Someone asked for something just like this so I thought I would throw this out there.

When I used it I used it as a function in functions.php; I prefer to keep most of my stuff there vs. running plugins. I’m releasing the code in plugin form though.

Usual applies: no warranties, no promises, if it’s broke it’s your problem, yadah yadah.

Instructions

Download the file below by right-clicking on the link and Save As…

Open the file and insert your Adsense code in the $adsense variable.

Rename the file from .txt to .php, upload to your plugin folder and activate.

Alternatively you can add the add_filter and function to the functions file in your template folder. If that makes no sense or raises more questions, you’re better off with the plugin option :)

Download

Right-click here & Save As

Here’s what I have to say – from a social networking perspective.

Two Reasons

There are, I believe, two reasons why the Geocities model failed in popularity. And I say Geocities but I could also say Blogger or LiveJournal…

One, we don’t want to built web sites, easy page makers or not. Making new pages, figuring out where or how to add them to the navigation – not cool.

Two, audience. Family and friends we proudly told about our site came once. Then the incentive was gone and they didn’t come anymore.

All We Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun

In the end, all we wanted to do is:

· Share some links to stuff we found cool (the “forwards”)

· Show our photos (the “kids & cats”)

· Show our videos (without figuring out codecs or embedding)

· Post status updates and comments (make “statements”)

What we didn’t want to do is

· Write articles (or “posts”)

· Built web sites

· Author blogs

Empowered, Connected

Social networking sites have given us the things we want. The easy posting, the easy sharing, no responsibility to maintain the framework of the site.

And better yet – it comes with audience and participation built-in.

House Bar vc. Cheers

That built-in audience and participation relates to Geocities vs. Facebook the same way setting up a house bar relates to a café.

At home, you have to build or get the bar. Add drinks, yourself. Then invite friends. Who are thrilled to celebrate your proud acquisition this Friday but not every coming Friday.

The bar around the corner on the other hand has built-in audience and participation. I bet if you go there today and open the door, people go “Norm!!” and are ready to listen to your latest status updates stories.

What It Says About Social

It shows that at this stage of the social networking development, we the public require something of a walled city with something like social town squares.

We’re often the keepers of those town squares; we choose who to follow or which things to show in our Facebook stream, for example. But it’s a town square that otherwise would be lacking.

Can aggregators or social dashboards take over that function then? Yes, but only if their use, either as a service of a software, is as common that we naturally expect people to use it the same way we currently expect someone to have, see and use email.

Images by: dmentia and xverges

There’s no native option to print the note list but don’t let that stop you.

I use a “scrolling window” profile in the screen capture program SnagIt to capture the note titles I want to print.

In snagit I crop the list to only have the title and tags columns visible; you might have your own preference.

The note font is quite small but before printing you can play with the page setup: stretching the image makes it more readable at times.

During the Weekly Review I print out two of these lists: one with personal to do’s/someday’s, and one with work related to do’s/someday’s.

For slightly deeper data digging some of us might be tagging our notes and use the [tag:] query to get to very specific notes.

The problem begins when you need that note with that Word document attached to it. Or when you want to pull all your notes with .ppt attachments.

Go ahead, give it a try. I’ll wait.

“Finding” Files the Evernote Way

You won’t find any guidance on how to do this in the Evernote help files. The information is buried deep inside the developer notes and reads something like;

resource:[MIME type string] - will match notes that have a resource with a MIME type that matches the argument.

Which is almost not true.

So before you go off on a Google chase to figure out which MIME type Microsoft Word is then, let me tell you that even with that information, you’ll only find a fraction of the amount of files you know are in your Evernote.

Wouldn’t it be cool if Evernote had a search like has:pdf or from:whomever or…

Finding Files the Easy Way

Setup and use a tag structure which emulates precisely the type of queries you would want to perform in Evernote.

For example, I might tag a note with has:file, has:word, is:template. Or: has:file, has:image, has:photo, is:scanned.

You can already see how this folds back into specific queries:

[tag:has:pdf] finds all my PDF files.

[tag:has:word –tag:is:template] finds all my Word documents which aren’t templates.

I have these tag structures listed in a way which helps me remember visually that something special is going on here – but you can organize this any which way you like.

Taking Query Tagging to the Next Level

Although you have to be careful not to go all out crazy and create tagging structures like people:family:mom:events:birthdays … there are some tempting query-like tags you can setup.

