Web Worker Daily

Because of its recent return to my working methodology, I want to take a moment to single out a very low-tech web working tool for praise. I’m talking about the sketchbook, that handy little tome in which we can capture and generate some of our best ideas. Not to be confused with the writer’s notebook, mind you, which is a great tool, too, but a different kind of beast.

The sketchbook is a free space for your ideas to play, unbound by lines and ruled margins. It’s a laboratory, a playground, a testing facility and a sounding board. And perhaps best of all, it requires no batteries and can go pretty much anywhere you do. Here’s why I love mine so much, and why any web worker would do well to have their own on hand. Read the rest of this entry »

Over on the OStatic blog, Lisa Hoover covered Luminotes, which has been around for a while, but just became completely free and open source, for anyone to use. It’s a note-taking and wiki-building tool that you can either use online or offline, collaborating with others, or just collecting notes and information on your own. I’ve been working with it, and I think a lot of people will like it for its ease of use and flexibility.
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As much as I try not to, I still like paper for some things. Boring, plain old paper, with all its failings and negative environmental impact. It seems a chore to pull out my iPhone or log in to Google Docs every time I want to make a note or write down someone’s number. Still, I want to keep trying to kick my paper habit, if only to establish a more clutter-free lifestyle.

A new web app called NotePub seems to be devised around the principle that, for computerized note-taking to be as useful as the paper kind, it should also be as simple and hassle-free. Accordingly, NotePub is built around the concept of an easy-to-edit wiki.

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We’ve looked at note organizer Evernote before, and liked what we saw. Th combination of desktop and web clients, text recognition, and the promise of universal information availability, make it very useful as a general-purpose place to store, well, everything. A new feature, introduced just in time for Christmas, makes it even more useful: universal file synchronization.

Evernote already synchronized copies of its own notes across as many installations as you cared to have – Windows, Web, Mac, or mobile. But attachment synchronization was limited to a few file types that it natively understands, such as images and audio. Now, you can attach any file you like to a note, and have that file transported to every installation, as well as available through the web interface. Read the rest of this entry »