We’re big fans of Evernote, the “second brain” service where you can throw nearly any scrap of paper into the cloud until it’s needed again. For certain types of personal data, however, this approach often means that you’ll spend more time searching than accessing information. Mustbin is a free app geared toward life’s most precious data – credit cards, driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, and more. However, the developers have also empowered the app as a kind of digital jack-of-all-trades that can be used for sorting photos or even password-protected accounts into digital “bins.”
Mustbin differentiates itself from other services by guiding users through each process in an effort to stay better organized. All data is securely protected in the cloud with the company’s own flavor of “Bincryption,” an end-to-end AES-256 solution applied to every file generated by the app, as well as locally by a user-generated four-digit pin code. Built exclusively for iOS 7, Mustbin features a clean, easy-to-navigate UI. Each bin features three modes: A hand-holding Guide, Documents for quick access to everything inside a bin, and Actions for secure sharing with colleagues or loved ones along with “I Lost My Wallet,” a well-thought-out, step-by-step strategy for nearly any crisis.
So far, so good, but Mustbin tends to swing and miss with some of the little details. For example, adding wallet entries includes snapping a photo of the front and back of plastic cards, yet the app requires you to then manually enter the same information. Why is there no option to have credit card numbers and expiration dates automatically filled via optical character recognition (OCR)? There’s also no way to move entries between bins, short of redoing them. Although a Mustbin account can sync between multiple clients, for now the app is iPhone-only: there’s no web-based client for adding or editing entries, and iPad users will be forced to use the app in 2x mode — or not at all.
The bottom line. Mustbin may be a better way to get organized, but the service will need to expand further before it’s suitable as a true Evernote alternative.
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