I often come across software that strikes me as very handy because it does A or B. I often download and/or buy it. Problem is that when the time comes that I think “boy, do I need to do B!” … I have no recollection of the software solution I have at hand :)

So, these days when I read the description of a product or service, I clip it into Evernote and tag it with one of my tool: query tags.

Need Portable software? [tag:tool:portable]

Graphic apps? [tag:tool:graphic]

Any software? [tag:tool:*]

You Can Go Your Own Way

Apart from the file/attachment specific queries above, which I think we all need at one point or another, the examples above are really very specific to my user scenarios.

When you get back to your Evernote install or web setup, you have to apply this the way it makes sense in your life.

Questions & Answers

• Do I have to use the : in these tags?
  No, not at all. In fact, putting a period there is much faster. I just like how it looks like a regular query this way :)
• Do I have to start these tag structures with has or is or tool?
  No; pick whatever works for you.
• Why do you use word:word? Why not simply add two tags?
  Because at times I need very specific searches. When I have notes tagged with “word”, “file”, “template” … those notes are just as likely to be about those thing vs. being those things.
  In other words, the above structure allows me to separate tags into information about the note’s content (what it’s about) and information about the note itself (where it comes from or what it contains).

This week I added to that the global hotkey CTRL + ALT + T to create a new To Do item from any application.

The hotkey is made in AutoHotkey (widely used freeware macro utility).

The script to add is:

^!t::
send ^!n
WinWait, All Notebooks - ruudhein - Evernote
send ^!n
Sleep, 1000
send ^+C
return

Now, when you press CTRL + ALT + T, the script opens Evernote by “pressing” CTRL + SHIFT + N, puts the focus on the note by again pressing CTRL + SHIFT + N, waits one second to allow Evernote to prepare the new note, and then it inserts a checkbox. Now you can start writing your note :)

The setup features:

• notebook independent setup: enter and use to do notes anywhere, anytime
• Project List
• list aggregating all next actions
• @ context lists
• Waiting For
• Someday/Maybe
• 5 “time required” levels & lists
• done/audit list
• toggle checkbox (/tag) to move items on/off the Someday/Maybe list

The description is for the Windows desktop client, Evernote 3.1, but works anywhere Evernote does. The setup works equally well in Evernote 3.5 Beta. It, however, has no counts shown next to the saved searches: Evernote 3.1 gives a clear at-a-glance view of where you have how many open items.

How It Works

You tag Evernote To Do items — those are the ones where you insert a checkbox — with your context(s) and (optional) a time estimate (5, 15, 30,45 or 60 minutes).

Saved Searches make these items show up on your @ context list(s), on your Project list when tagged with @project, on Someday/Maybe when tagged with sd — and on one of your time lists if you added that info as a tag.

Saved Searches without items are automatically greyed out. Lists that do have items show how many items are on them: you can see your runway at a glance.

Thanks to Evernote’s multi-tagging, one or more items can be moved from NA to Someday/Maybe simply by checking or unchecked a tag’s checkbox.

Setting Up Your Saved Searches

Evernote’s Saved Searches are the heart of the system: they are what generates our various lists for us. Here is my list but you can do this any which way you need it.

@ MIT

Most Important Tasks^[1][2]

Mind the [space] between the @ and MIT: this is so it sorts to the top of the list, before the other @ contexts.

Search: todo:false tag:@mit -tag:sd

We’re looking for to do items that haven’t been checked off (todo:false), which include the tag for this context but do not have the someday tag.^[3]

@ Projects

Again, a [space] after the @ to have this sort to the top of the list.

Search: todo:false tag:@project -tag:sd

@ Waiting For

[space] after the @ to have this on top.

Search: todo:false tag:@wf

No need to negate someday items as @Waiting For’s never are, right?

Like someday the tag is shorthanded to @wf for waiting for.

@All Next Actions

To have a complete list for your perusal.

Search: todo:false tag:@* -tag:sd -tag:@project -tag:@wf

Get all @ context items unless they’re someday items, projects or waiting for.

You might have other @ contexts you don’t want to see on your list of NA’s. Simply add each one as -tag:@yourcontext.^[4]

Projects are negated as in this setup, they too can have contexts (more later).

@context

These are your context lists. One search per context.

Search: todo:false tag:@context -tag:@sd -tag:@project

In general your @ tag will match your @ search — but it doesn’t have to. Examples in my setup: @Waiting For (search) aggregates @wf tag; @Computer (search) aggregates @pc tag. Why? Faster, easier to type.

