But simply having one of these notebooks won’t be enough to spark your productivity and get your steam pumping towards optimal efficiency. Here are a few ways you can elevate your Moleskine from “just another notebook” to “I can’t live without this anymore.”

1. Stay Productive With Circle To-Do Lists

The most basic to-do list is often no more than a list of shoddy descriptions of tasks that are crossed out when completed. While this simplicity may be enough for simple tasks that are either “done” or “not done,” you may need a more elegant system for longer-term tasks.

In steps the Circle Method. Basically, this method starts each list item with an empty circle beside it and gradually fills those circles with marks depending on the tasks’ completion levels.

• New Item: To start a new item in the list, draw an empty circle.
• Next Item: To distinguish the next task you want to tackle, place a dot in the center.
• Item Started: To mark a task that you’ve started, cross the circle with a diagonal slash.
• Item Cancelled: To mark a task as trashed, cross the circle with an opposite slash.
• Halfway Complete: When you’re halfway through a task, fill in half of the circle.
• Fully Complete: When a task is completely finished, fill it in all the way.

The method is smart and extremely versatile, allowing you to change the status of a task if necessary.

2. Organize Using The Quadrant Technique

If your notes require a lot of internal referencing, then the Quadrant Technique will be a lifesaver for you. The only downside is that it requires an initial time investment to set up the notebook.

Set up your notebook by dividing each page in half – draw a line through the center, separating the top from the bottom. This will create four quadrants: the top-left quadrant is A, the bottom-left quadrant is B, the top-right quadrant is C, and the bottom-right quadrant is D.

Each group of four quadrants is called a block. Now go through and number each block, starting with 1. I like to place the number in quadrant A, but feel free to put it wherever you like.

That’s it for set up. Now, if you’re writing notes in quadrant 38C (block 38, quadrant C) and need to reference something in block 12, quadrant A, just insert a parenthesis: (12A). Done.

3. Create An Index In The Back

Set aside the last 10 pages of your Moleskine notebook and use them to create a system of indexing. This is extremely useful if you have notes on various topics and intend to reference them over and over again.

In order to use an index, you’ll need to number your pages from start to end. If you’re using the Quadrant Technique, you can use that as your reference instead.

Indexing itself is simple. If you have a page of notes comparing different laptops, flip back to the index and write on a new line, Laptop Comparison, page 38. Now, if you need to reference that comparison, you can find it easily. Instead of flipping through the entire notebook, you only need to flip through the 10 or so pages in the index.

The indexing system grows more useful as your notebook grows more packed with information.

4. Divide The Notebook With Plastic Tabs

Bump up your notebook’s organization by using plastic divider tabs, especially if you use your Moleskine for more than one purpose.

If you’re using the previously mentioned quadrant technique and indexing system, you might feel tempted to just fill out your notebook as you go. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it certainly isn’t optimal. Wouldn’t it be easier on your mind to split up the notebook in chunks and assign each chunk to a topic?

The plastic tabs, then, are a great way to visualize the different sections. Combine this with the other organizational techniques, and you’ll soon find your Moleskine becoming an integral part of your life.

5. Choose the Right Pen

Believe it or not, you can boost your Moleskine notebook to the next level simply by switching to a different pen. Which pen should you switch to? That’s entirely up to you. However, there are a few guidelines for which pens work well with the Moleskine.

• Choose a pen that doesn’t bleed. Using a pen that bleeds through the pages can be disastrous. At best, you’ll render clean pages unusable. At worst, you’ll render past work illegible. Mostly, you’ll just turn your notebook into a mess of ink spots, and that might keep you from wanting to use it anymore.
• Choose a pen that doesn’t smear. Similar to the bleeding problem, a wet pen that smears easily will result in notes that can no longer be read. Even if you’re careful as you write, the ink will smear as soon as you close the notebook. Avoid smearing pens unless you want to wait for the ink to dry every time you jot down a note.
• Choose a pen that feels comfortable in your hand. It’s amazing how holding the right pen can make you want to write more. Pen comfort is individual, so you’ll need to find one that fits your hand well. It doesn’t matter if you need a thin pen, fat pen, long pen, short pen, or one with rubber grips – get one that you enjoy writing with.

