Stick is an application that lets you attach tabs to the sides of your screen so that you have a convenient tabbed desktop. The tabs can contain a wide variety of content ranging from contents of a folder to web pages to RSS feeds to Notes to a calendar or calculator.

Let’s have a look.

You can download stick from iWonderDesigns. The application is available as an installer as well as a portable version that you can run off your USB drive. When running for the first time, Stick prompts you start building a tabbed desktop by adding the tabs. Go ahead and create some that you would like. You can create 6 types of tabs:

Notes

• Lets you store notes in rich text format which makes it perfect for things like a To Do list you can access quickly from your tabbed desktop, or any kind of random scribblings you access often.

Navigator

• The navigator tab can be used to create a tab to point to your favorite folder location or any URL of your choice. Excellent for things like Gmail and Google Reader that you like to keep open.

RSS Reader

• I mention Google Reader above, however Stick offers an RSS reader of its own. Complete with auto refresh and previews you can view one or more RSS feeds in an RSS tab. It can also notify you of new items in the feed via a popup.

TaskBar

• Displays a list of all items you have opened, similar to the Windows Taskbar

A Calendar and Calculator

It can take some time to think out a perfect tab setup for your desktop. You can of course add as many of them as you want to begin with and then narrow down or refine your choices to get the perfect setup. I have a To Do tab, some other random note tabs, a Gmail tab, a Twitter Tab, another for a quick Google search, and some that point to local folders that I access often.

You can simply move the tabs around to stick to any edge of the screen. You have to move the tabs one by one to wherever you want them to be which is a pain. It would be nice to have the ability to move all the tabs as a group.

Stick offers you a dedicated Tab Manager that you can use to create and delete tabs. In addition, the Tab Manager lets you change the properties of any tab. Properties include options like always on top, autohide, autoshow, keyboard shortcuts to toggle visibility of any tab, transparency and themes.

You can store a set of options for the tabbed desktop as a template and thus change the options of all tabs together in a snap. This comes in handy when you would be working full screen or want to get rid of all the distraction for whatever reasons.

Stick is loaded with options and lets you tweak almost every aspect of the tabs to your liking. It is a great alternative way to display information which I prefer over gadgets and sidebars that keep staring at your face.

Do you have other creative desktop setups or favorite applications you use for similar purposes?  Please mention them in the comments!

If you missed the link above , here is the link to Stick

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iCyte is a browser add-on that allows you to capture web pages, highlight text and save it to your account.

First, go to iCyte.com and click the big ‘Create an Account button’. Then, ignoring the option to create an account, select your browser from the left side of the screen. It is supported by Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 & 8. Sadly, there is no Chrome option available.

When the download begins, you’ll be asked to close all browser windows. You have to do this in order for the installation to complete.

When it has done so, re-open the browser. It should automatically take you to the iCyte website where you’ll be asked to create an account. If it doesn’t automatically bring you their, go to the ‘Create an Account’ page where you first downloaded the add-on and create an account there.  As you can see from the screenshot, it only needs a few pieces of information to capture web pages and there is no confirmation e-mail that needs to be retrieved. Once you have done this, you can begin using iCyte.

Go to the web page you would like to save. If there is text on the page of particular relevant to you then highlight it using the mouse as you would if your were going to Copy & Paste. While the text is highlighted, click the iCyte button along the top of the browser in the iCyte toolbar. A window will open.

Using this window, enter in the name of the project. So for example, if you’re researching flight prices enter in ‘Holiday Planning’ or if you’re researching an essay, enter in the title of said essay. If you already have an existing project you want to add to, click the arrow to the side of the text entry bar and select the appropriate project. After that, you can enter in tags and notes about the web page you are saving. When you’re happy with everything, click ‘Save’ and you’ve captured the web page.

To view the web pages and highlighted text you have saved, click on the ’View Cytes’ button in the iCyte toolbar. This will open up a sidebar in the browser with a list of all your different projects and ‘Cytes’. They’re easily recognisable because of the screenshots but you can use the search bar to find one quickly. In the screenshot, you can see that I have saved a Cyte of the MakeUseOf.com homepage and a couple of my personal blog.

By clicking on one of these ‘Cytes’, the browser will load the Cyte in its full form. The quality is amazing and it looks just as it does when you viewing the actual web page. All of the links and buttons in the Cyte are fully clickable and will load their respective pages in a new tab. Along the top of the Cyte, there is an option to ‘View Live’. This will bring you to the original page of the Cyte.

All in all, iCyte is a great tool for those who research a lot and need somewhere to store all their information without printing off reams of pages. Do you know a similar tool? Cyte it in the comments!

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1. Sticky Notes

Sticky notes is the default sticky note application for Gnome. It is an applet that you add on the panel and access it via a simple click on the panel icon.

Sticky notes is a simple app and it is easy to use. You can configure the background color, font color and the default width and height. On the sticky note itself, you can also toggle the lock to prevent accidental deletion of the note content. While it is simple and short of features, it still can perform its task well, and one good thing is that it integrates well with the Gnome desktop and can access to the language library of the system. This gives you the capability to select the input method and the unicode characters.

2. KNotes

Knotes is the default sticky note app in Linux KDE desktop. It is highly configurable and comes with plenty of features not found in any other apps.

KNotes is actually part of the KDE PIM suite and an integrated component of Kontact, but it can be used independently as well. Being tightly integrated with the KDE framework, it give you functionality like drag and drop notes into emails, sending/receiving notes over a network and print note.

Features like editing the background color, font color, title font, text font, default width and height and the tab size are also available in KNotes. You can also paste note from the clipboard and perform a search to find that particular to-do list. You can add a title to each note for easy reference in the future. I found this nifty feature very useful and it is apparently missing from all other sticky notes apps.

On thing that I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t allow you to resize the sticky note on the fly.

