Software Recommendation (Onenote vs. Others)

Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 11, 2012 at 09:07 PM

Glad you found the thread useful. I would still think that some sort of a desktop wiki that also works on iPad might be a solution. You may want to dig around Manfred’s blog (http://takingnotenow.blogspot.co.uk/) a bit because he’s covered a lot of different wikis and mark-down apps. There are also quite a few websites out there that compare every imaginable wiki under the sun.

Why do I think a wiki would be good? 1) Because text files in the end are still more versatile and more likely to survive than PDFs, and 2) because of the distinction I would make between your “brain” and your “library.”

Your “brain” is the software that contain your notes and your analysis of items in the “library” (or multiple “libraries”). The “library” should be external to your “brain,” otherwise it will clutter it with irrelevant material. A wiki is good for a “brain” because it can create connections like a brain (i.e. not necessarily in a hierarchical tree-like order) and can hold a large number of text notes organised in multiple ways, and can also link to external library items.

So I’d keep notes (such as the ones you take after reading a PDF article) in the wiki (“brain”), however I’d leave the PDF article in the library. Chances are you may never ever need to look at that PDF again, if you had taken good notes or if it turns out to be an unimportant or poor article. You only want to end up with the good stuff in the brain, so you can make sense of it, find it more easily, remember it, do things with it.

Then it just becomes a matter of syncing your brain across your devices (desktop to iPad), and keeping your PDF, image, website clippings etc. libraries synced across your devices. The latter could be in one or multiple apps (there are advantages and disadvantages either way). Basically it’s a good idea to keep your own notes and the stuff they derive from or refer to separately, to avoid duplication and to maintain clarity.