Evernote Site Memory for WordPress AND other platforms
Slocum Design Studio, and a member of their design team, Jonathan Desrosiers, have developed Evernote Site Memory, which allows users to clip a blog post to Evernote in, by my count, two mouse clicks and without having to navigate away from the post. And it may prompt some readers to clip who, in their excitement about the post and shouts of “Eureka!” forget to note the URL
. (If you’re getting that excited about posts on this blog, you probably need more R&R).
Slocum’s portfolio is outstanding, and it’s clear that they exploit each other’s talents to good effect. A look at the staff portraits makes the point well: each of them is outstanding, and is the visual anchor for each staff member’s “About” page. In fact, it makes a strong case for engaging a team, whether it’s an established full-time team, or an ad hoc team assembled for a project, for even relatively simple projects. The simplest statement of the principle is that no one should proofread or edit their own copy in any text that matters.
My installation of the WordPress plugin was entirely snag-free [plugin page on WordPress repository]; what’s more, the people at Slocum took the time to provide a clear and detailed entry in the WP Plugin Repository. NB: if you install via the WordPress dashboard, there are several other similar-sounding plugins, with similar descriptions of functionality. I tested Mr. Desrosier’s plugin first because it was featured prominently on the Evernote website. What you’re looking for is “WP Evernote Site Memory,” with a credit in the description field for Slocum and Mr. Desrosier.
Other developers have produced Site Memory functionality for Joomla and Tumblr, and Evernote also provides information for developers; it’s all readily navigable on the Evernote Site Memory page.
One other Evernote plugin for WordPress, EverPress, is essentially the opposite of WP Evernote Site Memory.
EverPress is an automatic RSS posting plugin primarily designed to integrate with the information capturing service, Evernote. This plugin allows Evernote users to automatic post their shared notebooks to WordPress. [EverPress also supports]post scheduling – by day, week or month, and time of day; [and]post settings – set the author, category, status (draft, public and private) and tags.
EverPress is the creation of Martin Hawksey; we hope to have tested and reviewed it in short order.
FusionDesk: flexible, integrated information tools
Fusion Desk comes in three flavors:
- Lite, ($30 USD)
- Deluxe, ($60 USD)
- Professional ($90 USD)
Fusion Desk UI Interfaces and Themes
We haven’t started testing yet, but we’re impressed with what we’ve seen so far, and some glowing reviews which were published before several revisions which added features. From NoteTalkers (“Note-taking software from a user’s perspective”) 2006 review:
Tabbed Projects and Tree Hierarchy with sub-folders.
Clean interface and easy navigation. Ribbon style menu.
Reports that are both functional and print ready.
Multiple Export formats.
Built-in timer and ability to track/expense time.
Quick Review of FusionDesk (2006) on NoteTalkers.
The NoteTalkers review included some suggestions for improving FusionDesk, and at some point after the review, all of those features, and others, made it into subsequent releases.
Even the super-bargain priced “Lite” edition ($30) includes a time-tracking, hours-and-expenses for billing purposes functionality, and that’s not its only valuable feature.PN and smart phones, directly to a second PC, via FTP, over a VPN, and OneNote or with MyInfo.
What’s more, FusionDesk has an API to make it possible for developers to integrate other applications with FusionDesk.
We hope to have some testing – and some results – in the near future.
17 Note-Taking apps for Linux (some with Windows and Mac versions as well) from LinuxAndFriends.com
Linux and Friends has a list of 17 Linux-friendly note-taking applications, inspired by the author’s fondness for Microsoft OneNote which, unsurprisingly, isn’t available for Linux. I’ve heard good things from other people I respect about OneNote, but haven’t really looked at it carefully because of the cost and my own gradual transition to Linux. (Wikipedia entry “Microsoft OneNote;” Microsoft official OneNote site; OneNote standalone version, without other Office components, currently $70 with free shipping at Amazon).
The Linux and Friends list – Note taking – Free Microsoft OneNote Alternatives for Linux – is impressive in its thoroughness. At least half the list was new to me. NB: one application which I’ve been testing and using – and liking a lot – is KeepNote, which I’ve been using on my Windows 7 machine. But my Linux laptop is running Fedora – and thus far I haven’t found Keepnote for Fedora. In other words – availability in Linux doesn’t mean availability in all versions of Linux.