Gnome users can also install KNotes from the repository, but must be prepared to install a whole bunch of KDE files.

3. Xpad

Xpad is a third party sticky note app (not to be confused with the xPad text editor and xPad sticky note for Mac) that is loved and used by many. It is lightweight, simple, yet extremely useful application.

Xpad is highly customizable. You can add basic styling (bold, italics, underline, etc) to the text, change the background color on the fly, resize the notes and even choose if you want to have scrollbar, window decoration on the notes itself. Each note comes with a toolbar that allows you to control all the note on an individual basis. You can even add or remove extra icons to the toolbar to make it more interactive.

Some of the Linux distros that are not using Gnome or KDE as the default desktop environment actually used Xpad as the default sticky note app in their distribution. If you are looking for a lightweight, yet highly configurable sticky app, this could be a great choice for you.

4. Pin ‘em up

Pin ‘em up is a Java-based sticky note application, which means it can run in whatever platforms that supports Java, including Mac, Windows and Linux.

Anyone who have used Java app on their system will know that it won’t run as fast (and look as nice) as the native app. This is also true for Pin ‘em up. It does feel clumsy when you try to move the sticky note around. However, Pin ‘em up does comes with some useful features that could worth a second look.

First of all, Pin ‘em up allows you to sort your notes into categories. You can define your own categories and categorize your notes into their respective groups.

Secondly, it supports importing/exporting of your notes to your own server to sync them with other computers. This is useful if you are using different computers with different operating systems.

5. Tomboy Notes

Strictly speaking, Tomboy notes is not a sticky app, but it is an excellent and extremely powerful note-taking app that I think it worth a mention here.

Most people who have used Tomboy Notes will swear by it. Its ability to link notes together with a Wiki-like linking system makes it extremely easy to organize your thoughts and ideas. The best thing is, even if you rename/reorganize your notes, the links will still be intact.

Accessing the notes is often a mouse click away. Simply click on the panel applet icon and you will be able to access all your notes instantly. Tomboy integrates well with the Sticky Notes (in Gnome) and you can easily import your sticky notes into Tomboy. It comes preinstalled in Gnome desktop.

Are you aware of any other sticky notes for Linux? If they weren’t mentioned in this article, please introduce them to us in the comments!

Image credit: closedzero

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The Web offers a bunch of options for this type of application – personally, I’ve been a fan and user of Evernote for a fairly long time now. Many others use Google Notebook, or any of a number of applications that let you capture and organize everything in your head and your life.

3Banana is another application that’s in essentially the same realm – letting you take, sync, and store all your notes online. It’s got a couple of unique features, though, that make it worth a look even among the more established and popular choices.

The coolness, as I see it, starts from the very beginning: you can sign into 3Banana with your Google account. No new credentials to remember (or forget), just sign in with Google.

Once you’re signed in, start adding notes to 3Banana. Adding notes is as simple as you might think – type or paste something into the box, and click “Save Note”. What’s cool about 3Banana is that it accepts all kinds of tags and text – it’ll recognize phone numbers as phone numbers, links as links, and even supports embedded codes so you can watch movies within 3Banana.

There are a bunch of ways to add a note to 3Banana, and they’re all simple and easy. There’s a bookmarklet for adding notes from other websites, as well as an iPhone app and an Android app. They’re all free, all simple, and all support the same great features as the regular 3Banana interface.

One of my favorite features of 3Banana is the sharing – it’s great at letting you create and share everything from a single note to your whole notebook. At the bottom of every note, there are links to share it in a huge number of ways – email, Facebook, Twitter, or even just by a link. This makes 3Banana perfect for sharing information with friends, colleagues and anyone else in your life.

One other thing I like is the tagging system. Instead of tagging individual notes by dragging and dropping or manually adding tags, 3Banana uses something like Twitter’s hashtags. At the end of a note, if it’s a task, typing “#task” adds it to that category and makes it searchable under the “tasks” category.

3Banana isn’t the only application that does what it does, but it offers enough new features that it’s worth a look. The ability to recognize and use HTML code to create something of a rich website within every note, and to easily share the notes you want, are only a couple of the great reasons to check out the super-portable, super-simple 3Banana.

What’s your favorite note-taking app? Share your wisdom in the comments.

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Last week, WebNotes released a new product called “WebNotes Pro.” It may not be the most cleverly-titled project ever, but WebNotes Pro offers some fantastic new features for a whole new demographic of users.

Whereas the original WebNotes (which still exists, is free, and works great) was designed for a more social group, allowing you to share annotations and use WebNotes as something of a social-bookmarking service, WebNotes Pro is geared more toward the professional user.

As WebNotes sees it, the professional or student doesn’t need to share notes and highlights, they just need to be able to find and access them again, quickly and easily. To that end, you can create multi-colored highlights (fantastic if you’re cross-researching or stumble across something interesting but unrelated), as well as add sticky notes to pages.

Notes and highlights are automatically saved to your WebNotes account as you go – no saving or refreshing necessary. From your WebNotes box, you can view the original web page, the page with your annotations on top, or just your notes and highlights. If you don’t want to highlight anything, WebNotes can just be a bookmarking service.

Once you’ve got a bunch of annotations and notes, WebNotes lets you easily compile them into a document that you can share with your friends or colleagues – it creates a nice, simple page that you can email or distribute.

But I’ve saved the best feature for last – PDF markup. For students or professionals, reading PDF is an all-too-frequent occurrence. Memos, books, and the like all seem to come in the ubiquitous PDF format, leaving you with two options – either waste the paper printing, or go without any highlighting or markup. In order to do either of those things on a PDF, you’d need Adobe Acrobat, which isn’t exactly cheap.

With WebNotes Pro, you can now mark up PDF files to your heart’s content, in exactly the same way as you would any other Web page. PDFs are saved to your organizer, which creates for a browsable, annotation-friendly interface for all your PDF documents.

