Jot Once, Remember Anywhere: The Best Tools For Universal Note-Taking | Fast Company - http://goo.gl/IWIHO

Interesting, Jim! Thanks for posting.

In the interests of killing time when I should be working, I have to point out that most of the items on this list don't meet the basic requirements described in the opening paragraph. Dropbox, iCloud, Evernote, OneNote, Google's cloud, etc., may be nice applications, but are you really going to use a laptop or whatever to take a fast note while standing in line at Shake Shack? Of course not. And I can't imagine taking notes on a smartphone's sub-microscopic keyboard in situations like that. It would take forever.

If you need a tool that's fast and always available, it seems to me that handwritten notes are the only item on this list that really fits the bill. Stick a pen and a small notebook in your pocket. What could be simpler? Writing the note is a little slow and can be awkward in you have to hold your notebook in your hand while you're writing, but searching through handwritten notes is incredibly fast, especially if you underline key words and phrases. You can search pages of notes in a matter of seconds. Nothing, in my experience, is faster than a visual scan.

I'm surprised that the list didn't mention voice recorders. They're even more minimalistic and efficient than handwritten notes--at least for TAKING notes. After all, you can dictate fairly lengthy and involved notes in a matter of seconds with a recorder and you don't have to carry a pen around with you. Using recorders involves a trade-off, though, because there's still no way to search an audio file for specific spoken words or phrases. You can insert index marks into a recording and/or play the recording back at higher speeds, but it's still slower than visually scanning a handwritten note.

So I would reduce the list to two options:

1. handwritten notes
2. voice recorders

As far as I can tell, those are the only really universal tools for these situations.

It depends on various factors, including the size of the note. I have actually taken quite a few notes in Evernote on my Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro's keyboard (it doesn't get any smaller than that) under quite uncomfortable positions. Not whole essays, but enough to remember what I needed.

On a shaky bus, for example, my writing with pen and paper would only produce illegible scribblings.

Gary Carson wrote:

In the interests of killing time when I should be working, I have to point out that most
of the items on this list don't meet the basic requirements described in the opening
paragraph. Dropbox, iCloud, Evernote, OneNote, Google's cloud, etc., may be nice
applications, but are you really going to use a laptop or whatever to take a fast note
while standing in line at Shake Shack? Of course not. And I can't imagine taking notes
on a smartphone's sub-microscopic keyboard in situations like that. It would take
forever.

Along the same lines, you can use free voice to text mobile app and services...

1- Speak into your iPhone / iPodTouch and have it convert to text. You can even have it automatically go into an email and off to your Evernote notebook
2- Or, using a regular cell, call a service, such as Jott (discontinued) to feed your Evernote notebook with searchable content

I'm completely sold on using voice recorders to make fast notes. I carry one around with me all the time and I'm constantly dictating reminders, task lists, memos, etc. It's really fast and efficient and I've found that I don't even need to save ninety per cent of this stuff since it's all transient material that I can usually delete after a day or two. If I do need to save a recording for longer than that, I can usually just leave it on the recorder, which has 4 gigs of internal memory and also takes 32-gig microsd cards. One interesting result of using a recorder like this is that I've realized that I don't really need computers and PIM's and the like as much as I thought I did. I also realized that I've been saving a ton of "information" in OneNote that I'll probably never need again. I've been obsessed with collecting information for years and I'm starting to wonder if I'm really all that different from someone obsessed with collecting string or rubber bands. That's just me, though. Everybody has different needs.

Seems to me he left off Simple Note, which you can have on your mobile device (I don't know if there is an app for all devices or just Apple's). On a Mac computer, you can read these with the free application Notational Velocity. On a PC you can use the free ResophNotes.

As for hand-written notes, I am really bad with these because I lose them. I mix up notebooks and can't find the notes I'm looking for.

Steve Z.

A question and a comment.

Gary Carson wrote:

It's really fast and efficient and I've found that I don't even need to save ninety per
cent of this stuff since it's all transient material that I can usually delete after a
day or two. If I do need to save a recording for longer than that, I can usually just leave
it on the recorder, which has 4 gigs of internal memory and also takes 32-gig microsd
cards.

