Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Note Taking Tips?
Adam Schoales | Sep 29 2007
I'm in my first year of university and trying desperately to come up with the best way to take notes on my mac... I've been looking into notae and yojimbo (I like the tagging features alot, but dislike that I can't put in pictures and such) but have heard good things about journler and devonthink. The problem with Notae (which I used today) is everything is in SQL databases which is going to make it difficult. Plus most of these apps REQUIRE you to make a new database file rather than a bunch of text files which it will database and collect, etc. I've also heard wiki's are a great way to take notes but have no clue how to do so on my mac. So please, if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them. I'm sure there are many like me who also would love to know any suggestions for great apps for us Univeristy kids. 105 Comments
POSTED IN:
 Microsoft AutoCorrect: ewwww.Submitted by terceiro on October 2, 2007 - 7:24am.
It sounds like handwriting is your problem, my friend. If it were me (and it was, about fifteen years ago), I'd spend some time and make my handwriting fast and legible. And you don't have the patience? You're a doctoral student? In my experience, being a doctoral student is all about patience. Patience and long, long, long hard work. Even with your technological crutches, you're handicapped by your handwriting. As far as Microsoft autocorrect goes, I'd drop it in a heartbeat and replace it with a system-wide tool to do the same thing. Consider TextExpander or TypeIt4Me. Either one will give you your expansions and snippets (and spelling corrections) all over your Mac, yes, including Pages, Keynote, and Mail. Also, emacs, TextEdit, Safari, Firefox, Mellel, DEVONthink, VoodooPad, Yojimbo, TextMate, Scrivener, Journler, Adium... you get the point. Why settle for Microsoft's sandbox when you can broaden your horizons to a world of better options? That said, I used MS Office 2004 for a year, and took advantage of the cool feature to record in Notebook mode -- and have my typing sync up with the recording (see Merlin's comment above). It's cool, but then lecture notes take up a LOT of disk space and give me a false sense of security. I did use the recording a few times, and it was marginally useful, but I also allowed myself to (once or twice) slack off in my notes because I figured it was all recorded anyway. In those times, when I slacked off, did I review the recording later? No, I did not. In a nutshell: get out of Word, try a system-wide autocorrect/snippet tool, and don't skip paper just because you're unwilling to improve your handwriting. [Note: I apologize for my lack of sensitivity if your handwriting difficulties are related to some sort of physical inability. I have no tolerance for folks who are simply too lazy for handwriting. For those who are unable to improve their handwriting, you have my sympathy because paper really is a superior tool.] » POSTED IN:
|
|
| EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |
