Circus Ponies Notebook

Circus Ponies Notebook is a note taking and organizing application that can be used for taking class notes, documenting research, journaling, scrapbooking, creating travel guides, and a thousand other things. Notebook is free to try for 30 days, and academic discounts are available. This application has the look and feel of a physical notebook. There are options for lined or unlined paper, legal paper, and there are even little holes punched down the left side. You can place tabs in the notebook, and they can be any color or style that suits your taste. For my setup, I have a notebook for each subject, and within each notebook I have the tabs set up like this:

When I get a syllabus for a new course, I transfer the professor’s office hours, phone, email, etc. to a page under the Information tab. The readings for the semester go under the Assignments tab. Class notes start under the Notes tab. The Research tab is for information I’ve collected from outside sources. Additionally, for a writing course, I usually create a tab for each writing assignment.

There is a table of contents in the front of the notebook, and you can create new pages from there. In fact, this is the way I start taking notes for the reading for a (hopefully future) class session. When I create a new page, I mark the title with the date and subject to be covered. Then, I go to the Assignments tab and copy the reading assignment for that class and paste it at the top of that day’s page. As I work through the assignment, I make notes directly in Notebook. Having the assignment at the top of the page allows me to quickly flip to the correct page during class without looking at yet another piece of paper or online document. Also, I have a “Case Shell” on the Class Info page. This Case Shell is the bare bones outline that I use to go through a case. This shell is different for every class, but here’s what most of them look like:

This helps me structure my thoughts as I’m reading, and ensures I don’t forget to take something down. I can also easily find an answer when a professor is standing over me, because everything is standardized.

Where Notebook really shines is the ease of data entry. When I am in class taking notes, there is very little mental effort devoted to formatting, spacing, or organizing. To create a new line, hit Return. To indent the line, hit Tab. To dedent, hit Shift-Tab. When a professor says there are a few elements for a legal test, and suddenly there seem to be six, that’s never a problem. I can reorganize on the fly, and using the keyboard or the mouse to move items around quickly, I can make my notes match my evolving understanding of the subject matter. Entire sections of text can be collapsed or expanded to remove distractions or to more easily move things around.

When people watch me taking notes, invariably I get comments that fall into one of two categories. First, they say “Wow, that’s really cool looking, what is that?” and “You’re really fast at taking notes”. As to the first point, it’s a Mac, and Notebook makes sure they live up to the great-looking simplicity that you’ve come to expect. On the second point, these comments aren’t about my typing – I’m still learning to touch type – they’re about how I can move items around and make sense of a complicated topic. The keystrokes and layout are intuitive. Grab this, move it somewhere, and the other chunks of text get out of the way, changing their positions to accommodate your action. My favorite Notebook feature is something so small and innocuous, it’s easy to miss. When you have a chunk of text selected and you want to add additional text, you don’t have to hit Return or click the mouse, you simply start typing. Your cursor is automatically placed at the end of the text block and you’re off and running. This takes no thought and no time, allowing you to focus on taking down information.

Another way to get information into Notebook quickly is their clipping service. From any application on your Mac, you can select text and send that information to a specific page in a Notebook. This can be done even without having Notebook open. Let’s say you’re in a browser and you’ve found the perfect phrase for punching up your incredibly well written argument. There are a couple of ways to snag it and place it into your Notebook via the clipping service. The first way is to select the text, right-click it and select the clipping service you want to send it to. That’s it. Notebook records both the text you selected and the URL of where it came from directly into the appropriate page. If you want to add an additional thought or maybe a citation to this text before it goes in, just right-click and select “Clip and annotate”. This pops up a dialog box with your selected text and it allows you to add to or edit the selection. Notebook can be everywhere yet invisible, the perfect legal research companion.

If you want to share your notebook with a group, there are HTML export capabilities which preserve the tabs and the easy navigation of moving around the notebook. Sometimes I export my Notebook to a web server so I can access them on a lab computer in the library.

Another feature I use quite a bit in Notebook is the index. At the back of every notebook there are indices generated automatically as you type. A great one for working with your law school notes is the Capitalized Words index. This index contains a list of all parties in all cases harvested throughout your notebook. Expanding the party name allows you to see every instance where that case is mentioned. Clicking on an entry takes you to that page, and that line in the document. This is the best way to find how cases are related or to quickly see the last time a case was mentioned.

I’ve used Microsoft Word, OmniOutliner, various text editors, and of course, real paper. For me, Notebook is a clear winner. It’s simple to use, fades into the background, and makes it easy to organize and reorganize your thoughts when you’re furiously typing notes in law school.

Circus Ponies
Standard license $49.95
Academic license $29.95