WebNotes Pro comes in one of two formats – either a toolbar (for Firefox or Internet Explorer) or a bookmarklet (which works with most browsers). Either one is simple to install, and makes annotating and saving pages much easier.

For me as a student, WebNotes Pro is a fantastic tool – it’s great for taking notes on reading, doing research, and keeping all my relevant material in one place that’s accessible from anywhere. As a professional, it’s nice to have a way to organize and mark up the PDF documents and websites that are relevant to what I do. WebNotes has brought me even closer to being totally paperless, and is saving me tons of time daily.

WebNotes Pro costs $9.99/month (again, there’s still the great free product), and there’s a two-week free trial. Students with a .edu email address get an automatic 50% discount.

And YOU, as a MUO reader, get an even better discount – we’ve got 100 invites for 3 free months of WebNotes Pro. Try it out, decide how you feel, and either sign up or drop back to the free option.

The first hundred people to click this link, will be taken to the WebNotes website, where you can activate your 3-month subscription, courtesy of your friends at MakeUseOf!

What do you think? Are you sold or are you sticking with Evernote? Share with us in the comments.

Photo: Megapixel Eyes

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So, when all else fails, look to the Web! I did just that and found a great solution for sticky notes that offers some great features in addition to the simplicity I admire on the Dashboard. It’s called Jjot, and I have no idea how to pronounce that.

Regardless, though, Jjot’s a pretty cool service. As soon as you visit the site, you’re given three sticky notes with the basic information written right into them. Delete all the information, and start filling up the sticky notes with anything – notes, research, and whatever else you can think of.

There’s very little in the way of formatting within a sticky note, whether you use Jjot or something else, so I wouldn’t suggest using it as a full-fledged word processor. You can bold text for emphasis, create hyperlinks, and create bulleted lists. That’s it.

The things you can do with your actual stickies is what makes Jjot really stand out.  Notes can be popped out into their own window, dragged and dropped to be reorganized, resized, or emailed to someone else. If you want to use your sticky notes as you would paper ones, you can also print one or all your notes for offline use. Jjot’s real use though is if you’re trying to get rid of the paper clutter.

You can share individual stickies or entire boards with as many people as you want, by providing them with a link to your board. Other people won’t be able to edit the stickies, but they’ll be able to read them – great for sharing meeting notes or something similar.

You can edit and create notes without creating an account with Jjot, but in order to save them and create new “boards” (new sets of notes, instead of new individual notes), you’ll need to create a free account.

To make your note-taking faster (one of Jjot’s biggest draws is how fast the application moves as a whole), there are a bunch of useful keyboard shortcuts available. Shift+Control+N creates a new note; Control+U creates a bulleted list in the current note; there are a number of other shortcuts as well, accessible at all times in the Jjot sidebar.

If you’ve got a lot of notes within Jjot, there’s a search function that lets you look for text across all your notes in order to find what you’re looking for. The search is great for someone like me, who likes to have each note only contain one item in order to be able to process it that way.

Jjot isn’t ideal for a full-fledged information management system, and it’s not designed to be. What it is, is a fast, simple-to-learn application for creating notes to yourself and others that are easy to create, easy to edit, and easy to share.

We’ve discussed other StickyNote applications on MakeUseOf in the past.  Karl discussed Stickies for Windows, Saikat showed you how to make your own sticky notes with Notepad, as well as Superstickies, Linoit, Posti.ca and StickyTag.

What’s your app of choice for the little notes you take all day?

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You can also apply these methods to Outlook, Thunderbird, or any other mail client with some similar features. Let’s jump right in!

Writing a diary

Gmail is almost built for this function in a sense. It is private, it can store as many entries as you want, you can categorize using labels, everything is there to make this a great diary application.

Each day, start a new email draft in the morning and either write everything that happened to you that day when you get home in the evening, or add to it as the day goes by. When you’ve written all there is to say, you can save the email, or better yet, send it to yourself.

The great thing about this method is that it allows you to amend any comments, or your friends to comment on an entry too. Just reply to an entry and send it to yourself again to add some additional thoughts, or send the whole message to a friend to get his/her comments. This way all the comments will stay in one thread, so you will have a very organized diary indeed.

Plus, you get all the categorization and search features Google offers you. You can use labels to add your emotional state (happy, sad, etc.) or you can categorize as usual, highlighting the main events of the day.

Keeping your diet

You can also use the power of Gmail to manage your diet and take a look at how many calories you consume daily. This is helpful because you can dedicate a whole inbox to this subject and you can keep track of your progress on a daily (or even more frequent) basis.

I recommend either adding a new message for each meal you ate, or adding one each day. I would write what I ate, ingredients, how it made me feel, was it necessary, and all the additional info you need in the message body, and write the calorie count in the subject. This would give me at a glance info about my consumption if I take a look at the inbox.

You can use labels to flag all the days where your consumption was good, and to highlight the ones where it was not so great. You can also create labels for the amount you consume. Create one for 500-700, 700-1000, 1000-1400, 1400-2000, etc. You can then easily switch to view all the days where you were in these specific regions.

Book & Movie Organizer

Gmail can also help you organize your Books and Movies, or indeed any other items you have a collection of. If we take Books as an example, you can create a new email for each book you have. Type the book title, author and ISBN in the subject, this will help you sort and search very easily later on.

You can write a short synopsis of the book, along with any other info, like publisher and so on in the body, plus you can include an image from Amazon to accompany it. Just we did with the diary you can write down your opinion, your review and so on as replies to that email. You can also send the email off to your friends to get their opinion on the book.

You can create emails for books you would like to read, which will come in handy when you’re shopping (you already have a list of titles with ISBNs you would like), and when you want to decide which one to get (you can send them off to friends who have read them to get their take on the book).