But Linux and Friends have been meticulous and concise about important features (output formats; whether tables are permitted, for me an increasingly important feature). Not having tested the list yet, I’ll say that I was particularly drawn to Cherry Tree, by Giuseppe Penone of Giuspen. CherryTree, available in nearly a dozen languages, Linux and Friends describes it as follows:
a cross platform hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting. It allows you to insert images, tables, lists, and hyperlinks. Written by Giuseppe Penone, this is one fine note taking application (emphasis added).
One other standout is Tuxcards, which has built-in encryption capability, something which attorneys in particular ought to keep in mind.
We hope to test several of these and report back. In the meantime, thanks to Linux and Friends for their exhaustive and valuable efforts.
Scott Scheper/HowToGetFocused.com = useful tools and ideas to enhance productivity
Scott Scheper the force behind HowToGetFocused.com has some useful thoughts about productivity – about attitude and practice, about intellectual tools, and digital tools. With the exception of his review of EverNote 1.
Check out his post Productivity Applications: 5 That Rock, 5 That Don’t, and 5 That are Underrated; you might also like Scheper’s book, also named “How to Get Focused” available in hardcover, e-book, and as an electronic book on the Amzaon Kindle platform (at, respectively, $26, $20, and $10.
- His review is of Evernote if used as, in effect, an image-grabber; I find it quite helpful when I’m putting together citations and have used it writing briefs and conducting investigations. Usually I’m using it to grab a block of text to quote, letting Evernote automatically write down the URL/page source, and tagging it with the project name so I can easily locate it later. [↩]
John Hamilton’s primer on evidence photography
John Hamilton, an engineer on the faculty of the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of Arkansas has posted on his site a primer on evidentiary photography using film.
(His “Hazard Evaluation” article in Plant Engineering, written with John S. Morse, is also an excellent primer, a starting point for litigators, investigators, or others new to the consideration of industrial, occupational) and/or public health risk).
There are many virtues of using digital rather than film, cost not least among them. But, things being what they are – one virtue of handing over, say, a contact sheet and prints, and permitting inspection of negatives, is going to tend to reduce the temptation to allege photo manipulation. If you’re thinking about shooting in film, Professor Hamilton’s primer is worth having in hand as you proceed.
For the entirely obsessive-compulsive – a class which includes nearly all attorneys some of the time, and some attorneys all of the time – shooting digital and film in parallel might be the safest course, if not the most cost effective.
Awasu
Awasu is an application (free, $29 and $79) which I learned about on the brilliant website Learning Tools Compendium.1. More about Awasuin a moment, as I work backwards from how I found it to what problem I was/am trying to solve.
I was looking for a “feed reader,” a way to centralize the sites and writers I want to keep with. My primary blog, Popular Logistics, is in large part about disaster preparedness, so there are types of events where close-to-real-time coverage is critical. I’ve found Google Reader to effectively have only two settings – “trickle” and “fire hose,” and I haven’t figured out how to mark items “read” without marking several hundred “read” at once.
Here are some examples of the types of data streams I’m trying to keep track of – with a signal-to-noise ((the “signal-to-noise” ratio is a way of describing the mixture of information one has to review and discard (“noise”) to yield information that you wration that’s bearable.
- I’ve used Google Alerts with some success to keep track of one story, the disappearance in Iran of my dear friend, Robert Levinson. That google alert is pretty effective – but every third response seems to be about someone else named Bob or Robert Levinson. And sometimes important stories get to me as much as a week after publication, which probably just means that Google’s spiders, or “bots,” are always playing catch-up with the Internets.
- Some sites which have RSS feeds provide no apparent native control over what part of the feed you see – in other words, all or nothing. For instance, my local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate, WNYC, provides free podcasts of almost all shows, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to just get notified of stories by Bob Hennelly, WNYC’s chief political reporter. Google Alerts has helped there, but doesn’t know about a story until after it’s been transcribed (usually one day or less), plus time for the Google bots to catch up.
- The Learning Tools Compendium is a project of Jane Hart, an educational consultant who has put a lot of thought and care into this terrific resource. Here’s a link to their 2010 Learning Tools Directory. She’s also responsible for Jane’s Learning Pick of the Day, 140 Learning, which “looks at how to use Twitter and Facebook for learning;” Social Media In Learning, and
much more [↩]
