Third Shelf

One more favourite tool that I have come to like a great deal is OneNote 2008. Straight from the box I got used to the ease and the flexibility that it provides to capture and layout my notes. It is almost easier than a notebook.

Currently I am designing a website and the way that OneNote helped me organize the research is amazing. Not only that, it has a very handy screen capturing utility that can be invoked at any time using the Windows Key + S.

It also allows you to capture side notes at any point in time by pressing Windows Key + N. Very handy stuff indeed.

Some features of OneNote 2008 includes:

• Gathering your notes and information in one place;
• Automatic saving of your notebooks;
  
• Organize information in the manner that you want with complete freedom;
• Prioritization and management of your tasks and your to-do list more efficiently;
• Themed notebook pages;
• Sharing of your notebooks;
• Text highlighting;
• Using pens on the note surface;
• Automatic source linking when pasting information;
  
• etc…
  

I think I might have abondoned my Moleskine for good after discovering OneNote.

Most of the time I find myself running around like a mad thing and inevitably will forget fairly important things. Things that can land me in a fair bit of trouble, if forgotten. Out hunting for a decent task and time management application (I’m sorry todo.txt), I finally found and settled on one, RememberTheMilk.

The feature list and flexibility of this web application is outstanding. For starters, it integrates smoothly with the concepts of Getting Things Done. Here is a post on how to set it up for GTD.

You can add tasks from almost anywhere, be it mobile, Launchy, e-mail or even their own website. There are also a couple of ways to interact with your task lists, such as:

• Remember the Milk Tool – Lets you add tasks rapidly from the system tray
• RememberTheMilk provider for Thunderbird – Lets you access tasks from within Thunderbird
• Add tasks with Launchy – Lets you add tasks directly from Launchy
• Embedding tasks on your desktop – View your tasks embedded into your desktop
• Or, write your own, with their extensive API

For offline access it uses Google Gears, so that you can continue to work with your tasks offline, and then synchronize when you are online again!

Some of the features that just make it that much better, is that it supports:

• SMS reminders
• E-mail reminders
• Recurring tasks
• Multiple lists
• Tags for tasks
• Weekly planners
• Locations integrated with Google Maps
• Synchronize to BlackBerry and Windows Mobile
• Notes on tasks
• Contacts with whom tasks can be shared
• etc…

Well done to the Australian Team!