__Someday

Two underscores to have this sort immediately after the @ lists but before the _ lists (1 underscore) that I use for some dedicated projects.

I prefer to drop the Maybe in GTD’s base Someday/Maybe list.

Search: todo:false tag:sd

__What Was Done

I like checking off things, I love using the checkboxes in Evernote — and so I don’t delete completed items.

Search: todo:true

Time Lists

I use 5 broad time levels for next actions: 5, 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes. Each has a list.

I’ll give the search for the 5 minute items; for the other times you simply recreate this search but change the time tag.

Search: todo:false tag:5 -tag:sd

No need to negate projects as those aren’t actionable items and thus don’t have a time required tag assigned to them.

Untagged Notes

In general my notes have at least one tag but especially for distinguishing between braindump items and processed projects, next actions, etc. it’s important our items have their tags.

Search: -tag:*

Important: if you don’t tag your notes in general, the above obviously wouldn’t be useful. In that case, change it to:

Search: todo:false -tag:*

Untimed Actions

Being able to pick actions based on time/energy level is not just handy: it helps tremendously at determining how booked you are.

For this to work, each NA needs a time tag, obviously, so here we check if a note misses that.

Search: todo:false tag:@* -tag:@project -tag:@wf -tag:5 -tag:15 -tag:30 -tag:45 -tag:60

Using Evernote for GTD

You get an item on your desk or think of something. CTRL + ALT + N brings up a new note in Evernote. CTRL + SHIFT + C to get the checkbox. Add your item.

[F2] [TAB] [TAB] to get to the line where you can enter your contexts. Let’s say this a 5 minute email for work: @work, @email, 5. Done.

Don’t want to do this item soon enough? Then it’s a someday in GTD so tag it as such: sd. With one tag, the sd, the item is taken off all the action lists and moved to someday.

When the time comes to review your lists you might want to take a whole bunch of NA’s off the table; maybe it’s a long weekend or vacation is coming up. Or maybe you want to move a bunch of someday’s back to the Next Action lists, right?

Select the items, CTRL + SHIFT + T to bring up the tag list box. Click the column with the checkboxes to have all assigned tags sort to the top of the list.

Now you can simply check or uncheck the someday tag to instantly move all your selected items to or from the someday list.

Don’t want to tag your items as they come in? No problem: don’t. Simply come back later, click your untagged items search and do it then.

Evernote GTD FAQ

Why Do Someday Items Have Contexts?

In a previous version someday was made up of all todo items that had no tags. So, to move NA’s back to someday I had to remove all tags. Then add them again when moving them back to NA. Big waste of time.

In the current setup items can be moved back and forth based simply on the sd tag.

Meanwhile I’ve found the presence of tags to be very helpful during review. I can select the someday list and search for all @project’s or for @work related items.

Nowadays, when going through untagged GTD items, I take a moment and assign the proper contexts and time as I would when setting them as NA.

Why Can Projects Have Contexts?

Again, during review it’s handy to be able to look at home projects or all work projects. By having (already) set tags on them I can zoom in on very specific areas.

How Do You Handle Start/Due Data Actions?

Date-specific actions go on the calendar. Not just because that’s how GTD defines it (dated items are on your “hard landscape”) but because it’s practical.

I use Google Calendar (setup with multiple colored calendars for ease of use; holidays, daughter stuff, my stuff, work stuff, etc.).

Depending on what’s sane to do, details are in the calendar item (”Call Joe re. coffee @ 1234″) or in the note in Evernote.

Example of a calendar item? Some of my @wf’s are for specific dates: by this or that date I should nudge the person. That @wf is in my system ([ ] Joe re. if he ordered coffee -- call by this or that date) and to make sure I don’t see that item only when I review that list, it’s on the calendar with a reminder.

How Do You Handle Recurrence

Recurrence is essentially a repetitive hard landscape item, so most of my regularly recurring items go on my calendar. Often with one or more reminders/heads-up’s.

Less specific recurrence or reminders may go into my 12 months (+ some people specific) tickler file; the 43 folders thing is overkill for me.

Other items might just be ones that I need over and over again. Reusable items, essentially. The note on the left is an example of such a reusable item. As I was changing my morning routine I used this checklist to keep on track.

As I prepare my next day every evening, I would simply uncheck the items and … use it again the next day :) But I can just as easily keep it in the “someday” list and copy & paste a new note from it: whatever works best for you.

