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Of course, I’m talking about storing actual, emotion-based memories in Evernote. And not just the great plate of fish you had at your last birthday or that photo of your special lady looking especially toothsome (check and check, by the way), but the more momentous events that take place in people’s lives which, given the advent of little pocket computers, are painfully simple to capture.

Today, I’m going to open the kimono a little bit and tell you guys a few of my most valued Evernote notes that are based on some of the most memorable and important events in my life.

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I’ve talked before about how I use Evernote to build my own history book; a detailed account of my life that goes beyond a bunch of bank records, Jiffy Lube receipts and beer labels. I’m not just blowing smoke when I say that many of the most important moments in my life are safely housed in my trusty Evernote account, where one day I’ll be able to hand the whole mess over to the next generation of our family.

Call me stupid or whatever, but it brings me peace to know that so much of what’s important to me isn’t just shoved in some file box somewhere in a hall closet. Having all of it at my fingertips and taking casual strolls down memory lane is one of my favorite parts of using Evernote.

Click here if you want to learn to use Evernote.

So. Clear.

What do I think about Clear?

While in San Francisco last month for Macworld, I got a chance to briefly demo Clear (courtesy of the handsome Nik Fletcher of Realmac software). I have to say, my initial impressions were quite good. The app is clearly well thought-out and make exceptional use of iOS’s gesture-based interaction paradigm and, frankly, it’s gorgeously simple.

“But”, I thought to myself, “this isn’t going to supplant OmniFocus.” After all, the two apps are worlds apart and Clear, for everything it is, isn’t a GTD-style list-maker. It wasn’t meant to be one.

There are days when I just need a list; errands to run, chores to finish around the house, things to buy at the hardware store. I could drop these things into OmniFocus, sure, but the data is inherently transient and doesn’t really need a place in my Fortress of Productivity. This is typically where my trusty Pilot G2 Mini and Field Notes notebook would come into play. For one-off lists, analog tools are my go-to.

Clear is going to get a shot at that particular title.

The ease with which I can quickly compose a list of things is on par with any other app out there. It’s certainly faster than OmniFocus.

And I think that, because Clear deals exclusively in short, text-only chunks of information, the Realmac folks were able to optimize the living pudding out of the interface such that the user, once properly acclimated, could fly through it. There’s no background sync operation to wait for, no extraneous options to distract the user from the one thing Clear does. That’s the secret sauce here, if you ask me: pure speed.

My iPhone is just as ubiquitous as my pen and notebooks and—believe me—unless I’m sleeping, all three of these tools are in my pocket, almost without exception. Temporarily retiring the Field Notes notebook in favor of evaluating Clear isn’t going to be a huge leap for me. I can’t really give an opinion as to how I think it will pan out, but the Realmac guys make such great stuff that I can’t help but give it a go, nor can I help being optimistic.

So, that’s the deal—for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting Clear through it’s paces as my “incidental” list manager. If nothing else, it will be a marked improvement over my abysmal handwriting.

I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

To argue that the promotion itself is alright, and that if the customer chooses to participate then it’s their own fault, is akin to denouncing cancer warning labels on cigarettes, or disagreeing with bans on cut-price alcohol promotions.

I certainly won’t argue that a portion of Internet marketing (and those perpetrating it) is off-putting and that it’s annoying to see people tooting about the new gadget they just entered to win, but absolving the participants and placing the blame squarely with those running the promotion tacitly makes two statements:

1. The marketers driving the promotion are malevolent puppeteers who ring the iPad-shaped bell as their Pavlovian supporters blindly do their bidding.
2. Their supporters are the dumbest kind of idiots who can’t be expected to think for themselves nor take responsibility for their own actions.

A marketer’s job is to sell things to people — so, it’s incumbent upon them to figure out the most effective way to do it. Nobody’s arguing that maybe these folks could be a little more scrupulous, but these marketing departments simply wouldn’t employ these tactics if they didn’t consistently produce results. It’s not illegal and it works, so they do it.

Yeah, it’s annoying when people toot about the free iPad 2 they just entered to win. But, if we really want to choke this problem off, then we should start with the (mostly) grown men and women who are perpetuating the problem with each and every “like” instead of admonishing the sleazy marketers of the world to somehow grow a conscience.

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1Password is easily one of my most valued and utilized tools for the Mac. It makes it stupid easy to create and use unique, strong passwords across all of your Macs, as well as your iOS devices. If you’re not using it, then you really should be. Totally serious.

If you are, then here’s a little something that might just curl your hair a little bit.

Open the 1Password app on your Mac and click over to the Logins area. You’ll see a big ass list of all of the logins currently stored in 1Password (duh). Now, I want you to position the main 1Password window right next to your favorite web browser.

Next, click and drag one of your commonly used 1Password logins onto your browser’s bookmark bar, like this:

What the heck?

You just created a bookmark for a website that you commonly use, but now it will automatically fire up 1Password and fill in the login for you and—if you have it configured to automatically submit login forms—just log you right in.

With a single freaking click.

You guys have no bloody idea how much I use this.

(Note: if it’s been awhile since you entered your master password, you’ll be prompted to type that in, but the process will then continue as described above).

So there you go. I was a huge fan of 1Password before I learned about this little trick. Now I wish I could physically hug it.

Boom.

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Factory work sucks, period. It will never not suck. Stop kidding yourself if you think it will… but also stop kidding yourself that these workers are being “abused”. No one is forcing them to work for Foxconn. No one is being “enslaved”; in fact, people line up by the thousands for the opportunity to work there.

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(Disclosure: I work for Evernote.)

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(via Michael Hyatt.)

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