Piconote – Online always accessible version of notepad

Are you someone who is always taking a lot of digital notes? Maybe to remember what you have to do at work or to make a grocery list? Whatever it may be, most people end up creating notes in Notepad, which is fine, but hard to access outside of the local computer you create it on.

Other people use online tools like Remember the Milk and fancy online to-do list creating services, but sometimes you just want to slap some text in a document and be able to access it from your computer, your mobile phone and the Internet, right?

Piconote is a really cool service that just appeared on the web that is basically Notepad, but with an online backend also. Why do I like this service? Here are some of the cool features of Piconote:

• Create unlimited number of notes in a scrapbook using a small 1 MB desktop application
• Mobile access to all your notes by visiting m.piconote.com from your mobile phone
• Access to your note anytime from anywhere via the Internet
• Ability to password protect your notes or make specific notes public
• No requirement to create a full account, just type in any username and password to manage your notes

I just tested it out and I have to say that I really like it! I was actually impressed that it worked! Here’s how to get started.

First click on Sign up and type in a username and password. That’s it, now you have an account. The way Piconote works is that it uses the combination of your username and password to manage the notes.

So you can create multiple accounts with one username, but if you use a different password, they will all have a separate set of notes. Now click on Application and download the desktop app.

Once you run it, go ahead and choose “I already have the PicoNote account” and type in your unique username and password.

The program will automatically sync with the PicoNote servers and download any notes you may have created online.

You can now create notes while you are offline and sync them up to PicoNote by clicking on the small Sync icon at the top left (two green arrows). You can also click on the Notepad menu and Synchronize.

Now the notes will show up when you log into PicoNote online:

Finally, you can access all of your notes from your mobile phone by simply going to m.piconote.com. I tried it on my BlackBerry and it brings up a simple login screen. Type in your username and password and BAM, you have your notes!

You can also create notes from the mobile site and then sync them to your computer later on. Overall, it’s a pretty cool service for people who like to use Notepad or Wordpad for taking notes! Enjoy!