Recording Notes

[Joshua Moore]

Hi,

I find a lot of things I want to record are just random thoughts/ideas that I think I may want at some future time. Basically these are short ideas that could fit on a 3 by 5 card (or less) and I want to file for some future use. The thing is I want to do this digitally with these requirements:

I can tag the idea
has search functionality that alows me to search the notes text


Basically I am looking for a good digital system to store thoughts and ideas. The most important thing is reliable search.

Does anybody know if any such system exists?

Thanks,

Josh

[Linada]

There are bucketloads of programs like that, with varying amounts of features and for many different devices and OSs.

Since you didn't specify anything, I'd hazard a guess on Evernote. It runs on a lot of systems and syncs very well.

[mackiest]

I second the Evernote recommendation.

Myself I've been using wikidpad for idea capture for a couple of years now and like it a lot, but it might not be as structured as what you're looking for...

[Oogiem]

Basically I am looking for a good digital system to store thoughts and ideas. The most important thing is reliable search.

Does anybody know if any such system exists?


There are many such systems. I'm mac based and I use Yojimbo. I don't trust cloud computing systems and want total control of my data. I like the simplicity and ease of use of Yojimbo. Devon Think was another package I considered but ti was more complex to use. I wanted the digital equivalent of a simple notebook.

[Dan Owen]

Evernote, no doubt.

It runs both on your desktop and in the cloud and synchs flawlessly and automatically between the two, which addresses Oogie's (very legitimate) concern.

[Grey1618]

If you're actually writing these notes on 3x5s and scanning them, then evernote is the way to go -- no doubt about it.

However, if you're inputting these notes at your computer, I'm a big fan of plain old text. Keep a random_ideas.txt file on your desktop for quick entry. To tag them, use twitter-style hashtags at the end of each note.

With a good text editor, such as textmate, searching is a breeze.

[abhay]

With a good text editor, such as textmate, searching is a breeze.

And if you use a text editor which can search for regular expressions and know how to use them, you won't go for anything else:)

Regards,
Abhay

[Brent]

This is what my Someday/Maybe list is for. That's a text file. If I wanted to add tags, I'd append them to the end of the entry, perhaps in parentheses. Then I could easily search for them.