I swear to the gods that I am going to actually start posting on time again. Honest. I swear…
If you could not tell from the way I post updates here, I struggle with organization. It does not help that I have so much on my plate. The work I do at Carleton, my Consulting Business, being a full time single father. It all adds up to, well, not much as far as time is concerned. There are a number of tools that I use on a daily basis to (try to) keep myself organized. I thought it would be a good series of Mac tweaks to review each one here over the next few weeks. We start with…
NoteTaker is a digital notebook that gives whole new meaning to the term “full featured”. On it’s face, it is a basic notebook, like a paper multi-subject notebook. It even has spiral rings and tabs on the side to divide your entries into sections. You can create and have as many separate notebooks as you wish. But that is where the similarities leave off and the true power begins.
NoteTaker has an parent child multiple entry style that makes it a powerful outlining tool. You can order and number your entries if you choose in Legal, Hard or other styles. Or leave the styles off and simply use it as a way of organizing and defining otherwise free form information. It also can store images, sound files, movie files and link to key documents. Say for instance you are at a meeting and discussing a memo that has been distributed to the group as a Microsoft Word Document. You can not only take notes of the meeting but also provide a link entry for the document in question. Double clicking the link will launch Word and open the document. Very handy!
Furthermore, it leverages the built in Services feature of Mac OS X to clip information from other sources (For instance, documents, e-mails and web pages) into new entries in your notebook. It will also include header information about the source where the information came from.
But the real surprise is when you enter a URL (web site address) into a notebook. It places a little “@” sign next to the entry. Double clicking on the text of the link will launch your web browser and bring you to that page. Double clicking on the “@” sign will load the page in a little mini browser, in line, right there in your notebooks page. How cool is that?!
I use NoteTaker to jot down ideas, thoughts, clip and save information from many sources. I use it for so many other things and it is truly part of the foundation of information on my Mac.