What is Evernote?

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

I recently received an Evernote invite from Peety via plurk.  I must say that in the short time that I have been using it (a few hours!),  it has been very handy, and I wish I had it earlier.  I can think of several situations where it would have come in handy in the past.

Before Evernote was introduced to me, I used Stickies on Mac and Mail.app for notes and To Do’s.  This worked fine, as I could see my notes like emails and while away from home they were available online.  I really don’t have a method for taking notes of other things that I see when I am out and about, or browsing the web.  Sure I can bookmark a site and check it later, but what if I want to keep a picture of some shoes that I was checking out at amazon, or the speaker system that I am looking at for my car?

My Firefox bookmarks tab was getting flooded, and posting random links for homes and cars (I am moving back to the US!) that I am interested in onto delicious is not very helpful.  This is where Evernote comes in.

Private use

Evernote has been great for my private information.  I am set to travel in a few weeks, and I have added copies of my credit cards, passports, and other important documents.  I had recently download  Wallet for Mac, but it costs, and it won’t help me if someone swipes my laptop as it is only desktop based.  I can backup my files to iDisk though.  Evernote eliminates all of this hassle and automatically updates online without me ever having to worry about it.

Social Use

You can also share notes with the public as well.  I have yet to find a true use for this portion of the service.  In example screenshots, people are sharing pictures and little clippings that they see on the web.  I use Tumblr for that, which happens to be perfect, so it is a tossup with Evernote and social aspects.  If there was collaborative note taking, then I could see how it would be great for doing projects with multiple users.  Other than that though, anything that I deem important enough to share with friends, I use delicious, digg, or tumblr.  The feature is there though if you need it!

I have 20 invites to Evernote, so after you browse it and feel that you want in, leave a comment with an accurate email (not in the comment!!) and I will be sure to send one your way.

Enjoy!

    You guys know that I have been all over Delicious Bookmarks recently.  I found a site with some excellent scripts that every user could benefit from. 

   There are 15 on the list, but I am particularly interested in:

Google Reader + Del.icio.us - DOWNLOAD HERE   (You can easily add stories in google reader to delicious)

Digglicious - DOWNLOAD HERE  (Add digg stories to delicious right through digg)

Del.icio.us Bulk Delete - DOWNLOAD HERE (Bulk moderate bookmarks)

Fav.icio.us - DOWNLOAD HERE  (Add Favicons)

Snap.icio.us - DOWNLOAD HERE (Have a snapshot of the site that you bookmarked)

Del.icio.us Skin - Del.icio.us 2.0 - DOWNLOAD HERE  (Cool skin for delicious)

   The guys over at Killertechtips really made a great list, and you can go there to check it out for a few additional scripts.

   I know some of you have these already, but I am guessing that there is another delicious noob out there like me that could benefit from these scripts!

1:  The same people are getting stories to the FP regularly.

  They implemented the algorithm change so that top digg submitters would not totally run the FP.  Sadly, this has not worked.  It takes 150-200ish votes to go FP for most users.  Guess which users can get that many votes on a single story?  Top diggers.  I see a lot more excellent NEWS stories from normal users not go FP, and a funny pic from a top digger go FP.  While I am all for trying to even out the community, I am not for less content.

2:  Everyone is using IM.

  I got 1 story to the FP a few days after returning, and I got hit with 14 IM friend requests within a few hours.  Turns out, this is the main way that people get diggs these days.  Every time I log on to IM now, I get 5-10 pm’s looking for diggs on content.  This is fine, but at some point I feel weird having some guy promoting content for gizmodo or some other huge site.

3:  Shouting, while widely considered spam, is really needed to get your submissions noticed.

  I really don’t like the shout feature in regards to promoting submissions.  Sadly, the only way that certain friends will digg submissions is if you shout it to them.  A lot of people are too lazy to check friend’s submissions these days.  I am virtually forced to shout a particular story if I want it to have a chance at FP.

