Never thought I would say this about something from Microsoft, but……Microsoft Office OneNote RULES!
I started using it about a week ago after promising myself that I need to start taking notes instead of keeping everything in my head. The thing is, I hate notepads and pens, my handwriting sucks, and if I have it on paper instead of on the PC, I’ll never actually “act” on it. I tried to find some software that was better then “Notepad” for taking notes for work, and Office OneNote came to the rescue.
The UI for it is fairly good, in that I can setup a Work notebook, monthly Tabs, and then daily pages. On the pages, I can take freeform notes in sections. You aren’t tied to a specific line, like in Notepad or Word. Once I’m done with a note, if I have a to do or follow up from that note, I can go ahead and create either an Outlook task, or a meeting request, straight from OneNote with that note’s content. Sweet! I usually create Meeting requests, as then I can assign a time and block off my calendar for that particular task, so I make sure it actually gets done.
The integration with Outlook gets even better. If I’m in a meeting somewhere w/o my computer, I can then use my iPhone’s built in Notes app to take a note down. Its very easy to email that note to yourself from your iphone. 2 clicks. Once I get back to my desk and am sorting emails, there is a 1 button “make into note” feature, so I can instantly turn that email into a new note. It would be awesome if there was some sort of App to integrate with OneNote, but there are no services or APIs to do that. Would sure be nice if that would sync over wireless straight to my OneNote DB. For now, I can deal with 3 clicks per note/meeting. Especially for free.
On a separate “note” har har, I’ve been using Toodledo to keep track of my personal to-dos. As with work, I always keep everything in my head and just start to forget to do stuff, like get my damn car registered, or sign up for the next semester for classes. Toodledo is pretty much free ($3 for the iPhone app) and allows me to always have my to-dos in front of me. I have the iPhone app, where I can view, enter, sort, assign dates, etc to all my tasks. I have the website, where I can do the same from any computer ever, and I have an iGoogle widget that sits on my homepage reminding me to get my damn car finally registered on Thursday. Now I just need to start actually doing the things I don’t want to do, and I’ll be set 