The main problem with using it in the browser is I can’t Command+tab to the application to jot down or check off items. I also frequently Command+h (hide) applications, and if it’s in the browser all browser instances hide.

As a quick and dirty fix, I put this lite application together that will give you a GlueyNotes instance on your desktop that you can use as a regular application. It is basically just a web kit wrapper application, but it does the job well enough.

It’s lite because there are some real APIs and web services in place for GlueyNotes (and for the most part working), but I haven’t had time to write a real application that use the APIs - this quick hack works well in the meantime though.

It looks like this:

If you’re using GlueyNotes on Mac, you can download the application here (I’ll slap together a windows and / or linux version if someone wants it).

I just put up a new version of GlueyNotes, there are quite a few under-the-hood changes, but not many client visible changes.

One new visible feature (that is often requested) is you can now be logged into several devices at the same time. Before you were limited to one device due to possible edit conflicts. However, now there is a conflict checker, and I boosted the number of logins to 4. This should also limit the number of times you have to login, as you wont get logged out when switching devices.

Another visible change is basic help - another oft requested feature. The help documentation is somewhat nasty looking at present, but I will be updating it soon (I am using it as the main testing ground for WebArchive Extractor).

I also put a forum together for the application - it is currently quite bare, but if you have questions, comments, or suggestions you want to get in the queue you can post them there.

It looks at your browsers preferred language and if it’s Chinese (zh_CN) displays the UI in Chinese. So if you want to see the Chinese site, you have to set your preferred language in the browser. If you’re just curious as to what it looks like, here is a screen shot:

There are not many people that use GlueyNotes in China, but there are a few actually.

I also added support for the Android platform. I am not sure if there are any Android phones in the wild yet, but it seems to somewhat work with the emulator. Since the browser is based on WebKit I am not all that surprised, but it’s kind of neat that it works almost out of the box (if you have an iphone web application you might want to check out Android too).

Consider Android support beta though. Android seems to have problems with a few ajax calls, and text area entry oddities; however, the bugs could be due to the emulator.

Most people know that if you do a bit of advertising, you’ll get more people checking out your service, product, or whatever. However, I’ve never really seen a concrete example - a real world example - until this weekend.

A while ago I submitted my GlueyNotes application to Apple for display on their listing of iPhone applications. Look at this image and try to guess the day it went live:

The page views went from about 100 a day to over 3,000 - that is amazing to me. Now granted it was / is on the “front page” of the listing so the numbers will likely drop, but this is an amazing example of what a bit of marketing can do.

If you’re curious, you can see the listing here. (Ignore the company item that was a type-o or something (as evident by the link coming back to this site))

Unbeknownst to me, the number of users grew on GlueyNotes by leaps and bounds this weekend. Looks like I need to step up GlueyNotes development…

Changes:

* GlueyNotes should now work with the iPod Touch.
* Better browser support for non iPhone usage - IE6/7, Safari 2, and Firefox. It only worked “right” on Safari 3, and didn’t work at all on any IE.
* Better layout for the simple online list editor.
The editor was kind of hard to use from the iPhone UI, and it didn’t layout very well on the desktop either. The new one just takes up the whole screen without any UI fluff.

There is still a lot more to come. My wife now depends on the application, and she has given me a list of things to do ;)

You can checkout Glueynotes here

There is something wrong with textareas on the iPhone sometimes. I am not sure what causes it yet, but you lose the ability to scroll (aka no magnifying glass) which makes the textareas useless. It seems to have to do with having a textarea off screen then moving it on screen (seems to happen to text inputs as well).

Those problems made a few of the screens on the iPhone version of glueynotes.com hard to use / useless. Specifically the context search and the raw file editing.

To fix those, I changed the context search to a select box that searches your list for contexts and just provides context choices (I like this better anyway). And for the raw edit mode, it just goes to the desktop version of the list so you can edit it with the phone. Long way around, you can now actually use glueynotes.com with just an iPhone if you want.

The UI is still a bit rough, but the application works well. I’ve been using it all week and I’ve gotten a lot of things done ;)

You can take a peek at the previous post on how to use GlueyNotes, and you can sign up for an account here.

The basic flow is: you type your lists in plain text, and then the iPhone shows them to you hierarchically where you can check off tasks as they are done. You can watch the movie about it on the GlueyNotes home page (it will work on your iPhone), or here is a youtube version (if you don’t see the youtube version, check back later. They seem to take a really really long time to convert video, and I am impatient and tired at the moment.)

If you don’t want to watch the movie…

Currently, you can type your list using any browser, and the format is:

* Item 1
* Item 2
** Sub Item of 2
** Sub Item of 2 as well
* Item 3

etc. If you use a text file for your own lists, you likely do something similar already. If a task is complete, you can change the first * to an X and it wont show up in the iPhone UI. For example:

* Item 1
X Item 2
** Sub Item of 2
X* Sub Item of 2 as well
* Item 3

Item 2 and Sub Item of 2 as well will not display in the iPhone UI. Likewise, if you tick the box on the iPhone for an item, your text list item will get and X in front of it.

If you want to add more detail about an item, you can add it after an item on a new line. If you add phone numbers, emails, or URLs they become links on the phone and allow you to click them to make a call, send an email, or open a new browser windows. For example:

* Item 1
Call bob about the forecast 415-555-1212 and tell him about http://robrohan.com or email bob@bob.com
X Item 2
** Sub Item of 2
X* Sub Item of 2 as well
* Item 3

You can also add comments to the list (for lack of a better term) by starting the line with a #. This is useful to draw lines or separate sections.

* Item 1
Call bob about the forecast 415-555-1212 and tell him about http://robrohan.com or email bob@bob.com
X Item 2
** Sub Item of 2
X* Sub Item of 2 as well
* Item 3
######### HOME STUFF ##########
* Item 5
* Item 6

And lastly, you can add contexts to items which you can then search for on the phone. Contexts are denoted by putting @[context] anywhere on the line. So for example:

* Item 1 @phone
Call bob about the forecast 415-555-1212 and tell him about http://robrohan.com or email bob@bob.com
X Item 2
** Sub Item of 2 @phone
X* Sub Item of 2 as well @computer
* Item 3
######### HOME STUFF ##########
* Item 5
* Item 6

Then on the iPhone, you can list all items in a context.

Ok, so that was a bit of a brain dump. I’ve been playing with it for a few days, and while it’s still beta it’s useable. If you have an iphone, like lists, and are adventurous, you might want to check out GlueyNotes.com.

Feedback welcome.

(I’ve been meaning to write the application for a while (even before the iphone), but last weekend I decided to just bang it out. I didn’t get as far as I wanted because I had to go to a Beach Boys concert, but I just cleaned up a few odds and ends, and it’s now useable - albeit beta.)