4.  The Tech news section is dying.

  The only news that I submitted in the past was tech news.  This was fine for my account.  While my FP % suffered, if I had some good tech news, I knew it was going to the FP.  I think I got 1 tech news post FP since I have been back.  I am forced to submit pictures and political content because those sections are the most popular now. 

While I don’t learn much on digg anymore, I do get a good laugh every now and then.  Ironically it has changed my surfing habits, and I have subscribed to a lot more non-tech blogs recently.  I just wish more love was given to the tech section  

That out of the way.

This Fox News employee, her response was a little too “natural” for me. Even I have made the mistake of calling Sen. Obama, “Osama”. Hell, I am in the military and I have been hearing that name about twice a week for the past 7 years. Big deal that she said that. Upon the recovery from her mistake though, she implies that assassinating “both” would be great, then laughs!

Update: The lady apologized, and basically said that it was a bad joke. Public apologies seem to be taken less and less seriously these days.

                                   

   Upon joining my first group, I was immediately impressed.  The groups obviously made it easier to chat as a community, and I could see 8 or 9 different conversations going on.  Genius from a social point of view.  It feels like a mix of IRC, IM, and Google groups all in one.  I added 10 more people to my subscription list in about 5 minutes.  Since we were in the same group, we were into the same things, and I actually got to chat with them first and check out their previous activity before subscribing.

   I am really enjoying the way friendfeed is going, but I still think that it is most beneficial only subscribing to a selected group of interesting friends, and hanging out with 2-3 groups. 

   I hope that you are checking out the groups, especially if you were undecided.

  Friend me on friendfeed!

Since I have gotten back into the social side of the internet, I have been debating which RSS Reader I should use.

Sites such as Friendfeed and twitter encourage me to share more links and media with friends. Desktop RSS readers have been great, but most of the sharing features are geared towards email, or sharing on a social news site like digg. I am not big on emailing, and I can’t digg everything that I feel is interesting.

Currently I am using Times RSS reader. It is fairly new, but it has been working quite smooth thus far. The only down side is that it doesn’t keep an archive type list of all of the articles from a certain site. Depending on where I place a feed, I can only see like 3-4 articles from a site. Also, when I add a feed on one computer, I have to remember to add it on my other computer, which has been a hassle.

I used Vienna at one point for a while, but when I got to work, I had no access to these feeds. I happen to work 12 hour shifts! This is what got me contemplating going back to Google reader. The sharing is much easier, and friends can easily check what I am enjoying via my friendfeed or via google reader itself.

I guess this post is mostly my attempt at convincing myself. Part of that is because I paid for the Times RSS reader recently! I wanted to see what others were using though, as I know there may be clients out there that I may have over looked.

What are you using for RSS? If it is google reader, add me! gtalk id - Mr.oberry

     It is really only coincidence though.  Once I returned home to my family after a long deployment, I was pretty lazy and rarely felt like doing much.  Blogging felt like a burden at the time (but mainly because I was being too strict with myself), and most of my spare time was spent with my family.  It didn’t help that I came back to a ridiculous work schedule, which completely caught me off guard.

     I just couldn’t stay away though.  As I slowly got back into surfing the web, I started itching to blog.  I revived my tumblr account first, which only had me craving more.  Eventually I gave in and started working on ob81.com again.

     I changed the blog around a bit.  I like the basic look and feel of it, and  I really enjoyed the upgrade to WP 2.5 also (yeah, I am late).  This time around, I will be taking baby steps, and won’t be as strict with my content.  My subjects may be a bit sporadic, but as usual, it will be things that I am interested in, and I think others may be interested in. 

See you around the site!

I checked out the 300+ new features for Leopard earlier, and was astonished by how much stuff they squeezed into the OS. I predict that I won’t use most of the features more than the one or 2 times I use them when I first upgrade.

I have been waiting for Spaces ever since the first Leopard preview. I often have several windows open at once, and at present, I have 9 open. Would love to throw my mail in a separate window, and maybe have some DVD burning going on in another.