Labels can be used well to mark the genre of each book, but you can also use them to indicate whether you liked a book or not. If you also enter books you would like to read later on, you should also assign a label to separate them from books you have already read.

Google’s search will give you a great way to sort through your collection, all you need to do is enter the title or the ISBN and you have it already. I for one read good books multiple times and I have approximately 30 Terry Pratchett books. Selecting which one to read (again) is no easy task, and this system helps me, and could help you too.

Note Taker & Task Manager

Nowadays when we have Google Notebook, Remember The Milk, Todoist, Zoho Writer or Adobe Buzzword we have quite a few note taking and management goodness apps at our fingertips, but I like to keep things simple and integrated, so I came up with a system to use Gmail for taking notes and managing tasks.

Basically there are two types of emails, a note or a task. Notes are assigned the label “note”, tasks are left without a label. I keep adding notes and I use other labels to categorize them (personal, work, website design, etc), the main thing is to separate needed and not needed notes. If a note becomes unimportant I just delete it, or archive it, depending on the contents. Make sure the subject is to the point and short, so you can sort through your notes in a jiffy.

Tasks are mainly managed using the Gmail Superstars system, which can be enabled in the settings under Google Labs. It replaces the usual Gmail stars with an assortment of different icons like a green tick, or a red exclamation mark. I use the normal star, the blue star, the exclamation mark and the tick to indicate the status of a task.

If I enter a task and it needs my further attention until I can start work I slap the yellow star onto it. If I am waiting for someone else’s input to get it going I apply the blue star. The exclamation mark is used when I need to work on a task and the tick is used to mark finished tasks.

This method enables me to have an inbox where I just keep notes and tasks. All the methods we talked about above like sending a task to someone to get their opinion and so on still apply, you can add more using threads, and of course you have the all powerful search available.

Conclusion

While Gmail is not a management system or a CMS, it can do a pretty good job of organizing anything really. It won’t beat some top notch systems, and is NOT a better note taker than Google Notebook, or other services, but if you just need simplicity and ease of access, these uses may be for you. let us know if you use your Gmail inbox for some weird stuff!

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So what do you do? Do you write on a piece of paper? Or do you open a text editor and save the note or list to your desktop? I find both alternatives anything but optimal.

Personally, I have worked with digital post-it notes in the past. They ended up cluttering my screen which got really annoying because I prefer a very cleaned up, empty desktop.

Here are the alternative free note taking applications that work for me.

Note Taking with NoteScraps (Windows)

NoteScraps is a most simple but extraordinarily easy to use and handy tool for Windows XP and Vista. Notes are centrally stored within the program window (see screenshot below) and the program resides in the Windows tray.

With the free version you can create up to 10 notes. I found no limitations as to the length of each note. You can type 14 lines of text, after that the note retains its maximum size and a scrollbar is introduced for more. URLs are recognized and active, however you cannot add images. Furthermore, you cannot format text.

As strange as it may seem, you can neither delete notes nor change their order. A note is deleted when it’s empty. And the last note you created or edited is the first one in the list. The best thing is that you can search your notes. All notes that contain the keyword remain visible, while all others vanish for the moment.

So this tool really keeps its promise. It’s simple and elegant.

List Making with Printable Checklist (online)

Printable Checklist is a website that lets you create reader- and printer-friendly lists. It’s super simple and easy to use. The screenshot below should not require any further comments.

But just in case…

Apparently you click “Add item” in the bottom left to add a line, you click “OK” to finish editing an item and when you scroll over an item with the mouse a red cross appears which you click to remove that item from the list.

Karl did a review on the site a few weeks back, see A No-Nonsense Online Checklist Creator.

If these tools were way too simple for you, maybe the next one is what you’re looking for.

Note Taking and List Making with Gubb (online)

This last online tool is more complex, but offers a lot more options and room for creativity. Gubb works very intuitively, only that notes are called lists. Of course you can add items to your list and edit them, additionally you can add a comment, a due date, rate each item or move it to another list.

The screenshot reveals even more features. Obviously you can print, email and even text your lists to someone. Beyond that you can share selected lists with other users or take a list off your “homepage” (main page), i.e. hide it. Through the Lists tab at the top of the screen you can view your hidden lists and un-hide them.

Which tool appeals to you the most? Do you still prefer pen and paper and why? Or can you recommend a different tool? We appreciate your feedback!

Image credits: bizior from fotolia

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The concept here is similar, although the focus is different. 3tags is designed as a way to store and organize notes online securely. Bear in mind that it’s new, and has a fair way to go. Nonetheless, it’s both interesting and useful.

If you’re familiar with delicious (and who isn’t?) then it’s easy to think of 3tags as the opposite. We don’t want to share this information. Instead we want to ensure that it cannot be shared.

The basis of the platform is that your browser, and especially the javascript that runs inside it, are capable of high grade encryption and decryption. So you write notes locally, and then they, along with your credentials, are saved and encrypted on your PC, and then stored on the web. Even the developers at 3tags are unable to dig around inside your stored information.

Before we get into the details, just remember. It’s encryption, and it’s the web. Keep your wits about you, and don’t gamble your home, job, or children on this working properly. The risk and the decisions are both yours.

The initial screen in 3tags is somewhat sparse, but it soon fills up once you add some notes.

In order to do that, click in the obvious spot… the Add button.

Fill in the boxes to suit. This is a famous New Zealand biscuit (cookie) recipe. I’m reliably told by Google that the name has to do with the colour of the cookies, and not the folk from Afghanistan. Who knew? By the way, Google can do the metric to imperial conversions if you’d like to try the recipe.

Obviously this recipe is not exactly a secret, but you can see how the interface works. Note that you should separate the tags with semi-colons, despite the lack of instruction around that. The rich text editor works just as you might expect otherwise.

Click Save.

Your note is added to the (empty) list, along with some metadata, and the tags are all listed down the left hand side for easy location later on. Search is something that is missing currently and might be useful if you have stored a lot of notes in 3tags.

