Yeraze's Domain 3.0

Last week I talked about "I Want Sandy", so this week I’m gonna talk about another Web2.0 tool that I’ve been using alot: EverNote.  EverNote is, as the name suggests, a note taking service.  They offer a Website where you can view and edit your notes, as well as a Standalone application for Windows and Mac, and several Mobile platforms.  The Standalone app will let you index information without the web service, if you’re uncomfortable sharing your information on the internet.

Information is easy to get into EverNote too! For starters you can simple fire up the app or go to the website and create a new note, and start typing.  The more interesting stuff happens with other means, tho.  There’s an EverNote extension for FireFox where you can simply highlight text and click a button to send it to EverNote, images and all.  Also, you get a custom email address that you can send notes to to have them automatically entered as notes.  Plus, with the mobile application (I use the iPhone version) you can take pictures or write notes and have them automatically entered into the site. 

All of that is fairly routine tho.  The real power of evernote lies in the searching.  If you take a picture of something and send it to evernote, it will automatically search the image for Text and allow you to search on the text.  This really adds to the value of the service.  I’ve taken to using my iPhone to take pictures of all the notes and information sent home with the Kids from School, to make for easy searching.  Simply search for "august" in the "Kids" notebook I’ve created, and I see everything happening in August.  An example is below:

It’s also trivial to extend this to cataloging Whiteboards at the office (where the handwriting will automatically be recognized), shipping labels, interesting books. The list goes on and on.  The One popular example they talk about is using it to catalog business cards.  I unfortunately have not had much luck with that, as the iPhone camera does fairly poorly at close-range.

The quality of the OCR is a bit spotty.  It requires a good high-contrast image, which can be difficult with the iPhone given it’s poor low-light quality and slow sensors.  Also it searches for text in all orientations (right, up, down, etc) so it sometimes guesses wrong. One example is shown below, where I searched for "august" and it misrecognized a column of numbers.

So it’s not perfect, but it’s a far cry from nothing at all.  Also, EverNote can index documents like PDF’s.  It doesn’t support any kind of Preview, but you can send PDF’s (I do it via Email) to EverNote and searches will then search the PDF contents! This is great for conference & technical papers which are always PDF’s, and online magazines too!

EverNote offers a free service if you want to try it out.  They restrict you to 40Meg upload every month, which is quite alot of text and cameraphone pictures.  The premium service is a mere $45 a year, and offers 500Meg upload every month.  I’ve fully integrated EverNote into my organization & cataloging tools, and highly recommend it to anyone doing the same.  Where Sandy is great for scheduling, contacts, and short 1-liner notes, EverNote picks up the slack for anything bigger. [tag:evernote][tag:organization][tag:web2.0]

Oops.. I just now noticed that in the upgrade to Geeklog 1.5 I forgot to re-enable the gallery plugin I was using. 

Sorry about that, it’s fixed now and the "Inmemoriam" link is back at the top.  Enjoy

About 6 months ago I realized that trying to manage work, home, and 2 kids is a scheduling nightmare.  Especially as the school year wraps up and you’ve got school programs, dance recitals, half days, parties, work conferences, PTA meetings, and so much going on that even if you can remember it you have to master astral projection to actually go to all of it. My decicion then was to simply start carrying a planner.

After a few happy months of finally having some way of managing all this, I started to wonder if there’s a better way.  I spend all day working on and around computers, surely there’s some computerized way that will work for me. I’ve tried PDA’s and various other tools before but never found one that worked to my satisfaction.  Finally, a few months ago I stumbled across "I Want Sandy".

I’ve been amazed at how easy I was able to work Sandy into my flow, and with my new iPhone I’ve found it even more indispensable.  Sandy works almost entirely by email, turning your inbox into a scheduling system.  Upon registration you’re given a custom email address that you can use to communicate with her and send her simple emails like "remember Dental Appointment september 11 8am" or "Remind me to take out the trash tuesday night @weekly", and she’ll parse the text and put it on your calendar.  Items can be added, searched, edited, and removed entirely via email.  Also, every morning you get a nicely formatted "Daily Digest" showing all your upcoming appointments for the day, plus anything else you’ve deemed important enough to be included.

But that’s not all.  Email is the main form of communicating with her, but she also integrates nicely with Twitter & Jott, allowing you to do the same operations via those interfaces.  Also, she can do more than just appointments. She can understand and remember URL bookmarks and Contact information, and just plain notes.  It’s all stored in a nice searchable way via their website,  and can easily be requested remotely via any of the means above (Email, Twitter, Jott). 

While Sandy’s website leaves some to be desired, she can export all of your information as RSS or iCal feeds making it easy to add her calendar to your favorite tool (Google Calendar in my case).  This way I can easily get a quick look at what’s going on for the next week or month.

So Sandy’s done alot to help me keep organized.  Rael Dornfest, lead developer of Sandy & my old blogging tool Blosxom, has done a fantastic job and I look forward to seeing what tricks Sandy learns next!  I really loved using Jott to talk to Sandy, but it seems Jott has decided to start charging for that ability (Currently at $4 a month), so I’ve had to stop using that.

But Sandy’s not the only tool I’m using in the Web2.0 space to stay organized. Come back next week for more information on some other tools!

[tag:iwantsandy][tag:productivity][tag:gtd]

Ok, I’m adding a test Section.. Howdo

I post this here (and on Mosio, and linked to on Twitter) in hopes of an answer.  We see these things towed by 18-wheelers up and down I-20, but don’t have the slightest idea what they are.  They have no company identification, and no other identifying marks that we’ve found.  Searching google for "big plastic container" doesn’t help much.  Any ideas?

UPDATE: Wow.. Took less than 20 minutes.. Thanks you interwebs!!  The answer seems to be a "Wind Turbine Nacelle" (from multiple sources).  Given that these were heading West on I20 through Mississippi and there’s a huge Wind Farm under construction in Texas, it makes sense.  Plus, I found a great pic of one of these in action at the AWEO Website.

[tag:unknown][tag:mystery]