Installing an extension to QuickFox Notes is not quite as straightforward as installing a browser add-on. You’ll firstly need to download the extension script, which is found here (right-click, and save it as a .js file). To install the script, open QuickFox Notes and then click on Tools->Add-ons->Open add-ons folder, then move the .js file you downloaded into that folder. You’ll need to restart QuickFox Notes for the change to take effect.

Once restarted, you’ll find that you now have an extra button in your QuickFox Notes window for uploading the note to Google Docs, as shown in the screenshot above. Hitting that button will pop up a window asking for your username and password before saving the note to Google Docs. Note that notes are only saved to Google Docs — this extension does not provide a two-way sync.

(Via Addictive Tips)

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With the rollout of Livescribe Connect, the company has now added sharing features to the gadget that should be useful for collaboration.  The system can turn the notes recorded by the pen into interactive “pencasts” that can be shared with anyone who has Adobe Reader. Files containing both handwritten notes and recorded audio can be sent to a number of applications and online services, including email, Google Docs, Facebook, Evernote, and the MyLivescribe service that offers 500MB of cloud storage to any Livescribe owner. Pencast files can also be sent to mobile devices, including the iPad and iPhone.

You can download a demo pencast from the Livescribe site. The files are modified PDFs with embedded Flash elements to provide the interactivity. Thus, you’ll need Adobe Reader 10 or higher to play back and interact with a pencast. Other PDF readers, such as Preview on the Mac, can only view the first page of the document.

The Echo Smartpen, accessories and apps are available from the Livescribe store and various retailers. The base pen includes 4GB of storage, and costs $149.95. Pens with more storage and features are also available.

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The idea behind yaM is to replace more traditional tools, such as an emailed agenda and notes, with a collaborative online tool that provides a centralized place to capture and share all of the information pertaining to the meeting. yaM is designed to be used before, during and after the meeting. Prior to the meeting, the organizer can set up a schedule and agenda and distribute that to the attendees. Each meeting set up on yaM can have a number of pages added to it, with each page containing different tools, including:

• Agenda, minutes, action items and notes. Notes and action items pages can be added to take notes during the meeting, while agenda and minutes pages can be generated automatically.
• Documents and drawings. Documents can be uploaded and shared prior to and during the meeting
• Whiteboard. A collaborative virtual whiteboard to sketch out ideas.
• Analysis and discussion. yaM provides a range of collaborative analysis tools to help  decision-making during the meting, including SWOT, cost-benefit analysis and brainstorming tools.
• Voting. Meeting participants can vote on ideas using the consensus development tool.

Pages can be added on the fly, and all the pages from the meting are archived in the tool, keeping a handy record of meeting outcomes.

yaM is free; you can sign up here.

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Simplified Sharing

Glass’ major benefit lies in how quickly and easily you can comment on a site and share it. There are plugins available for both Firefox and Chrome, letting you add your own thoughts to a website with a click of a button. Those thoughts can include links, images and video.

The messaging system built into Glass makes collaboration convenient. Not only can you send along your comments to other users, but Glass has built-in messaging features. Users receive real-time notifications and can effectively chat about the sites they share.

There are a few pleasant surprises if you signed up for Glass early on in the private beta but haven’t spent a lot of time on it since. There is a mobile version, available for the iPhone, along with plenty of bells and whistles geared toward sharing information. You can create well-designed slides through Glass’ interface, making your comments something truly worth sharing. You can also organize the users you follow and your own information through the use of interest groups and lists.

The Mechanics

There’s a layer of security built into Glass that can make it a more useful option for teams interested in sharing information that closely ties into what they’re working on. The use of SSL encryption creates a tool that organizations can feel confident in using. Glass also takes care to reassure users that the owners of those sites that you may comment on can’t actually see your comments — unless, of course, you share them.

Glass remains free and appears to have further developments in the pipeline; right after coming out of beta, the site has already announced a new slide theme as a “thank you” to the users who came through beta with the application. 

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Catch’s web interface is pretty bare-bones, but it’s easy to use while offering more options than Paprika. Catch notes can include text, images, links, map locations, and Twitter-style #hashtags. The interface includes full-text search of notes, plus sorting by date and tag.

Specific notes can be made public if you wish to share them, and other Catch users can comment on shared items.

One can capture data by sending it to your account through email or by importing a TXT or CSV file. The service can accept HTML text, but the interface doesn’t really render HTML as one would expect on a web page.

Catch is available on Android, iPhone, and iPad. The mobile apps can use location data to show maps, and to “show notes nearby” a location. The apps have offline access to notes, and are password-protected.