Once you have more notes in the system, the preview pane on the lower part of the screen is handy for quickly checking out the content of each note with a single click.

For more serious changes you can click the Edit button, and you can remove individual notes using Delete.

Notice that the note I added also has a link in it. That link becomes clickable and underlined for easy use.

That’s basically it. It’s worth noting that making use of the site requires your computer to process javascript at a reasonable speed, and that language wasn’t really designed for this. 3tags recommends the use of Firefox rather than Internet Explorer, purely due to the speed at which it can process the javascript encryption and decryption routines.

As I said, it’s all pretty new.  I found a few unexpected wrinkles. For instance, it didn’t seem to like me coming back and adding more tags to a note after I had created it. Your mileage may vary.

You may also want to check out T.J’s article about TaggedFrog which is also about online tagging.

Let me know how you get on with both 3tags and the Afghans. Do you use any other websites that store your data with encryption? Are you familiar with an easier/safer way to organize notes online.

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• iCyte: Capture Web Pages And Highlight Text In A Flash (5)
• 6 Ways To Add Your Information To Evernote (16)
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One of the best features of Evernote is how easy it is to add things to it, and how many platforms Evernote supports. It’s awfully close to ubiquitous, with some the best and most availability of any application I’ve ever used.

Of the many ways to do so, here are six easy ways to add things into Evernote:

The Web

Evernote is, first and foremost, a Web application. Using the Web interface from Evernote, you can create and edit notes, as well as upload files and images to go along with your notes. There’s a Web Clipper for clipping web pages and snippets, and Evernote’s interface can serve as everything from a writing tool (with a lot of styling options) to a total file-manager, all right from the Web interface.

Desktop Version

Evernote offers downloads for desktop versions of the application, with Windows, Mac, and even portable versions available. Once you’ve downloaded the application, in addition to your notes always being available offline, adding notes becomes even easier.

You can easily create notes, add files, and organize all of your notes. The desktop versions even let you take screenshots and save them into Evernote, where they then become searchable (one of the coolest features of Evernote).

Windows Mobile

Not always at your computer? Me neither. Luckily, Evernote has you covered, offering a bunch of different solutions for your phone.

My phone, as well as many others’, is a Windows Mobile phone – with a great application available from Evernote. Once the application is downloaded to your phone, you can add notes by text, by recording voice notes, or by uploading pictures from your phone’s camera. You can even upload a file from your phone (great if you get your email on your phone), and have it available right from Evernote.

iPhone

The iPhone application is a new, but fantastic, application from Evernote. Once installed on your iPhone, you can create notes right from your iPhone or iPod Touch and have them uploaded to Evernote.

You can upload pictures, or even take voice notes (much like the Windows Mobile version, but native to the iPhone).  Notes can be marked as “favorites”, making them available to you even offline.

One tip I really like? Taking screenshots of the iPhone, and then uploading them to Evernote is easy, and great for explaining iPhone applications like this one.

Email

For those who aren’t carrying smartphones or iPhones, but still want to use Evernote, email is the solution for you. Every Evernote account comes with a dedicated email address, to which you can forward emails, send files, send notes, and anything else you can think of to put in an email. It’ll all be available to you in Evernote, and easily manageable and searchable.

Instead of letting your Inbox fill up, try pushing everything to Evernote, and keeping your email clean. To find your Evernote email address, go to “Settings” and look under “Emailing your Memories.”

Any Phone, Anywhere

It seems a fairly safe assumption that most of us have cell phones, or at least are near a phone most of the time. If that’s the case, you can add notes to Evernote using only your voice. There are a number of applications (Dial2Do and Jott are two of the best) that will let you add notes to Evernote by saying a few words. Just pick up the phone, call a number, say your piece, and let one of these applications transcribe them for you and add them into your Evernote notebooks.

Anytime you need to remember something, there’s bound to be a way for you to put it into Evernote. If not, just write it down or take a picture – Evernote takes those too.

How do you add your notes into Evernote?

Photo Credits: rscottjones, JonJon2k8

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What Evernote actually does is offer you essentially a blank slate of information capture and management tools, that allows you to use their product for a huge number of interesting and different things.

Some people use it as their GTD system, some as a way of storing business cards, and any number of things you could think of.

Me? I’ve found seven great ways that Evernote can help my life, and make it simpler and more efficient. Here they are, in no particular order:

Bookmark Manager

One of the best features about Evernote is the Web clipper. Using the desktop version, or a Firefox extension, you can add selections of pages, or even entire Web pages, into Evernote with only a couple of clicks. This, for all intents and purposes, has completely replaced my need for a bookmarking service. Any page I want just gets clipped into my Evernote inbox, and then I can deal with it there.

Evernote actually has most of the features of a good bookmarking service: you can tag bookmarks, search them, and even send them to someone else. Also, you can edit the text of them, so your bookmark contains only the bit you want, along with the URL. Simple, easy, and one less application for me to install.

File Backup

This is the only use of Evernote that differs whether or not you pay for an Evernote Premium Account ($5/month or $40/year, and well worth it). If you’re using the free version, you can use Evernote as a place to store all your pictures, audio, and PDFs. In itself, that’s pretty great, and a nice way to back things up (especially if you’re a fan of backing up your Word Documents to the universally-recognized PDFs, which I am). If you upgrade to Premium, you’ll be able to sync literally any kind of file you can think of (up to 25MB per file, so no movies) to all your computers and desktops.

This is yet another application – online backup – that Evernote does really well. All your files are in sync at all times, and can be accessed from anywhere. Make a change to a file in Evernote, and the changes are automatically saved in the Evernote note. You can email files, view or edit them from anywhere, and always be sure that your precious files are safe.