If you need a recommendation, try using the Pilot G2 pen. It won’t break the bank, it doesn’t smear or bleed, and it writes smoothly.

Conclusion

If you don’t use your Moleskine all that often, then you probably won’t gain much benefit from applying these tricks to your routine. However, if you use your Moleskine enough that you carry it around with you everywhere, then these tricks can heighten your notebook to the next level.  Let us know in the comments what tricks you use.

Since this is an Evernote extension, Clearly includes additional features for copying selected articles to your Evernote account, as well as three types of reading formats, including small, medium and large font sizes, and a Night Owl view that changes the background of the page to black, and the font color to white.

You can access Clearly in the Firefox menu bar (Tools > Clearly) or its extension button in the browser’s toolbar.

When you use Clearly to clip an article to your Evernote account, it sends the read-only version to your default notebook. This means you no longer have to manually strip away clutter from clippings in your Evernote account and notebook. To use the Clearly clipping feature, you will of course need a free Evernote account.

Source: Techcrunch

Perhaps the most significant (or at least, the only dying service I’ve used for more than a few days) is Google Desktop, which brought gadgets and search directly to the desktop experience. Though a neat trick at the time of its release in 2004, both Windows and Mac OS X now offer similar functionality, making the product redundant. Support will end on September 14th.

Other notable products that will be buried include Aardvark, a question-and-answer site brought under Google’s wing in early 2010, and Fast Flip, a service that tried to digitally replicate the style of a newspaper. While unique, neither were popular, which is no doubt why they’ll soon be gone. Less important causalities include Google Pack, Google Web Security, Google Notebook, Google Maps API for Flash, Sidewiki, Subscribed Links, and Image Labeler.

It’s doubtful any of these services will be greatly missed (queue hostile comments), but their disappearance points to a larger trend within the company. Google has been trying to streamline its product offerings, and has been switching focus to web apps exclusively. That leaves no room for experiments like Aardvark or locally installed software such as Google Desktop.

Farewell, sweet products. Some of us will miss you. Maybe.  Will you miss them?

Source: PC Magazine

The free web and mobile app and online services is the first product produced a company called Nektoon, founded and incorporated in January 2009. With a free Memonic account, you can save and share up to 100 free notes. While this limitation can’t compete with the unlimited, 60MB/month note upload of Evernote, it does offer some handy features not available to in other web capturing services and apps.

Let’s check them out.

Platforms

Similar to Evernote, Memonic is a cross platform application and service. In addition to being a web application supported by major browsers—Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE—Memonic also includes client apps for the Mac, PC, iOS devices (including iPad optimization), and Android. Your web account client, archives and keeps all your Memonic web clippings and screen shots in sync between these platforms.

The dashboard user interface of Memonic is similar in each platform, and its sections—Inbox, Notes, Folders, Tags, Groups, Search, and Settings—are represented by clean icons for quick access.

The default corkboard background design can be customized, except in the mobile apps.

Web Content Features

Depending on which platform you’re working in, the features work differently in Memonic. In the web platform, you use a browser plug-in to bookmark pages, clip selected parts of a page, or save the entire page for “Read Later.”

The clipping features selects individual parts of a web page; there’s no free-hand option for selecting content, like you do when taking desktop screen captures.

In the desktop client, you get options for adding written notes, image files (including screen shots), and links to content in your computer. Image files must be imported into the application; they cannot be dragged and dropped into it. All content can be sorted into folders, tagged, and shared, and set to private.

Another drawback in the free version of Memonic is that you can’t use the “Gathering Mode,” which allows you to save all your clips and notes directly into a preselected folder. It’s a bit of a hassle to select a folder each time you want to save a clip.