How do you actually find something in there? I can't imagine fast forward audio working for the ear as images do for the eye.

One interesting result of using a recorder like this is that I've realized that
I don't really need computers and PIM's and the like as much as I thought I did.

An important point. My experience is the following: I can actually conceive and develop ideas orally much faster than in writing. However, IT tools are built mostly around tactile input and visual recall/presentation so these are the interfaces that I rely on.

Why do I have to use IT tools in the first place? For me it has mostly to do with the question I asked above.

How do you actually find something in there? I can't imagine fast forward audio working for the ear as images do for the eye.

Good recorders have digital-pitch-control playback which lets you play a file back at two or three times its normal speed (or faster) while keeping the dictation legible.It works pretty well, but obviously it's not as fast as doing a search in a personal information manager.

In general, though, organizing and searching through audio files is a problem. As far as I know, there's no way to search a recording for a specific spoken word or phrase. I've been looking for something like this for years and I don't think it exists.

Good recorders let you create folders on the recorder and move files around and professional-grade recorders let you attach custom keywords to files, so that helps keep things organized. Also most decent recorders have some kind of index-mark capability so you can jump directly to a specific point in the file. They also have a preview feature so you can hear the first five or ten seconds of a file while you're scrolling through a directory. You can also download audio files into audio management applications like Olympus Sonority or DSS Player Pro and attach annotations to them which explain what's in the recording. The best way I've found to minimize the problems with searching files is to keep the recordings as short and as concise as possible.

Personally, if I have a long recording that I know I'm going to want to search later, I'll transcribe it in Dragon Naturally Speaking and dump it into OneNote. That's probably the best solution to the long-file problem. I dictate drafts for essays and books that are sometimes several hours long.

Using recorders is a trade-off. Finding things in audio files can be time-consuming, but dictation is so productive that it makes it worthwhile. At least, it does for me. I guess it all boils down to what you're doing. I still think they make great tools for note-taking.

Tossing in my 2 cents ...

I love outliners - I'll buy omnioutliner the first day its available for windows. I still use Inspiration, as it just works well for me.
But lately, I've moved more to plain text files and dropbox. I find I can access them from anywhere, on any device.

My current favorite is actually not an editor, but personal wiki (hold the groans) ... Ema
http://jwbs-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/ema-personal-wiki-for-android-and.html

It is an android app, with a windows version available - all free. It can use dropbox to store/synch notes, and uses markdown format for its text files. Ema is simple, intuitive, and good enough for quick notes - while adding structure and organization at the end of the day.

Just my thoughts ...

Thanks for the heads up on Ema. I was actually looking for a markdown compatible android wiki :-)

Gary Carson wrote:

but are you really going to use a laptop or whatever to take a fast note
while standing in line at Shake Shack? Of course not. And I can't imagine taking notes
on a smartphone's sub-microscopic keyboard in situations like that. It would take
forever.

I would have agreed until recently. And then I discovered Swiftkey (http://www.swiftkey.net/ - a predictive virtual keyboard worthy of the name. I had been so nervous ditching my Blackberry-style hard keyboard for a virtual keyboard, but Swiftkey means I rarely type words any more. Firstly Swiftkey learns your vocabulary and style from your Gmail/texts,and within hours it is offering predictive output of astonishing accuracy -- which means that writing a fairly lengthy note on a smartphone is no longer a daunting task. Swiftkey also works on tablets. It's a rare occasion when an app/program instantly changes the way you work for the better. And I think it cost me $4.

I'm with Gary. Nothing beats voice recorders, at least on this point - you can record more thoughts more quickly than with any other method. The trouble is finding the notes you were looking for later. To me this requires conversion of the voice recordings into searchable text.

It would be great if I could simply tell Dragon Naturally Speaking to fetch all my voice memos from my recorder and transcribe them, but no such luck. Accuracy can be problematic - but DNS Premium doesn't even support batch transcription of voice memo files. You have to drag and drop the voice memo files one at a time into the app! Only the VERY expensive DNS Pro does batch transcription. it seems very strange given the very inexpensive options that are available with cell phones these days.