Photo Library

This is one of the things Evernote did from the beginning that sold me. You can take a picture (cell phone, camera, whatever), and send or upload it to Evernote. Evernote then does a bunch of cool things with your photos: it displays them in an attractive and easy-to-see way, and even recognizes text in your images through its high-powered recognition technology. You can organize and tag your pictures, share them with friends, and have them accessible from anywhere.

This is perfect for family outings and office parties, when everyone wants a copy of that great picture you took. Just add it into Evernote, share the note with everyone, and let them go nuts!

Student Organizer

As a student myself, Evernote’s usefulness exploded when I figured out how to use it for my school work. Now, all my notes and handouts go into Evernote, where I can organize them, tag them, edit them, and view them any time I want. Now, wherever I am, I can be reading or studying my notes, or getting ahead on class reading.

Also, if I need a great quote or need to remember a name of some Aztec ruler, I can search easily through my notes to find exactly what I’m looking for, instead of flipping through a massive pile of papers to try and get what I’m looking for. I can even take pictures of whiteboards or drawings, and Evernote makes them searchable for me.

“Mind Like Water”

Evernote’s most basic use is this one: easily and quickly getting everything out of your head. Evernote has versions for the Web, Windows, Mac, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and even a portable version to go on a thumb drive. You can add voice notes, image notes, or text notes through any of these clients, and organize them as you wish. It’s about as ubiquitous as a capture tool can be, and makes getting things out of your head a lot easier.

If you want to, Evernote can become a full-blown productivity system (a quick Google search will give you ways other people do it). Personally, I use it in conjunction with Remember the Milk, and it’s a great way to get everything in my head out of it, and into my trusted productivity system.

Shopping Helper

Do you buy things? Evernote can help. Next time you’re out, and see something you want, snap a picture of it. Or, when you run out of orange juice, either add it to your Evernote grocery list, or take a picture. You’ll have a constantly-updated, easy to access list of things you want and need.

Evernote is perfect for keeping Birthday and Christmas lists, ideas for things to get, price lists, grocery lists, and any manner of other things. When you’re out, all you need is Evernote, and you’ll never forget anything you need. Ever.

Paperless Life

I’ve recently started taking pictures or scanning all of my receipts. It’s a great way to keep track of where my money goes. I’m also starting to put magazine clippings into Evernote, as well as personal notes, bills, and the like. They all become searchable and organized, and are much more useful in Evernote than just sitting around in piles in my room. My life is becoming increasingly paperless, and all the stuff I accumulate is increasingly easy to manage, thanks to Evernote.

How do you use Evernote? Share it with us!

Photo Credit: MattGrommes

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All you need to do (after registering for an account) is to open up your cellphone and speed-dial Jott’s toll-free number (1-866-JOTT-123).  Record a bundle of free notes to yourself, which will quickly be converted into text for you to access later online.  Once you access your notes, you can make use of the popular (and free) Google Notebook application to assemble these notes into usable material.

Outline Your Writing

While Jott is a handy & free tool, it suffers from a minor limitation unless you opt for an upgrade.  It will only allow you to record a message that is about 10-15 seconds in length.  However, unless you’re a blabbermouth, this drawback is actually a Twitter-like asset.  It forces you to be succinct when making your notes.  For this reason, it’s good to rehearse what you’re going to say before you make your call to Jott.  Simply take a few seconds to mentally outline your idea.

Remember however that the notes you make don’t even necessarily need to be structured as sentences.  That’s right, just fire off ideas as they occur to you if you wish.  Whether you want to dictate title ideas, keyword ideas, or the opening paragraphs of the next Moby Dick, feel free to dial Jott when you’re ready to get started.

Trust Your Memory

Once you speak a note into Jott, you cannot access it unless you get online.  So, you will achieve good results with Jott if you learn to trust your memory.  Keep your writing simple, starting with a basic outline, and expanding your thoughts step-by-step.  Don’t lose your train of thought by rambling or ranting.  Instead, voice simple ideas that you can build on later when you’re at home.

Connect-The-Dots

Once you get home, you can complete your work by first logging into your Jott account.  (Set one up for free, and add your primary & secondary contacts).  You will find notes that you sent to yourself, hopefully completely transcribed.  Occasionally, these notes contain small errors, and rarely Jott is unable to transcribe your message.  In such cases, it allows you the convenient option of being able to listen to your original telephone recording.

Here is where Google Notebook comes into play.  (Google Notebook is offered as a free perk to anyone with a Google Account).  Open up the mini Google Notebook at the corner of your browser.  Create a notebook to place your recent Jott clipping in.  Next, simply open the Jott notes you made while you were out, and copy them one by one to paste into your new notebook (unfortunately, the Google Notebook’s “clip” feature won’t work with Jott’s notes).  Once you are done, add comments if you wish.

Next, you can choose to export this new notebook to Google Docs, where you can edit it into publishable form.  To do so, all you need to do is press the “Tools” button in Google Notebook, above the “Save Now” button.

Inspire Yourself

If you begin to regularly record your ideas in this way, you may notice yourself becoming accustomed to the routine of realizing your most creative ideas while standing in grocery lines or waiting in the lobby of a doctor’s office.  Perhaps you would even like to prompt yourself to action in the middle of the day, while away from your computer.  If you want to become your own boss, so to speak, another relevant service exists that you can make free use of.  Wakerupper will let you record simple telephone reminders to yourself, which you can schedule to be sent hours, days, or even months ahead of time.

You can inspire yourself with the use of this service if you do a little homework ahead of time.  Let’s say you want to prompt yourself to write blog posts that are filled with popular & punchy keywords.  Just research the keywords in the middle of the night when you’re up for a midnight snack.  Then, schedule a call to your cellphone for the following afternoon.  Hours later, when your cellphone rings, a friendly computerized voice will repeat the keywords back to you, and you’re ready to make use of them.  You can then scribble them down for reference or simply keep them in your memory, as you think of ideas that you will want to send to Jott.

