Skip to main content

5 Great Multi-Platform Tools to Take Quick Notes Anywhere


So you’ve come up with the million dollar idea when you took a shower one morning. You entertained your imagination with a scenario about cashing out on it and living the life of the rich and famous. Then you finished showering, continued your life with the 9 to 5 routine and totally forgot about that chance to be successful until one day you saw somebody on TV getting rich using that very idea!
What should you do about it? Find a lawyer and prepare to sue that “idea thief”? Actually, there’s nothing you can do but continue on with your life. You can’t copyright ideas and it’s very possible that there are several people among millions of others who came up with exactly the same idea.

Aside from taking actions, the first difference between success and failure is the act of taking notes of those ideas.

Anytime, Anywhere, Any Forms

Ideas pop-up unpredictably anytime and anywhere, and most of the time, they are only doing a one time visit. If you are determined to be successful, you’d better always be prepared to catch those ideas or they will gone forever.
The most basic way to do it is to bring pen and paper everywhere. Some people even go further and prepare paper notes on their bedside to write down their dreams. But in this technological era, I personally think that this quick note taking business should be done using gadgets that we use.
00b text input.jpg
We need a note-taking application which can be accessed using any gadget, and all the notes that we take should be automatically synchronized between gadgets.
Here are 5 alternatives to synchronize multi-platform quick notes:

The Many Faces Of Evernote

01 Evernote logo.jpgLet’s start with the most viable solution. We’ve discussed Evernote so many times that I don’t think another introduction is necessary. This note taking service comes for almost every possible gadget – Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile, etc.
The good: available under almost every platform and gadget, with dedicated applications built specifically for that platform.
The bad: the free option is a little bit limited (although it’s good enough for most users).
01b evernote.jpg

Combination Of Dropbox & Any Word Processor

02 Dropbox logo.jpgThis combo also needs no further detailed explanation. Just put any notes in the Dropbox folder and you can access it from anywhere.
The good: available under any platform which can access Dropbox, flexible, can use any note taking app.
The bad: doesn’t have a specific note taking application.
02b Drag to Dropbox.jpg

Zotero & The Synchronization Feature

03 Zotero logo.jpg
Zotero is the favorite of Firefox user researchers. It’s a very capable data gathering tool, with the ability to take and synchronize notes across the platforms.
03b Zotero - App.jpg
The good: available under any platform that can run Firefox.
The bad: cannot work outside of Firefox.

SimpleNote Environment

04 Simplenote logo.jpgSimpleNote started as an iPhone app with its own synchronization center. Then several note taking Mac apps – like JustNotes andNotational Velocity – began supporting it and opened up the possibilities of synchronizing notes easily between Macs, iPod Touches and iPhones.
Simplenote is available for free (ad supported) for all iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad owners. But if you don’t have those iGadgets, the service is also available via web access (require one time small payment).
04 JustNote - Simplenote login.jpg
The good: Supported by many dedicated and great note taking apps.
The bad: Non-Mac users can only access it via web interface (for now). Note: similar app for Windows: PicoNote.

NoteSync & Google Docs

05 NoteSync logo.jpg
There’s a new player on the field. NoteSync is an AIR application that can run under Windows, Mac and Linux. The best thing about this app is that it syncs with your Google Docs, so you can pick up where your Google Docs left off.
05b NoteSync.jpg
The good: simple, multi-platform dedicated desktop quick note-taking app.
The bad:  Nothing so far.
Honorable Mention: Any browser & Note Taking Web Service
There are quite a few free web note-taking services out there – something like Springpad – so it’s a little bit difficult to discuss them all. Basically anybody with access to the web could use the service – regardless of the platform. The good: accessible from everywhere.The bad: browser dependent, and not so quick.
There you go, 5 (plus 1) methods that you can use to have synchronized multi-platform quick note-taking. If you have your own killer apps or combinations of services, please share them using the comments below.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document?  That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...
1 comment
Read more

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...
1 comment
Read more

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a...
Post a Comment
Read more