The note taking features of Memonic is pretty much like a traditional text editor, including basic tools that you find in Microsoft Word. One little bug that I noticed in text editor is that keyboard shortcut for pasting copied text doesn’t work; instead, I have to click the paste icon in the toolbar.

Notes and image files can be added in the mobile versions of Memonic, but there’s no plug-in for exporting clippings from mobile browsers into the app. As with the other Memonic clients, you can also share your notes and other content directly on Facebook, Twitter, and by email.

All or selected content can be synchronized between each Memonic client, and you get the option for syncing by network or Wi-Fi to save on mobile charges.

Memonic is not quite as robust as Evernote, though it does have potential. While you probably wouldn’t want to switch from Evernote to Memonic, the latter’s app and service could come in handy for specific types of clippings and files that you want to archive and share.

Memonic is worth giving a try. Let us know what you think about it.

When I was in school (yeah you young whippersnappers I said when I was in school!) we took notes on paper with a pen. When I tried to use my laptop or Palm Vx I would get in trouble and be told to put my toys away. Nowadays these “˜toys’ are welcome in most situations.

Taking notes at a meeting with your laptop or handheld is super simple with Tomato. Yes you read that correctly, the application is called Tomato for no good reason. But Ketchup is for meetings”¦

You will need to sign up for an account to use Ketchup to take notes. To read someone else’s notes you do not need a login – they just have to share the URL with you in order to share notes online. And that eludes to Ketchup’s sharing feature which we will get to in a bit. Keep on reading. Use Ketchup is the URL to get you to the application.

After you sign up you will automatically be logged in and ready to take notes. Click on the get started button at the bottom of the Here’s how it works section.

Ah ha! We are in and ready to take notes. We will need to add a title to your project / meeting notes. Simply click the title field and fill it in. You can fill in the date and attendees as well. Click get organized when you are ready to enter your notes.

I entered January 14th 2010 at 6:12pm, and the name of the event is “test meeting” ““ I know how original! This could be a class name or specific project you are working on. Next we click on the “+” sign below the agenda to add an event.

I left the default called First Appt. Then you can click on the add note link as you see below to enter details or notes.

Go ahead, populate your notes and then get ready to share notes online with classmates or colleagues. Below you will see a checkbox to make the notes public. This is another way of saying that Ketchup will make the site live with the URL next to the checkbox.

When navigating to that URL - http://useketchup.com/meetings/0pv7Wx)L – this is what I see:

All my data but no way to edit it. Very nice indeed. Especially for those of you who have lent your notes to someone, only to discover that they dropped the class and now you are stuck without your notes for a test. Ha! Take that Sharon from my English Lit class!  I will find you some day and get my notes back!

Do you have another favorite free notetaking application where you can also share notes online? Online or off we would love to hear about it in the comments. If there are some interesting suggestions maybe it will warrant another post!

Getting this code spread to and from the rest of your peers is where it can become difficult. Sending through popular communication methods such as e-mail or instant messaging can lead to missing code, and doesn’t recognize proper syntax of all the various code types. Fortunately these days, there seems to be a solution for everything, and programming of course is no different.

I have put together three different internet based ‘clipboards’, that allow for easy sharing for not only programmers, but for those just looking for a quick text snippet to share with your friends and family.

TextSnip

TextSnip is very similar to URL shortening services, such as TinyUrl, in that it allows you to paste your desired text into the format of your choice and then creates a permanent link to that text. It can then be accessed by anyone of your choosing.

It supports a wide variety of coding formats, including formatting style to text, html, css, xml, javascript, php, sql, ruby, python and more. Along with automatic URL generation, it does have ‘custom snips’ as well, which allow for user customization of the URL.

One of the nicer things about TextSnip is that it does not require any type of registration, but with a registered account you can access your stored ‘snips’.

Cl1p

Cl1p is another non-registration required web based clipboard and only requires your own input to create a link. You simply add your own ending to Cl1p.net, such as http://cl1p.net/makeuseof and you then have free reign on your own personal clipboard.

Of course someone else can make that URL as well and that’s where registering your own account may be necessary. This will allow you to share private clipboards to those whom you’d like.