How Do You Use Projects?

At the base an @project note is simply a stake in the ground to remind me; oh yeah, I have a project going on. From there it is as the need prescribes.

Here are 3 typical project notes (data is made up largely so…)

In the first case I map out several NA’s. Usually when the time comes to put one or all of them on an Next Actions list, I copy & paste the to do line in a new note. Clean look at my NA’s and I have the track record in the project note.

How do I tie those next actions back to the project? Well, sometimes I just wing it and claim that “I know”. But usually I will write out the action so as a standalone note — it still makes perfect sense. In GTD it’s never “check finances”, it’s “check the finances of client XYZ”

Second note has no next actions but is a good example of the project note acting as a placeholder for project related info. Who is the account manager I need to contact for this? How many hours are assigned to the project? What’s the deadline? That deadline upon writing it there would immediately be added to my Google Calendar — with 2-3 reminders. See: How Do You Handle Start/Due Data Actions.

There’s a PDF in there too. Some files like that get added and most are removed when I’m done with the project. I use PersonalBrain to link and map files to clients and projects. Google Desktop or Copernic or any other desktop search works well too.

The last example is a project with just some bulletpoints; stuff I’m tossing around. The project doesn’t show on my project list though: it has the sd tag :)

My @ List Doesn’t Sort Correct!

When you create/rename a saved search it doesn’t get sorted at the right place. Exit the application, start it again and the list is sorted.

This Seems a Little Complex

The description is 1200+ words. Like describing how to make coffee step by step, it all come across as very daunting and involved… but really isn’t :)

XYZ Isn’t “Pure” GTD?
Oh :)

Wellll….

The geek in me wants to point you to GTD coach Keylly Forrister’s It’s not about the lists:

There’s a comfort zone I found works for me and my lists where I have as few lists as I can get by with, but as many as I think I need to slice and dice my stuff in a way that makes it manageable. And, they change from time to time, if for no other reason than to just change the look to get me excited about them again. [...]

An easy way to figure out which context lists you need is to look at the people, places and tools you need to do your work, personally and professionally. That will serve as a good starting point.

…but…

xkcd

What now?

If you liked this article:

1. Subscribe to the feed
2. Follow me on Twitter
1. See Purpose Your Day: Most Important Task (MIT). I usually have 2-3 MIT’s that I picked the night before
2. Yeah, I know his might not be pure GTD. So?
3. I use sd as a shorthand tag for someday to make manual tag entry faster. The system needs to be as frictionless as possible
4. For example, I don’t want to see my @read’s mixed in with my general NA’s, so my @All Next Actions search looks like todo:false tag:@* -tag:sd -tag:@project -tag:@wf -tag:@read
]]> http://ruudhein.com/evernote-gtd/feed 24 http://ruudhein.com/digital-memories http://ruudhein.com/digital-memories#comments Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:17:32 +0000 Ruud http://ruudhein.com/?p=46 Recently I gave Rachel, one of my daughters, a collection of digital documents covering her teenage years and some of her childhood. The collection contains PDF’s, some saved HTML pages, WMV and MOV video’s, a few audio recordings in MP3 format and thousands of digital JPEG photos.

It’s a slice of a growing collection, a collection that encompasses the digitized memories of My Life. Thoughts, songs, clips, snapshots, links.

It’s a collection started in 1997 but by now containing items from long before that time; digitized photographs and video of my childhood and teen years, songs from back then, etc.

As time passed and the collection grew two main challenges emerged:

• how do I make sure these items make it to my children?
• where or how do they get the information about the items?

Getting Digital Assets to the Next Generation

Although seemingly the simplest problem to overcome, this has turned out the be the most laboursome and worrisome aspect of digitizing memories.

The problems are media and file format.

Media

To put it simply: all digital media is fleetingly temporary into the extreme.


by U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang

When you decide to keep your memories in digital format, and for many of us that decision is made by the consumer equipment we choose, you agree to keep your files “in the air” as if you’re a juggler.

I have DVD backups from 3-4 years ago which cannot be read. I have CDR’s which cannot be read. In a few cases even recent media cannot be read but on the very device which I created them with.

The only sure way to guarantee your files will be there come next year let alone the next generation is to keep them in a constant “alive” state.

My files, the Golden Copy, are stored on a hard disk which is mirrored to another hard disk.^[1]

Hard disks are cheap. Exchange the backup drive for a new one at least every 2 years; delegate the previous one to your current main drive or keep it as an additional copy.