Have You Used Jott?

If you’ve already used Jott, and you’d like to share your own ideas about how to get the most out of its service, we welcome you to share your tips with us.  Tell us about whether you use Jott on a routine basis, or just every once in a while.  Have you made use of any of Jott’s paid services?  Do you use it to write emails, or just to record your random thoughts?  What would you like to see changed about Jott?

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Even as research went online, taking notes on that research really didn’t. It still involved either cutting and pasting into Word, or writing furiously in a notebook. Research became easier, but recording it fell behind. That is, it did until WebNotes happened.

WebNotes‘ motto is “Annotate. Organize. Share.” That’s exactly what they do, nothing more and nothing less. For bookmarking and other features, as we all know, I turn to Diigo. For pure research, though, WebNotes is my new favorite, and may be my last.

WebNotes is not the only Web annotater I’ve ever used (I even loved the annotation features of Diigo), but it’s the simplest- which, for research, makes it the best. It’s simply a tool for taking, organizing, and sharing (if you want) your research findings.

Set-up is a breeze: once you’ve got an account with WebNotes, you either install the toolbar (a Firefox extension, Firefox-only) or a bookmarklet with many of the same features (which worked in any browser I tried). Then navigate to a site you’re using for research, and let the fun begin!

With WebNotes fired up, you’re able to highlight any text on a page, as well as create sticky notes that float on the page. There’s no limit to how many you can do, and WebNotes works surprisingly well in every page I tried to use- highlighting and note-taking were always responsive. The way I liked to do it was to highlight relevant things on the page, and then write a couple of notes about the key points of the article.

WebNotes’ usefulness doesn’t end there, though.  Once you’re done taking notes, the organizer gets the spotlight. Right from the organizer page, you can see all the highlights and notes you grabbed from a particular page- it becomes your notebook, with all the information you need right there in one place. You can look through your highlights, read your notes, and see where it’s all coming from.

One small feature that I loved is that WebNotes automatically updates your organizer as you send it more information, meaning you don’t have to constantly hit “Refresh.” It’s a small feature, but a sanity-saver.

You can organize notes into folders, with endless numbers of folders and sub-folders possible. From the organizer, you can launch any page on which you’ve taken notes- with or without the notes on it.

Though sharing features aren’t the point of WebNotes, they’re extremely useful and easy to use. You can share a page, and its highlights and notes, to another person whether they have a WebNotes account or not. Each page gets a marked-up permalink, which you can send to your friends and study buddies. Pages can also be shared via email, or even turned into a PDF. This makes WebNotes useful for group projects and studying, which is a great feature.

WebNotes is still in private beta, but I’ve managed to snag 100 invites from them. The first 100 people to register for WebNotes by clicking THIS LINK will be able to try the private beta – for everyone else, it shouldn’t be long before it’s public.

If you manage to snag an account, please come back here and let us know what you think about the site.   Is this something you see yourself using often?   In your opinion, how does it compare to other note taking sites?

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Wikis are great for collaboration and note taking. Web workers have been using it to collaborate, Ubuntu has been using it, we use it here at MakeUseOf. However if you don’t have a web server and can’t install Wiki online, the next best thing is to have a wiki on your desktop.

ZIM is one such package that helps you create a wiki on your desktop. Or in other words you can use it as an excellent note taking application.

ZIM is a WYSIWYG text editor which aims to bring the concept of a wiki to your desktop. So why would you need a wiki on your desktop?

Well, here are some things you can do with it :

• Create TODO lists
• Create a notebook to keep important ideas or a general scrap book to note down your thoughts.
• You may then export it in HTML format and view them in a browser just as you would view webpages.
• Any other creative non-traditional ideas?

So it’s a note taking application. Why ZIM then? Just have a look at some of the features of ZIM:

• Saving transparently as you type and finish.
• You can even have a revision control of your notes/pages
• You can embed images as well (I missed it badly in Tomboy). Just link to them from within the text file.
• You can use the wiki syntax and keybindings or the editor to style and manage your notes/lists.
• It also supports plugins to perform tasks like spell checking, export, calendar, todo list and more.

Here is a small screenshot tour to give you an idea of some of the capabilities:

Open or create a new notebook:

Type in the notes with all the formatting using either the wiki syntax or the toolbars or shortcut keys:

Manage Plugins:

Using the calendar and plugins:

Export to HTML or another format using a variety of options.

The notes are stored as text files with wiki markup. This means that you can edit them with other applications as well. With the keybindings and wiki syntax, ZIM has become my favorite and I seldom use Tomboy now. If you are using Ubuntu, ZIM is just a command away:

sudo apt-get install zim

If you are using another distribution then you might want to check out your package manager. Nevertheless, here is the download page.

ZIM can be used on Windows as well, only you require the gtk+, perl and gtk-perl bindings. Also check out the instructions for Windows Install. Try it and let us know how you liked it or do you use another note taking application? I know BasKet can do similar things but I am not a big KDE fan.

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Should you struggle with these tasks, don’t worry, most of us are. Fortunately, you are free to change things and make your life a little easier. Here is what you can do to organize your life and reduce the amount of things you have to remember:

Routine

The first and most difficult task is to adopt a couple of key habits. This is crucial since no tool will ever help you if you don’t communicate with it. Whether you’re using a file-o-fax or an online calendar system, none of these tools were built to read your mind.

1. Write everything down – immediately!
If you’re lucky, you already own a portable device that will synchronize with your computer. If not, get used to carrying pen and paper.

2. Integrate the tools into your daily routine.
Both checking and updating them needs to become a routine task. The good thing is you get to choose when and how often you’ll communicate with your tools! And you don’t have to use them all at once. It all depends what works best for you. Just start – now!