The dashboard looks to have a huge makeover. One of the dashboard features I am waiting for is the drag and drop widget making. There is a lot of potential there, and I can’t wait to try this feature out for myself and see where it goes. I tend to be pretty widget happy, and being able to create widgets at will would be awesome.

Sorry Adium. You have held it down for well over a year now, but iChat is about to take back over. In Leopard, iChat supports multiple chat clients AND supports the voice and video features on your Mac. Adium was good while it lasted. I have it open almost every second during my surfing times. Sadly, whenever I want to do a video chat, I have to log into iChat to get it accomplished. Not all of my friends have iChat though.

I plan on walking into the Apple store and grabbing my copy. Don’t think I can wait any second longer than 10:00am on the 26th.

What feature are you guys waiting for?

Feels great to be reunited with my family, and it is odd hearing my son, who was 2y 5m when I left, say full statements now, and run around jumping without falling. My dog Chuck does not listen to me anymore though Hopefully a few more snacks will fix that.

I have been mainly trying to catch up on everything that I have been missing in the tech world and in the theaters. I still haven’t seen Spider-Man 3 yet! I finally got a chance to check out the iTouch also. Wasn’t impressed to say the least, but that is a whole subject on it’s own. I dived in and purchased an iTV for my bedroom and fell in love with the youtube feature. Can’t wait to see what else they throw on this thing! If you don’t have one, check it out.

From a blogging standpoint, now I can get in some first looks at new Apple gear and news due to being back home. I was seriously running dry out there in the desert where they were still selling the original Nano.
I am in the process of revamping my computer setup, as writing on this 13″ Macbook seems very uncomfortable at the moment. The 24″ iMac was looking nice, though I have been debating with being a cheapo and just grabbing an external monitor. We will see how things shape up.

If you have missed me on pownce the last few days, my inet connection chose to act up as soon as I returned home, and for the first time ever, I was too lazy to fix it until this morning.

Well, I will be on pownce and twitter as well as h_oberry@yahoo, or ob81@mac.com for my iChat users if you want to chat.

I finally feel connected to the world again!

I was checking out a blog post a while back that asked the question, “Are Internet Friends True Friends?”

Though a simple question, it really left me thinking for a while. Recently, interacting on a social network has become a big part of my daily internet routine. In fact, I can’t browse the internet without being simultaneously logged in to pownce, twitter, or streamy.

I have used features such as chat and forums to communicate in the past, and I have met some great people there. It never really amounted to much though, and the relationship only went as far as the hobby or topic that brought us together. Conversations were very limited, and rarely did I know what was going on in any of their day to day lives. Social networks today encourage more solid relationships, and make it easier to communicate for the most part. They are not built on one central idea, which would limit the amount of diversity that you would run into on the site.

Back in early March, I was sent on a deployment that would last for 7 months. I am not really a big email person, but I ensured that I had the email addresses of some of my closest friends so that I could keep in touch while away. For the first few months this seemed to be an efficient means of communication. You know friends and emails though. After a while the emails slowed and the news of friends going to the beach and enjoying summer seemed to only encourage home sickness.

Then came pownce. I signed up for my account and started meeting funny and interesting people right from the start. Over the months, I have learned a lot more about some of the individuals there than I know about some of my real life friends. I have exchanged advice and humiliating episodes in life with other users, and upon signing up for new social networks, I follow these friends there and they follow me.

I haven’t had a chance to personally meet any of my new social network friends yet, but it is very common for friends to meet up to hang out or go to an event or some sort. This makes social networks a bridge or another method of meeting new friends that in some cases end up being very close friends that you hang out with frequently.

I have met quite a few friends online these past few months that I would consider “close”, and that’s why the article I mentioned above, sparked my interest. Though some of them I may never actually meet, they are still friends that I share ideas with and spend time enjoying the daily activities in their lives.

Check out the article and let me know what you think!