As long as you have a somewhat manageable amount of data, use online backup as well. I prefer Carbonite, having been with them since 2006. I can download about 1 GB/hour: if push comes to shove I can restore my digital photo collection in 2-3 days.

At one point though there’s a tipping point either because your ISP would never let you download so much so fast or because downloading it would take the better part of a season…


You realize that you have so many digital memories since so long that you can’t afford not to consider serious disasters in which everything you consider as your current setup is destroyed: flooding, explosions, fire, theft, vandalism, etc. etc.

Once at that point you will want to start making copies/backups on an external drive which you’ll store in a safety deposit box at the bank or in a media fire proof safe at your own place.^[2]

The take-away is that at no time should you feel your information is solid and permanently stored. Instead, think of it as very ethereal.

File Formats

So far this is the one that bugs me the least. Time has actually done a lot to reduce worry for my famliy’s version of the digital dark age.

There are caveats though.

Most if not all of the files I use are not only current but long time standards: QuickTime, JPEG, PDF, HTML, and of course plain text. Other data of interest might be contained in email.^[3]

It’s my experience up till now that hugely popular file formats like this have tons of converter applications available. If down the line a format such as PDF would start to fade away you’ll have ample time to convert those documents to something else.

File Applications

A bigger problem.

As soon as we start to store information on the application level through integration with a database, we risk data loss through obsolescence of the application.



It’s not that the final storage place becomes obsolete but rather that it starts to demand that the next generation are geeks with intimate knowledge of how this application stored information where and how — and how to get that information out.

A good example is Evernote^[4] which when installed as a local application stores its data in a SQLite database. For geeks it’s trivial to 1) find this out, 2) realize you need a SQL browser of some sort, and finally 3) to find such a SQL browser without being ripped off and to effectively use it to export the information.

Are you absolutely sure your children will be such geeks?

It becomes necessary to export to a more standard file format or to prepare for it — and to possibly prepare such export paths and detailed information. More on that, detailed information, later on.

Sharing the Digital Memories

The difference between the digital asset and the digital memory is the one between data (the file) and meta-data (information about the file and what it contains or represents).

A good example to work with are photos.

Think back to your grand parents’ photo albums or, if you’re about my age, your parents’ albums. Under, on or at the back of photos information was scribbled about the photo: a date, event, maybe names of people in the photo.


by freeparking

And then maybe your mother or father would sit next to you and say “That’s from the time when grand-pa Joe was still hunting in Arizona and…”

Although the latter might happen with your digital files too, you shouldn’t count on it, shouldn’t build your collection on it.

But the former, the scribbled data, is simply not there: we don’t write or draw on our digital photos.

To carry information about what is portrayed, shown, described or sung over to the next generation we have to find and use ways to provide such meta-data.

“Truth In The File”

The best way to add meta-data is through the file and in the file itself.

Scott Dart, program manager for Microsoft Windows Live, referred to it as “truth in the file”. I like that description.


The first very basic file-level meta-data is the filename.

Most of my file names are in the format yyyy-mm-dd keyword keyword keyword.file-extension.^[5] This format not only allows for correct sorting in Windows in a sort of timeline flow but also helps ensure that the date stamp is carried over: file timestamps will change as backups are restored…

The above format can just as easily be applied to a photo (”2007-12-24 christmas eve.jpg”) as to a PDF (”2001-02-01 drawing audrey for ruud.pdf”), for example.

In contrast to the file name, the second layer of file-level meta-data is not immediately visible. This is data that can be embedded in the file.

Examples of file formats which can contain usable meta-data are MP3’s (ID3 tags; think of artist/title information), JPEG’s (IPTC and XMP data for captions, descriptions etc. but also EXIF data provided by the camera itself), PDF’s (keywords, title, description, etc.) and MOV’s (description, comment, etc.).

As this information is not immediately visible and only accessible at the application level it’s again necessary to prepare detailed information about the existence of the meta-data and how to access it and use it.

Your Digital Will

This is where your digital will comes in.

A digital will contains all information the people you would leave behind will need to finalize any account activity and access and use any kind of information you purposely want to leave behind for them.

Let’s only look at the type of information that’s relevant to what we’re talking about; digital memories.

What should you detail?

You should explain that there is a digital collection, that there are digital memories. As this post has done, you too should instruct the next person on how to keep that collection intact and alive.


