Online Remedy: Simplify my Notes
February 17, 2010 | VReitano
The world wide web has TONS of sites on TONS of topics and can literally make your life easier in an instant. This new series, with the tag line “online remedy” will aim at explaining new and old tech trends which can literally simplify your life in under 10 seconds. These tools will range from diet tools to tech tools to organizational tools all meant to reduce the stress of your life and allow you to enjoy it. After all these are the best years of your life– or shouldn’t they be? That’s what I plan on determining in 2010 and hope you do too.
We are busy people – this generation of net grown babies. We’ve had access to computers in our classrooms since the 90s, we learned how to text with our eyes closed and can carry conversations at warp speed. The biggest thing we didn’t learn was how to reduce the stress of this new type of productivity–a multitasking personal, professional and “freelancing” environment in which we now find ourselves. We all work, play and do something in between to subsidize our income and have fun. That in between–be it freelancing for writers, side contract jobs, or even just taking on additional work at the office or business for overtime–often cuts into our play (personal life) schedule, causing us more stress and strain. There’s a Web site dedicated to stress, shouldn’t there be one dedicated to lessening it? OH WAIT, there is, or rather there are…hundreds, millions, nay thousands of them dedicated to organizing your agenda, creating timeslips, and allowing you to communicate and share your ideas (or your work) with the rest of the Web.
Now that you understand the great power at your finger tips let’s learn how to harness it! This post for online remedy will seek to remedy your need for sharing information.
Whether you are a journalist, or writer, or even a marketer (or just a college student trying to get an assignment done) the Web is a great place to gather information, but how do you save it? Well, bookmarks are a great way to do this, but let’s say you are on the library computer because that really hot guy (or gal!) from english asked you to “study” with him in the library on Wednesday night. You most definitely were not going to pass down the opportunity for some play mixed in with work (a perfect example of our “do-it all mentality”) and so now you need all those great links you saved for your english paper, but didn’t have time to get your laptop. Well, there’s several things you could have done in your researching to avoid being stuck with your own computer all the time.
It’s called Web bookmarks, or more commonly known as Evernote and Read it Later, among others. These two social networking pages, a term I am using loosely, allow you to save pages on your laptop to an account on their site and then view them on your smartphone, iPhone or any device with WiFi or an internet connection (i.e. the library computer you are potentially sharing with mr. hunky english). Since I have a Mac and an iPhone, I personally prefer Evernote, but Read it Later is just as good.
How to use it:
Evernote: is a free program that allows you to control data instead of data controlling you. It allows you to remember everything you need to by saving it to your account with a bookmark on the iPhone application. You can even save tweets to this database in order to read them later or even just reference them later on. Check out their super witty video or blog to learn more.
Read it Later: This program can be used with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and iPhones, Blackberrys, Andriods and Palm Pres. It is a program that has crossed the “picket” lines of the tech world and thus is a great option for just about anyone. You can save pages from your phone or internet browser and then share them between your devices in order to read later–offline or online, it doesn’t matter. This is essential for anyone who travels a lot or doesn’t always have access to the internet, now you can have your files with you no matter where you are.
