
screens, the elaborate folder naming
schemes to organize documents in the
Finder, the
cluttered
mailboxes, and on
and on," says
Circus Ponies
cofounder and VP
of technology
Jayson Adams.
That means just
about anyone
with a computer
can benefit from
using NoteBook.
"If you think about it, whether you're a
student, researcher, professional, or just
about anyone else, you have lots of bits of
information from all kinds of different
sources that you need to keep handy,"
Adams says.
Adams originally created NoteBook in
1992 for NeXT computers (the other
computer developed by Apple CEO Steve
Jobs), where it won "Product of the Year"
from
NeXTWorld Magazine and was
described as "the ultimate digital
scrapbook." Since co-founding Circus
Ponies in 2003, Adams has rewritten
NoteBook from scratch to make the most
out of Mac OS X.
NoteBook 3.0 is the most recent update,
and the late 2008 release brought
diagramming and sketching to the
application's notebook pages. A new
annotation feature that lets users mark up
presentation slides and other PDFs with
text, sketches and diagrams is particularly
helpful for students.
Circus Ponies' development plan for
NoteBook is determined in equal parts
by user input and internal engineering
in what Adams describes as an
"organic" process.
"We love getting feature requests from
our users, though there can be a fair
amount of work refining them into actual
commands in the app. If someone says, 'I
want to be able do this,' we have to figure
out how to make that possible while
preserving NoteBook's overall integrity and
consistency," Adams says.
Despite an active user base that drives
part of the creative process, Adams notes
that NoteBook has some features that
many people don't know about. One
overlooked feature is the app's ability to
turn any Notebook collection into a Web
site that can be placed on the Web.
"If you have information you need to share
with other people, even on platforms
other than the Mac, you can use NoteBook
to construct Web sites," Adams says. "We
don't bill NoteBook as a Web site builder
but it's a capable solution."
With NoteBook's numerous features for
creative organization, you might be
concerned that Circus Ponies has replaced
desktop clutter with another source of
confusion, but Adams says he intentionally
avoided presenting all of NoteBook's
options off the bat so users can discover
them over time. That's the reason why the
first thing a user sees upon booting up is a
simple paper notebook.
"Occasionally we hear from a trial user
who says the product is too simple,
which really means they probably haven't
done a lot more than launch the app,"
Adams says.
Circus Ponies offers a 30-day NoteBook
trial that lets users see for themselves if
the app is the cure for their cluttered
desktop. The standard software package
starts at $49.95. Find these downloads
plus user forums and software updates at