On my Android phone I can quickly dictate a voice memo (it will be included in the Evernote item as an AMR file), and with the Voice2Note service ( http://voice2note.dial2do.com/ ), this memo will be transcribed into text. The service is $3/month or $30/year, might be worth it, but I haven't sprung for it yet. "You should also know that Voice2Note uses a combination of technology and human quality control to transcribe your notes accurately. When necessary, human transcribers will listen to your audio recording and transcribe it faithfully. They will never be given your name or other information."

Also my little Android phone does a very good job of transcribing my speech into text - the voice recording function is included in the Android keyboard. I think the speech is uploaded to a Google server and the text is sent back to the phone? Sometimes the phone can't connect, and I have to repeat my voice memo. Far from perfect, but quite good. I'm looking at alternatives - Nuance makes an Android keyboard called "FlexT9" - perhaps its speech recognition is better than Google's?

But I am still using a dedicated voice recorder rather than my phone. The voice recorder quicker and easier for recording the voice, so that I can conveniently record my voice more often (without immediate transcription however).

But two more problems arise:
(1) the voice memo transcriptions should be in a form that I can easily copy / import into my outliner - preferably one time-stamped line per voice memo, so that I can paste them all at once into my outliner, which would then break the text into separate items, one for each voice memo.
(2) the words which I use to express my thoughts orally are usually not the words I want to put into my PIM / outliner - I want to massage the text.

i've also used NCH Express Scribe to transcribe voice memos but it's usually just too much trouble. Sonocent Audio Notetaker is another possibility for dealing with voice memos - but at $150 it seems very overpriced.

JohnK wrote:

I would have agreed until recently. And then I
discovered Swiftkey (http://www.swiftkey.net/ - a predictive virtual keyboard
worthy of the name. I had been so nervous ditching my Blackberry-style hard keyboard
for a virtual keyboard, but Swiftkey means I rarely type words any more. Firstly
Swiftkey learns your vocabulary and style from your Gmail/texts,and within hours it
is offering predictive output of astonishing accuracy -- which means that writing a
fairly lengthy note on a smartphone is no longer a daunting task. Swiftkey also works
on tablets. It's a rare occasion when an app/program instantly changes the way you
work for the better. And I think it cost me $4.

Thanks John for mentioning this. I looked at the webpage. I like the Swype function on my Android keyboard. I like being able to swipe my finger across the keyboard to spell out words, rather than having to tap tap tap. Accuracy is pretty good. Can't match the speed and ease of speech recognition though (when it works!)

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Thanks for the heads up on Ema. I was actually looking for a markdown compatible
android wiki :-)

For the record, Ema works from Android 2.2 onwards, like many apps I'm interested in, but my phone is stuck in 2.1.

For anyone in a similar situation looking for an alternative, I seem to have settled with the SimpleNote solution: Resoph Notes for Windows, and Mnote or Andronoter for Android 2.1 synced via the Simplenotes service. None of these is a true wiki (neither is SimpleNote itself), but Resoph Notes happily recognises [titles in square brackets] as links to notes of the same name. Very handy.

Gary is spot-on:

I have used shirt-pocket planners for maybe 20 years, into which I put meeting info, notes, ... I finally bought a leather cover into which I put a new planner every year. Plus, it holds a list of my contacts, recent medical info, ruler, sun glasses, magnifier, stamps, toothpicks, blank checks, extra cash, ....

I also use a pocket voice recorder. It's the ONLY way to record a thought that pops up while driving. It's also god for recording travel directions: (One recording for each turn.)


Gary Carson wrote:

In the interests of killing time when I should be working, I have to point out that most
of the items on this list don't meet the basic requirements described in the opening
paragraph. Dropbox, iCloud, Evernote, OneNote, Google's cloud, etc., may be nice
applications, but are you really going to use a laptop or whatever to take a fast note
while standing in line at Shake Shack? Of course not. And I can't imagine taking notes
on a smartphone's sub-microscopic keyboard in situations like that. It would take
forever.

