So I’m reading how Alan is saving everything to everywhere and I’m thinking about all these cool ways to push information around and I finally started a wiki space where I’ve been putting some random thoughts for later collaboration…in other words, I’m working hard on the Newsmaster thing.
But I realized there is one more tool that I really want. It’s like OneNote online where I can save random linked passages from posts or sites as easily as I can do with Furl. I want to be able to highlight whatever text or pictures I want, click a button on my toolbar, and have that content automatically saved to my note page with a link. And I want to be able to create new note pages that will appear on a drop down, just like in Furl so I can select the most relevant. When I access these note pages, I want to be able to edit what I’ve saved, drag it around, reorder it, etc. And I want it to be collaborative, so that I can invite people to collect snippets like that as well. All the things I do in OneNote but from a browser interface, one that I can drop stuff into from whatever computer I’m on. A wiki comes close, but I still have to do that copy, go to the wiki, click the page, and paste thing. I just want to copy and click.
Anything like that out there???
Oh, man, Will, I am *so* right there with you.
The great things about Furl are (a) it’s online, (b) it’s quick (c) it’s full-text searchable.
I would love to have a web-based tool that lets me record notes and thoughts online as easily as I record URLs with Furl. Having it all web-based means my thought-recording isn’t tied to a particular workstation (the problem with all my personal knowledge management techniques right now).
It needs to have a public/private toggle (some things aren’t to be shared).
You don’t want to wish for too much like OneNote though. A drag-and-drop interface is pretty much out of the question without someone building it in Flash. And, frankly, I quit using categories in Furl — the drop-down just slowed me down. I just enter relevant keywords and use the search tool. To quote myself, a good search obliviates the need for a hierarchy (http://www.tenreasonswhy.com/weblog/archives/2004/07/14/the_personal_web.html)
I suspect you could use Furl for note-taking. Just continuously book-mark an “about:blank” page, and use the Comments field for the note. The problem is that you can’t have multiple Furl cookies set during a single browser session — so you can either use Furl for bookmark archive or for note-taking. 🙁
Please let me know if you find a solution — I haven’t come up with one yet. I don’t think it’s rocket science from a programming perspective, but I’ve got no programming skills (and don’t have time to learn to scratch this particular itch).
Hello Greg, I read that Yahoo will offer a service like the one you are looking for: My Web, see http://mysearch.yahoo.com/ – Kind regards, Peter
A9.com, the amazon-sponsored search engine, has a toolbar that has a note taking feature, and apparently you can access your notes from any computer. I haven’t tried it personally (it requires the use of IE), so I can’t speak to how well it works, but it sounds like at least part of the functionality you’re looking for.
Just to take notes online I use webnote (http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/). It´s easy and very user-frendly. Another tool that works fine is Notepad in myYahoo.
Have you tried EverNote? Sounds like it would be up your alley. We just came out with a free public beta for EverNote 1.0 for Windows this week.
EverNote 1.0 gives users a single place for all types of notes (Web clips, text, images, etc.) and makes them instantly accessible at the office, at home or on the go. With EverNote, users can now capture and easily find: typed or handwritten memos; excerpts from Web pages, documents and emails; passwords, to dos; brainstorms, camera phone snapshots and more. EverNote innovates by storing content on an endless, virtual, time-stamped roll of paper so users can quickly jump to any date and scroll chronologically through their notes.
You can download EverNote at: http://www.evernote.com/en/downloads/