3. Hang in there!
This is a pretty universal habit. In the context at hand it means the following:

• give the tools time to work, invest some time and effort to make them work for you
• resist your inner temptation to slack off
• develop a genuine interest in the tools you are using, learn about them, improve your usage of them or find out about different tools that may work better for you

Tools

If you are able to get into the routine described above, you will soon have a lot of free time to fill. However, I have to warn you: relying on any of the following tools means you will depend on technology like never before.

1. Evernote

With Evernote you can collect, sync, search, archive, and share information. The main interface is a website. The desktop client is available for Mac and Windows, further clients support the iPhone, the iPod Touch, Windows Mobile devices, and there is a bookmarklet for your browser.

One of the coolest features is Evernote’s ability to search for words inside of pictures. This makes it a very valuable tool for efficient archiving. On top of that it offers a free option and it’s independent of Google – so far.

Back in April Shankar wrote a thorough review of Evernote.

2. Stickies
If you are the type of person who works best with visual reminders, I recommend Stickies. It works a little like Post-It® notes, but stickies sit on your PC desktop.

Stickies can be fully customized and they can adopt many functions other than holding notes. For example, they may be attached to a website or document, so they will only show in connection with these; network support allows for transfer of notes between machines, for example between computers within a TCP/IP network; and alarms may be set for each note.

I should mention that 3M, the creator of the original Post-It® notes, offers a similar desktop application, however the free version is very limited!

3. I Want Sandy
Sandy is an assistant that you communicate with by eMail. No software, easy to access and easy to program. Sandy relies on keywords in your eMail to her. When you CC someone in your eMail to Sandy, she will get in touch with them for the specific tasks contained in that eMail. Sandy promises she will synchronize with your calendar. At this point she supports Google Calendar. If you like, you can also chat with Sandy through Twitter.

Earlier this year Mark wrote a review about I Want Sandy. For him she didn’t work with Google Calendar, but it looks like the plugin was updated and it worked fine for me.

4. Google Calendar
I already mentioned it in connection with Sandy. As a calendar it does a great job, but I found that it works much better for me when I can access it from my desktop. If you’re already using Thunderbird, see how you can integrate Google Calendar into Thunderbird.

And with GooSync, which is listed in our directory, you can sync Google Calendar with your mobile phone, the Blackberry or the iPhone.

5. Google Mail
While we’re talking about Google, Google Mail can not be missed. Great tool to archive and search mail or documents. If you are actually using the web interface of GMail you should find out about all the plugins and tools that are available for it. If you’re using Firefox, you can integrate Google Calendar with GMail.

6. Remember The Milk
Remember The Milk is a very efficient task manager. First of all it is compatible with a wide range of applications and devices, including Google Calendar, GMail, Twitter, Blackberry and the iPhone or iPod touch. It can send reminders to your eMail, your mobile phone, and many different instant messengers. While for example I Want Sandy is very basic, Remember The Milk offers some great extra features. Create lists or task clouds; integrate maps to make tasks that require you to leave the house more efficient; publish your tasks and lists, share them with your contacts or send out reminders.

A worthy rival to Remember The Milk may be TODOIST, which was tested and reviewed by Daniel.

It goes without saying that there are only two essential tools you need: a calendar and a reminder tool in case the calendar’s reminders aren’t sufficient. I would also recommend a good archiving system.

My personal combination is Google Calendar with Thunderbird because I do not need to rely on mobile devices and usually have instant access to my laptop.

Which ones do you choose and how are you combining them? Tell us in the comments.

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I can however introduce you to a few programs that may ease your burden and make those hours of studying a little easier. First on the agenda is a nifty little Linux note-taking program for KDE called BasKet Note Pads.

As you probably expect from a note-taking application, BasKet’s main purpose is to arrange all of your thoughts and information in an organized and easily retrievable way. To accomplish this BasKet, not surprisingly, centers around baskets – blank documents that you add notes, pictures and links to. You do that by clicking on any part of the basket, which in turn causes a blue rectangle to pop up.

You can organize your notes into columns (up to twenty on each basket) or just choose the freeform option. If your current basket becomes too large and unwieldy you can always start another one. This results in a hierarchical system of files and folders not unlike the one found in nearly every operating system’s graphical user interface. In this way Basket manages to offer a lot more flexibility than say, a word processor, but still keeps a certain amount of structure that helps you keep your information organized. This makes BasKet a good choice for a wide variety of tasks, but I think you’ll find it particularly useful during large research projects.

You can apply pre-made tags to your various notes so you can tell at a glance if something is “Important,” or “Funny,” etc and you can always create your own tags should the default choices prove too restrictive. This concept is a small part of what seems to be BasKet’s major design philosophy : customize everything. Just about any part of the program you can think of – like the toolbars, keyboard shortcuts, the aforementioned tags and more – can be easily customized.

Customization is never really a bad thing, but I found some of the features and customizations BasKet offers were a bit superfluous. For example, the ability to change the text color and add your own background image may be perfect for Grandma’s stationary program, but it seems silly and useless to me. Especially in a note-taking program, which by its very nature should prize usefulness over looks.

Thankfully, the pointless features do not at all detract from the overall practicality of the program. The filter tool, for example, is basically a search function that makes finding a specific note simple. And the program automatically saves so you don’t have to worry about losing hours worth of research when you’re in a hurry. BasKet also plays nice with other programs. It integrates into Kontact, KDE’s “personal information manager,” and you can integrate links to other programs (like a word processor) into your baskets. And, should you ever choose to include sensitive information in your notes you can protect it with BasKet’s password features.

There is certainly no shortage of note taking programs for Linux. A program called Tomboy leads the pack of programs that are generally very easy to use but also light on features. BasKet, on the other hand, sports considerably more features and an attractive look. Your first look at its busy interface may be a bit bewildering and overwhelming, and the relatively large list of frivolous features and options doesn’t help matters. Still, I am confident that most will find BasKet to be a helpful and worthwhile research tool.

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