If you need a tool that's fast and always available, it seems to me that
handwritten notes are the only item on this list that really fits the bill. Stick a pen
and a small notebook in your pocket. What could be simpler? Writing the note is a little
slow and can be awkward in you have to hold your notebook in your hand while you're
writing, but searching through handwritten notes is incredibly fast, especially if
you underline key words and phrases. You can search pages of notes in a matter of
seconds. Nothing, in my experience, is faster than a visual scan.

I'm surprised
that the list didn't mention voice recorders. They're even more minimalistic and
efficient than handwritten notes--at least for TAKING notes. After all, you can
dictate fairly lengthy and involved notes in a matter of seconds with a recorder and
you don't have to carry a pen around with you. Using recorders involves a trade-off,
though, because there's still no way to search an audio file for specific spoken words
or phrases. You can insert index marks into a recording and/or play the recording back
at higher speeds, but it's still slower than visually scanning a handwritten note.


So I would reduce the list to two options:

1. handwritten notes
2. voice
recorders

As far as I can tell, those are the only really universal tools for these
situations.

In this respect we are (unfortunately) quite alike. Most of what I saved in GV I never used.

Gary Carson wrote:

I'm completely sold on using voice recorders to make fast notes. I carry one around
with me all the time and I'm constantly dictating reminders, task lists, memos, etc.
It's really fast and efficient and I've found that I don't even need to save ninety per
cent of this stuff since it's all transient material that I can usually delete after a
day or two. If I do need to save a recording for longer than that, I can usually just leave
it on the recorder, which has 4 gigs of internal memory and also takes 32-gig microsd
cards. One interesting result of using a recorder like this is that I've realized that
I don't really need computers and PIM's and the like as much as I thought I did. I also
realized that I've been saving a ton of "information" in OneNote that I'll probably
never need again. I've been obsessed with collecting information for years and I'm
starting to wonder if I'm really all that different from someone obsessed with
collecting string or rubber bands. That's just me, though. Everybody has different
needs.

With voice recordings, I found that just quick notes about the topics of my thoughts were all I needed to record. I remembered the rest...besides which, I would sit, or preferably lie, down to really think about the topics. (Today, I'm thankful for guanfacine.)


Gary Carson wrote:

>How do you actually find something in there? I can't imagine fast forward audio
working for the ear as images do for the eye.

Good recorders have
digital-pitch-control playback which lets you play a file back at two or three times
its normal speed (or faster) while keeping the dictation legible.It works pretty
well, but obviously it's not as fast as doing a search in a personal information
manager.

In general, though, organizing and searching through audio files is a
problem. As far as I know, there's no way to search a recording for a specific spoken
word or phrase. I've been looking for something like this for years and I don't think it
exists.

Good recorders let you create folders on the recorder and move files around
and professional-grade recorders let you attach custom keywords to files, so that
helps keep things organized. Also most decent recorders have some kind of index-mark
capability so you can jump directly to a specific point in the file. They also have a
preview feature so you can hear the first five or ten seconds of a file while you're
scrolling through a directory. You can also download audio files into audio
management applications like Olympus Sonority or DSS Player Pro and attach
annotations to them which explain what's in the recording. The best way I've found to
minimize the problems with searching files is to keep the recordings as short and as
concise as possible.

Personally, if I have a long recording that I know I'm going to
want to search later, I'll transcribe it in Dragon Naturally Speaking and dump it into
OneNote. That's probably the best solution to the long-file problem. I dictate
drafts for essays and books that are sometimes several hours long.

Using recorders
is a trade-off. Finding things in audio files can be time-consuming, but dictation is
so productive that it makes it worthwhile. At least, it does for me. I guess it all boils
down to what you're doing. I still think they make great tools for note-taking.

jimspoon wrote:

I like the Swype function on my Android
keyboard. I like being able to swipe my finger across the keyboard to spell out words,
rather than having to tap tap tap. Accuracy is pretty good. Can't match the speed and
ease of speech recognition though (when it works!)

Along with Swiftkey and Swype, three other interesting Android keyboard apps are mentioned in this article:
http://lifehacker.com/5922522/five-best-android-keyboards