Thanks for the memories

You have to detail how to access it. Where are the photos? Where are the videos? Where are the scanned documents?

Suggest applications to access these files. Possibly prepare a folder with the installers of such applications ready for them.

Explain about the meta-data and how to access and use it.

List the applications you have used to build this archive of digital memories. Detail what you did with those applications and why. If you’ve ever ran into a problem with those applications or the files they work on and were able to fix or work around it, detail that here.

Best Practices & Tips

Make things as simple as possible.

Store all your digital memory files together in one folder (with subfolders if you want). It’s simpler to backup, simpler to instruct about (”take this folder and that’s it”). Using My Pictures, My Videos and My Whatnot starts to scatter things around in a folder (My Documents) which will soon enough fill up with files and folders unrelated to your digital memories.

Be wary of applications that “eat” your data/files. File recovery software is one thing; getting files out of some sort of proprietary file format or database is a whole different ball game, one nobody should want to play.

The above pertains to web services as well. Unless you use them as a sort of backup or “also” storage, don’t rely on them. Most people who were online in 1997 can name a whole lists of (online) brands that seemed to never ever go away which simply don’t exist anymore today.^[6]

If you do want to use an additional layer, an additional application, use one that works with your files in a non-destructive manner. Personal Brain is a good example: files dropped in it are stored as regular files in regular folders: if the application ever fails it’s somewhat trivial to search through the folders on the disk and access your files.^[7]

Two is better than one: I don’t rely on one image application to handle our photo collection, for example. I use both Adobe Photoshop Elements and Picasa.

1. I think of it as a poor man’s RAID. Use shadowing software such as NTI Shadow or sync software like GoodSync
2. Sentry Group has dedicated data protection safes with hard disk inside a safe and what not. Costly but as time progresses and more and more people have this problem, I expect more solutions to come on the market.
3. mbox and PST although I plan to do a huge export to EML and/or txt
4. I use Evernote quite regularly to add some diary-type information. The application will be part of my digital will. Personal Brain is better as it stores notes as standalone HTML files but here too one can’t rely on the next generation “getting” the application.
5. You can’t fully rely on these long file names however. I have a number of files from the early years which at one point had short DOS 8.1 file names due to a problem with the CDR backup
6. see for example the shutdown of Google Notebook or Yahoo Photo
7. see also One Brain to Rule Them All: Creating a MegaBrain
]]> http://ruudhein.com/digital-memories/feed 16 http://ruudhein.com/tweetdeck-combined-searches http://ruudhein.com/tweetdeck-combined-searches#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:42:14 +0000 Ruud http://ruudhein.com/?p=43 As a data processor I just had to switch to TweetDeck. The built-in Twitscoop view is a constant finger on the pulse of the community’s conversation; I “see” a lot of news and events approaching this way before they hit the news.

Another great feature is built-in persistent searches. You can add searches the Tweets of which will appear in their own column.

A “drawback” — one is never satisfied — is that TweetDeck enforces a 10 column maximum. You’ll quickly run out of columns to add, having to delete a previous search to start to monitor a new topic.

Bundle Searches

Searches in TweetDeck are powered by search.twitter.com (the previous Summize).

The default operator applied is AND: evernote chrome.



But Twitter search recognizes the OR operator: economy OR coffee.



This gives you the ability to combine or collapse a number of searches into one and the same column, giving you “virtual unlimited columns” in TweetDeck.

Good candidates are searches which during most 48 hour periods, the timeframe TweetDeck considers, produce limited results. For example, I combine the streams for knowledge management and mindmapping.

Topics can be more thoroughly covered this way as well. Hot is The Economy at the moment but simply searching economy gives you a restricted view. economy OR recession OR “wall street” OR “credit crunch” is much wider, covers more ground.

]]> http://ruudhein.com/tweetdeck-combined-searches/feed 12 http://ruudhein.com/add-files-to-evernote http://ruudhein.com/add-files-to-evernote#comments Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:57:20 +0000 Ruud http://ruudhein.com/?p=34 I don’t know if Evernote is indispensable as I don’t remember working without it. It’s installed on each of my computers and every reinstall of Windows since 2005…

Evernote3 has only made life easier, simpler, with syncing in the cloud. It’s the goodness of never having to chose between storing stuff on this computer, that computer, on your Flash drive or in the cloud: it’s and, not or. And Evernote does the transparent heavy lifting of all that synced goodness.