If you prefer a desktop app, you can turn Catch.com into a desktop app for Mac using Fluid. There’s also a Google Chrome extension, and Catch synchronizes with the cloud and mobile devices over a 256-bit SSL encryption.

The service offers an open API, so developers can create their own apps to sync with Catch. Catch itself offers no less than four Android apps: AK Notepad, Catch Notes, and the specialized Catch Health Tracker. Compass takes advantage of Catch’s location awareness to power a navigation app. All are free, and show what can be done with the platform, but there aren’t nearly as many apps for Ctach as are available through Evernote’s Trunk.

Catch is currently ad-free, and does not limit how much data you can capture; currently there is no information as to whether the company plans to charge for the service.

On the whole, I don’t find Catch to be compelling enough to make me switch from Evernote, but it may be of interest to those who like Catch’s location features, or don’t like Evernote’s freemium model.

What do you use for note-taking?

That’s pretty much all there is to it, but Shrib does have a couple of useful additional features (available via the “advanced options” link). Firstly, you can store backups or copies of notes (backup stores the previous version of the note, copy stores the current version). It’s important to use this feature when saving notes you want to keep, because otherwise, someone else could use the same name for their notes as you and overwrite your notes. Secondly, because notes are stored at a public URL, anyone could guess that URL and find your notes. If that bothers you, you can encrypt your notes with a password by clicking the “lock these notes” link. Anyone viewing the notes without the password will just see a garbled page.

Shrib’s certainly not groundbreaking, but it’s a very simple (and free) way to store and share notes with other people that doesn’t require anyone to sign up for anything.

What apps do you use for storing notes online?

(via One Thing Well)

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But how can you focus on note taking when you have other things on your mind such as networking, the other sessions you have to attend, and possibly some additional work you have to do? Here are three things you should keep in mind:

• Remember that being present and attentive is your priority. This means actively listening, looking at visual aids, and paying attention to the lecture itself. While you can record audio, video, or view live tweets, these must be for reference only and not a substitute for the real thing. It makes no sense to sit in an auditorium for an hour only to repeat that hour via a recording because you were too busy taking notes or getting to know the person beside you to digest the finer details.
• Know why you’re taking down notes. Is it for faster recall or to record your own insight? Will you be using your notes to write a blog post or make a presentation at work? The reasons behind your note-taking will help you determine the best approach and tools to use.
• Get as much information as you can about the tech specs of the event beforehand. Will there be free internet access available? How reliable is it and will be be available throughout the entire venue? Will you be able to plug or charge your devices easily? This information can help you choose your tools accordingly.

With that out of the way, it’s only a matter of getting your notes down as efficiently as possible.

Using Tools to Improve Note-taking

According to a research paper on note taking, in an academic setting the average note-taking speed for students is 0.3 to 0.4 words per second, while lecturers speak at around 2 to 3 words per second. With this speed discrepancy it’s no wonder that most people find it hard to jot down concise yet complete notes. Still, there are ways to work around this:

• Don’t rely solely on text-based notes. While many of us are used to pen-and-paper note-taking methods, the difference in speech and writing speed means that we can’t rely on them alone. This is why we should look beyond written notes. We could include mindmaps, photos (of important slides, for example), or audio recording. Some apps that allow you to record in a variety of formats include Evernote, Springpad, FolderBoy (which Charles reviewed here), and Notepub.
• Use fast tools. Don’t just look for fast loading time or responsiveness, but note your own speed when using the tool. This means that some options aren’t ideal for many people, such as alphanumeric keypads and apps for handwriting or speech recognition. You can even use SMS abbreviations, shorthand, macros, and word completion apps to increase speed further.
• Process your notes. Directly after the lecture is the best time to enter the second phase of note-taking: information processing. This is where you’ll start to consult external sources for additional information and make connections among the things you’ve learned. You could do this by organizing all the material you’ve gathered and by making annotations. Some handy annotation tools include Apollo and A.nnotate.

Taking a cue from student life, don’t be afraid to borrow the notes of other attendees. You can borrow notes directly from people you have a strong rapport with, or wait for bloggers to post their own notes or articles summarizing the talk. They might include some points you’ve missed or make connections that you didn’t think of. Just be sure to offer to share your own notes and express that you’re looking for something supplementary. You don’t want to leave the impression that you’re asking them to do all your work for you.

It may take a lot of practice to become very effective at note-taking, but the important thing is to get better each time.

Share your note-taking tips below.

Photo by stock.xchng user christgr

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As you might expect from the name, FolderBoy encourages users to create folders to organize notes. You can even create folders within folders, and move notes and folders using drag and drop. You can create tags, too, and can even tag your tags. FolderBoy says “trust us, tagging your tags is useful!” although I’m not entirely sure why. But even without using tags, it’s easy to find information quickly with FolderBoy’s “find-as-you-type” full-text search.

