Tech Geek

Where did I put that piece of paper that was on a Thrivent (or was it Mission Investment Fund) notepad? It had a great list of ideas that I was going to use for the Tech Geek posts. It must be somewhere. *rustle* Dig through another pile on the desk. Nope, it's not there either. If only there were a way to keep these ideas somewhere that I could always find them. Obviously to anyone who has seen it, any place in my office is not the answer.

I stumbled upon Evernote a month or two ago when I was exploring Dial2Do. It is a service that does exactly what I need a list keeper and a stack of sticky notes to do. Using Evernote I can track notes and access them from anywhere and just about any device.

First, I installed The Evernote Web Clipper extension into my FireFox browser. This lets me "save interesting stuff you see on the web. No more bookmarks, tabs, or open windows. See something you like, clip it and you'll have it forever." I also installed the Evernote for Windows application to give me direct access to my notes from a desktop application. The notes are fully accessible from any web browser at www.evernote.com. Finally, I put the iPod Touch application on my iPod Touch and I actually had the vacuum bag numbers that I needed when I was at Sears!

Along with the website, which is usable from about any Internet connected computer, net-book, or phone, Evernote has applications available for Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone/iPod Touch, Android devices, Blackberry devices, Palm Pre/Pixi, and Windows Mobile devices. Each of these will sync your notes when they have a live connection so that you are always up to date.

You can add items to your Evernote account using any of the clients above or the website. You can also e-mail to a customized e-mail address, use Dial2Do, or Tweet items into your account.

An Evernote, if that's what they're called, is a text note, an image, an audio file, or a PDF file. Free users are limited to 40MB of data transferred per month, which is a fairly generous allowance. If you start uploading every picture, you could go through that pretty quickly, but just using text like I am, it will probably take awhile.

Premium users ($5/month or $45/year) can use up to 500MB/month and upload additional types of content, including Microsoft Office documents and videos.

To learn more about Evernote, check out their page of videos at http://www.evernote.com/about/video/.

Once I find that piece of paper, I'll upload my ideas for future posts to Evernote. If you have any ideas for future posts or questions you'd like me to explore, add them in the comments or send me an e-mail them to me.

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