3banana: A User-friendly Note-taking Application

Banana is never a synonym to technology, but 3banana Inc. somehow manages to merge them together by creating an useful web-based note-taking application and call it 3banana (yes, without the ’s’).

For those who have tried and used popular note-taking apps like Evernote or Reqall, you’ll be surprised at how simple 3banana is, without losing much of the functionality. It is one of the few note-taking application that promotes usability, portability and effortless sharing.

Usability

First of all, 3bananas is free. You just have to sign up for an account to start using it. If you have a Google account (I bet most of us have at least one), you can even sign in with your Google username and password without having to create a separate account.

Once you are logged in, the first note that appears on the dashboard is the instruction on how to use 3banana. There are several useful things that you can apply to your notes:

Links – 3banana detects all URLs and turns them to hyperlinks automatically.

HTML tags - It doesn’t support all the HTML tags, but those that it supports are enough to allow you to create a rich-text formatting note. Currently, the html tags supported by 3banana are <a href>, <br>, <span>, <embed>, <object>, <img>, <u>, <b>, <i> (it does not support <strong> and <em>). You can even attach your photos or embed a YouTube video into your notes.

Twitter-like #hashtag - Twitter has make popular the #hashtag way of organizing and searching tweets. 3banana has included this feature in its app to make your notes easier to organize and search. Simply insert a #category at the end of the note to give it a label. All notes with URLs and images are automatically assigned the label URL and Image respectively.

Portability

In your browser, 3banana can be easily accessed on the site itself or via the bookmarklets. When you are on the move, you can also access 3banana on your mobile devices. Currently, 3banana app is available for iPhone/iPod Touch (iTunes Appstore link) and any Android devices. Other phones with an Internet connection can also access the mobile site as http://m.3banana.com.

One good thing that I like about the iPhone’s 3banana app is the ability to use it when you are offline. For other note-taking apps like Evernote and ReQall on iPhone, you can use it only when you are connected to the Web, but 3banana allows you to create a note at anytime and sync it to the server when your Internet connection is next available.

Effortless Sharing

In this Web 2.0 era, you seldom find an app that doesn’t come with web-sharing feature. Be it on your computer’s browser or on your iPhone, 3banana has make it easy for you to share your notes to Facebook and Twitter. Android users can even share as a QR code. There is also an email function for those who are not into social media stuffs.

Just like a blog entry, you can also leave comments on your own (or your friend’s) notes.

Conclusion

Other than the word “banana”, which I can’t find any association with the application, I am very much impressed by the application itself. It might not be the most elegant app around, but its simple user-interface, great usability and portability have definitely make it stands out from the rest.

If you have used 3bananas, I love to hear your experience in the comments.

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