Evernote can store images (and yes, index and search text in those images…) and PDF files (which, again, it can index and search too). So I didn’t take out my notetaker walllet to copy down the addition to the opening times of the nearby swimming pool; I snapped a photo with the low-res CMOS camera built-in to most cellphones today and emailed it to my Evernote account.



Likewise my copy of Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done has been drag-and-dropped into Evernote and is thus available to me anywhere at any time.

Nice.

However, as it goes with these kind of improvements, they make you long for more. That longing rises quickly when you attempt to drag a non-image, non-PDF into Evernote.



Can’t be done.

Adobe Acrobat to the Rescue

Having been on the fence whether to continue to use a patchwork of alternative solutions or buy Adobe Acrobat, I interpreted the recently-ish release of Acrobat 9.0 as a sign that I should buy a copy.



Ever since I’ve been playing around with the program, liking my new software toy very much — thank you — and turning just about anything into PDF’s. Our Husky now scurries away when he sees me approach.

One of the things I came across is the ability to create a PDF Portfolio. A PDF Portfilio is a PDF-ish file that can contain other files: images, Word files, Excel, video, etc. etc. …

You see where this is going to go, right?

Create a PDF Portfolio

Except for the reader-only version, obviously, any edition of Adobe Acrobat 9.0 can create PDF Portfolio’s.

Open your copy and go for Create -> Assemble a PDF Portfolio.



Grab a file and drag-and-drop it to the PDF Portfolio screen.



If you want you click on the file name to change that. Or click under the file name to add a description to that file.



You can switch to the esthetically more pleasing list view too. Adobe Acrobat Pro and Pro Extended can also apply templates to how these PDF Portfolio’s look and behave. Brian S. Friedlander’s Assistive Technology has a good entry on creating PDF Portfolio’s in Adobe Acrobat Pro (Extended).

The created PDF Portfolio, containing your files, can be dropped into Evernote and will be synced with and through the cloud.

Even when (if?) Evernote adds native file sharing, using PDF Portfolio’s in a very elegant way to move and share files which should be kept together.

]]> http://ruudhein.com/add-files-to-evernote/feed 6 http://ruudhein.com/gmail-to-evernote-information-management-workflow http://ruudhein.com/gmail-to-evernote-information-management-workflow#comments Sat, 20 Sep 2008 02:00:56 +0000 Ruud http://ruudhein.com/?p=29 Capturing information has to be as low-key, as easy as it can be. Smooth, is the word I’m looking for, I think.

My favorite capture tool since 2005-ish has been Evernote. Highlight, CTRL + C, CTRL + ALT + V to create a new pasted note from anywhere within Windows.

But back then Evernote was a local installation application only. Bugged me as I switch between my desktop and a laptop provided by Canada’s SEO company.

Enter Gmail [hat tip: Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center].

Gmail Capture Process

• Get the Google toolbar.
• Highlight info on a page, click Send To, choose Gmail.

  

• In the subject line I use a pipe followed by keywords/tags.

  

  

  Those keywords allow you to do “tag” searches by doing a subject search in Gmail.

…to Evernote Workflow

To send information into my Gmail database I, of course, use a special + email address as in Gmail you can do youremail+anything@.

In Gmail I’ve setup a filter which will label any email to this specific address with DB, short for database (why not database in full? simple, in a search it is faster to restrict to label:db or l:db than using the word “database” spelled out in full….).

The address is also filtered to automatically forward to my special Evernote email address. Minutes after the note arrives in Gmail it’s available in Evernote too.

Once every 1-3 days I go into my “InBox” notebook in Evernote and go through the incoming notes. This is a fast, short job. Give it one “real” Evernote tag, usually. Very high level too. Then drag it into one of the handful of notebooks I keep (again very high level. Any complete web page capture goes into Web Archive, for example).

Done.

The Benefits

1. Future proof: Evernote might disappear, email won’t
2. Automatic backup
3. Both available from anywhere with Gmail being just a tad better available even
4. Keywords (”tags”) in the subject/title of the note allow for subject searches in Gmail and intitle searches in Evernote
5. Searches in both Evernote and Gmail are fast while each has its own strengths
6. Since a little while Evernote has removed the inline Goto Source to a tiny button, making note export with URL a royal pain. Gmail includes the source link.

   

The only time I clip directly into Evernote is when images/graphics are of importance to me: Gmail stores a link to the images, not the images themselves. And yes, in that case I often email the note to Gmail :)

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