Similar to Evernote, FolderBoy allows you to upload text, files and links. But, once saved, the links aren’t clickable, and FolderBoy’s notes are in plain text only.

FolderBoy has some useful features, although some will take getting used to. It will create events when you type phrases like “aug 31″ or “next thursday.” It didn’t parse “a week from friday” correctly, though, and it tends to assign a time of 5pm to events created this way. You’ll need to be careful about deleting folders, too, since any notes within a folder will be deleted along with the folder.

FolderBoy is web-only, and does not have any mobile apps, although the website seems to work well on my iPod touch. The service also doesn’t have an import or export function.

FolderBoy has a free version that allows allows you to upload up to 500MB of data and create up to 1,000 notes. Premium accounts will soon be available for $45 per year and will allow users to upload up to 50GB of data. You can try FolderBoy’s demo account without signing up, or enter your email address to get your own account.

If you like the idea of using folders to organize notes, and you need an app that helps you to find notes fast, FolderBoy may be for you. But if you need rich text, desktop and mobile apps, plus import and export, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

What features do you need in a note-taking app?

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When you log in, you are presented with a very simple, almost stark, interface. All of your content is displayed under “Projects.” Don’t let the “project” name fool you — Paprika is not a project management system in the way that Basecamp and its many competitors are. Each “project” is just a text document.

In fact, Paprika doesn’t have a WYSIWYG editor. You can do some formatting of documents using Textile. This markup language may be familiar, as some of its conventions, like underscores for italics and asterisks for bold, have made their way into general use.

Paprika doesn’t offer full-text searching. You can only search for certain elements, such as Twitter-style #hashtags, dates, and to-do items (which are created by entering a dash at the beginning of a line).

Projects can be shared with others; the app creates short links when requested. However, anyone who has the link can edit — there is no way to assign different permission levels.

Paprika is web-only. It doesn’t sync to other platforms, and it doesn’t have a desktop or smartphone app. It doesn’t even have an export function, although it does interact with Jumpchart and Staction, both of which are produced by the same company as Paprika.

The free version of Paprika allows creation of up to ten projects, and includes 5MB of storage. For $5 per month, upgraded accounts are available that allow 25 active projects and 250MB of storage. Some web workers may like Paprika’s simple text-based interface, but I find other, more robust, alternatives to be more useful.

How do you manage notes, dates, and to-dos?

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Note taking can be a personal exercise. Look around any conference table today and you’ll see a wide spectrum of note taking techniques, ranging from people writing on paper to folks tapping away at laptop keyboards.

But the notes themselves are also often quite personal. For example, when I go into a client meeting, I am there from a technical documentation standpoint, and my notes reflect that. Likewise, I would expect not to get much from the notes of a programmer. The result is that “knowledge islands” can form as everyone hoards their own notes.

Applications like OneNote, Evernote and WikiTouch offer collaborative note taking features, enabling teams to access each others’ notes for collaboration, and help distribute that knowledge within an organization by capturing meeting, research and project notes in a centrally accessible location.

Here are some tips for implementing collaborative note taking on your project team:

• Define the benefits. Moving your team to a collaborative note taking platform shouldn’t be a cause for more work, especially if note taking is already an integral element in your work. It is important to communicate the benefits of the move to the entire team. Is it to capture important project information like requirements? Is it to better document decisions? Is meeting and research information falling through gaps?
• Choose the appropriate application. Moving your team to a standard platform for note taking shouldn’t be a daunting task. However, you need to factor in team member note taking styles and security considerations into the decision. If your organization is hesitant about keeping private notes in the cloud then I suggest taking a look at OneNote, which enables you to keep your note taking and collaboration inside the firewall. If the cloud is OK, then Evernote or Evernote Premium (with its SSL security encryption) would also be an option.
• Set note taking guidelines. Moving note taking to a collaborative app may require some initial guidelines to enable a seamless transition. Depending on your needs, your note taking guidelines may include templates to use (OneNote includes note taking templates), and directions about things like the use of fonts, numbering and bullet points. The aim of your guidelines should be to ensure some consistency across the notes your team takes. The end goal is to have a repository of notes that is accessible and understandable to all those on the project team.
• Set note taking roles. While collaborative note taking removes the need for a single “scribe” to take meeting notes, I might recommend that you still pay some attention to note taking roles when moving to a collaborative note taking environment. For example, you may want to make sure that project related notes are recorded by the project manager.

Do you use collaborative note taking on any of your projects? Share your experience below.

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