Cl1p may also be used as a storage facility as well. For files up to 30MB in size.

Paste Bin

Pastebin works just a little differently than the previously mentioned products, in that after entering your desired name and expiration for your text, everything is stored according to username in list format.

You can have multiple pasted clipboards with set expiration that users can copy and paste themselves, print, or download in a text format. The URL is automatically generated as well, but it is based upon the entered name.

Once again, the internet doesn’t disappoint. Using methods such as what I’ve described above is much quicker and much easier then many of the notebook tools out there as well. Proper formatting is big in programming and having an easy way to share it can be a big help. Try each of them out and see how you like them.

Give us your feedback along with some other options that might help out as well. Are you aware of any better internet clipboard to share share code snippets or other text online?

Marketed as a research tool, it is actually a tiny miracle.  Not only can it be used to bookmark information, but it also permits its user to highlight or add sticky notes to pages.  Furthermore, it sports an impressive search capability, just as Google Notebook has done.

Fortunately, Zotero also allows users to drag and drop highlighted information directly into a note, eliminating the need to press a “clip” or “paste” button.  For this reason, Zotero is an excellent program to use if you desire to put together a mailing list.

Download Zotero

Zotero is a free & handy piece of software that is easy to install. Equipped with a portable bookmarking tool, the Zotero application provides space for you to deposit information you discover on the internet. Doing so is easy.  Once downloaded, Zotero’s extension can be opened from the bottom corner of your screen (just like Google’s soon defunct Notebook extension). Once opened, it will expand to fill a third of the screen.

To get started with a new notebook, you will only need to press an icon titled “New Standalone Note” and begin to type into a blank page in the 3rd column of the Zotero pane. Next, highlight any information from the internet that is of particular interest to you, just as you would do if you were preparing to copy & paste it into a document . However, instead of needing to worry about opening up a Word document, you can simply drag the info directly into the notebook. Here, it can be modified, and can later be exported by being dragged outside of the notebook to a desired spot.

In addition to this convenient drag & drop feature, Zotero also permits users to simply record a page’s URL, as well as record a screenshot of the page.

Research Your Prospects

Plenty of information exists online to suit the needs of a wide range of aspiring entrepreneurs. When useful email addresses are collected in one place, they can be worth a pretty penny. Instead of worrying about needing to purchase this information from data gathering experts, why not just gather it yourself?

Since Zotero’s extension does not require repeated users to enter user IDs and passwords, it is an easy place to store useful information about potential business prospects. In fact, getting in and out of Zotero is even easier than logging onto the internet.

Open & Title a New Standalone Note

While Zotero permits you to tag items with the URL code from which they originate, the easiest way to save email addresses is to simply drop them one by one into a standalone note. Should you later have questions about the email address you’ve saved, you can always Google the email address in question and you’ll most likely get a list of results that includes the site from which you extracted the address.

Conveniently, Zotero automatically saves your work, just as Google’s Notebook & Google Docs does. This can be a lifesaver if you’re called away by an instant message, by a co-worker, or by a family member.

Send Your Mail Via Gmail

I recommend Gmail over Hotmail because, of the two, Zotero proved to be more compatible with Gmail when I performed a side-by-side comparison.  A chunk of email addresses can be pulled out of your Zotero notebook and dropped directly into the BCC line of an email.  Although Standard Edition Google accounts permit users to send 500 emails per day to external recipients, Google itself recommends to users to bypass this restriction by creating multiple email accounts.

And this is the least of what Zotero can do.  Although using Zotero takes a little work & ingenuity, it is a real lifesaver in the end. It frees up your energy to tackle complex projects without having to worry about getting overwhelmed.

Better Than Google Notebook?

Now it’s time for the big question:  Do you feel like Zotero is a worthy replacement to Google Notebook?  Let us know if you’ve tried Zotero yet.  If you have, how do you like it?  Do you have any tips for others about how to make the most of Zotero?

Photo Credit : Smil
Photo Credit : Crumj