The Other Stuff http://darrenprince.posterous.com assorted randomalia by darren prince posterous.com Sat, 29 Jan 2011 12:48:00 -0800 Saving Quotes With Evernote [Workflows] http://darrenprince.posterous.com/workflows-saving-quotes-with-evernote http://darrenprince.posterous.com/workflows-saving-quotes-with-evernote
A few friends have asked me recently how I use Evernote to organize quotes I come across for future writing, speaking or whatever.

One of the great things about Evernote as a platform is its ability to make “capture” really easy. It’s the perfect tool for archiving and accessing those savory quotes you come across as you go about your daily life. But how do you get them in there to start with?

Well, it’s worth considering how you tend to “find” quotes you like in the first place. I’ve found my great quote clips come from a number of sources.

Consider the Sources
 1) Twitter - Yeah, there’s a lot of drivel out there, but Twitter has ended up being a great place to “follow” some notable quotables. (Some of my favorites include: @chspurgeon@CSLewisDaily, or @NeverTheTwains.

2) Personal Reading - by far my biggest source of “capture” - when I’m reading I have a way of noting to myself that there’s a quote I want to go back and write down sometime.

3) The Web - This could include anything from blogs to news articles to white papers, etc.

4) Conversations With People - Sometimes things you hear people around you say, whether in conversation, creative meetings, or during sermons, etc. are worth saving for later!

The Process
There are several parts to making notable quotables useful to yourself in Evernote. Most of this is a riff on the principles behind David Allen’s, Getting Things Done. You find it’s one thing to save a bunch of quotes, but if you can’t quickly access them later when you need them, what good is it? That’s why all three steps are important:

1) Capture - get those quotes into a trusted system so that it all ends up in one place.

2) Process - name, tag and store those quotes in a way that ensures you’ll find them when you need them.

3) Search - quickly and reliably find your way back to those quotes for just the right moment.

Today I’ll just talk about what “Capture” looks like for me, using Evernote.

1) Copy and Paste
By far the simplest and smoothest way to get quotes into Evernote is by using good old Command+C and Control-Command-V to cut and paste. I use this for web quotes and even from PDF documents (using Preview for Mac) and Word documents. It’s a simple as cut-and-paste, but when you add in the “Control-Command-V” it opens Evernote and  pastes to a new note in the background. (This has become muscle memory for me.)

Evernote_clipping_preferences_
You can change your clipping Preferences in the drop down menu-bar icon, or in the application itself. That screen looks like this:
Evernote_clipping_preferences
2) Email it in . . .
I know that seems painfully obvious, but the magic is learning where to apply it. First off, every Evernote user has a personally assigned email address that allows them to mail in whatever they want into their account. Look for that address under Evernote>>Account Info
Account_info_2
So here’s what’s great about that. If you’re using an iOS device (or anything similar) and you come across a great quote in Twitter, just click on the button that lets you email the Tweet and select your Evernote address (hopefully you’ve saved it in your Contacts list, right?) and away it goes!
So this Twitter quote . . .
Photo_2
After you choose this option . . .
Photo_1
Looks like this . . .
Photo_3_2
And ends up as an Evernote note that looks like this . . .

 

Cslewisdaily_1-29-11_17-33
I usually go in and clean up some of that extra Twitter-fluff that comes along with the mail-in process. (Not that I don't like that pic of Lewis and all, but really).

By the way, this email-in flow works great with saving/archiving whole articles or blogposts when using Safari “Reader” view and emailing in the note from Mail.app. I also love the RSS app for iPhone called “Reeder” which lets you email in a whole blog post AND pre-select an automatic email address. So whole articles can go straight to Evernote in just a few screen taps.

3) While Reading A Book . . .
I tend to make marginal notes as I read books (paper ones) which serve as symbols or clues to myself later that there’s a particular quote I want to go back and capture. Lately the “code” for “this is a great quote!” is a box drawn in the margins with quotes around it. 

Something like this: “[]”

The box looks like a task - so I can check it off later to tell myself that I’ve entered it in. The quotes mean it’s a good quote!

Rather than put the book down and go to Evernote every time I come across a good quote, I leave these marks and go back through when I’ve finished the book. It takes a little time, but the entry process helps me remember the highlights of the book and forces me to be choosy about what gets saved for later!

The easiest and best way to do this is just by creating a new text note either in the desktop Evernote client or your mobile app. I have experimented with taking a photo snapshot of the quote or page and emailing it in to Evernote (something you can do from the mobile app). Truthfully, the images end up being searchable, meaning you can actually find any word in that photo later once it’s in Evernote. But it’s hard work getting a good photo to come through on the page, and I often end up wishing I’d just written it down.

4) On an eReader like Kindle
One of my new favorite tricks is getting quotes in while reading on Kindle - which has multiple formats besides the Kindle device itself. While your’e reading Kindle you can highlight and make notes, all of which get saved on your Kindle site at Amazon. From there it’s as easy as going in and doing the copy and paste trick I mentioned earlier.

However, since Amazon lets you “share” your quotes via Twitter you can actually integrate it with Evernote as well. I tend to be a private person, so not all of my saved quotes are for public consumption (yet) so use a direct message to @myen to get it into my Evernote account.

That might sound complex but it’s actually pretty simple. 
1) Set up your Evernote account to integrate with Twitter
2) Set up your Kindle to integrate with Twitter
3) then as you’re reading in Kindle, hit ALT+Return to “share” and type in the following:

d @myen

From there whatever quote you highlighted will head straight for your Evernote account.

Well, not exactly. It ends up as a link that looks something like this:

With that in your Evernote account, click the link then do the good-old “Paste to Evernote” clip I outlined above. That’s a long process from the sound of it, but I’m thinking it’s a huge time saver compared to manually going back through a book to type in good notes, know what I mean?

5) Everywhere else . . .
Lastly, if I’m in a productive meeting, hear a great sermon, or one of my very clever friends starts waxing eloquent, I often grab quotes straight into my Moleskine journal or a small Field Notes pocket journal I carry with me at all times. The same handwritten code applies here as it does to books: the square “to-do” box with the quotes around it.

The critical part of this system is getting them from your journal or notebook into Evernote. So I’ve built it into my GTD “Weekly Review” process . . . to go back through my journal and scrub for any quotes I need to enter into Evernote for later. Once you get into the habit of doing this every week, it doesn’t feel right skipping it - and you get the pleasure of crossing off those quote-boxes like finished to-do items once they’re in there!

I supposed if I had good enough hand-writing I could scan in my notes every week and let Evernote do the searching, but that’s not likely going to happen. Also, I suppose you could use the iPhone app in Evernote to take an audio note and record the sound clip while someone is talking - but that doesn’t end up converted into searchable text, so probably not very practical.

Okay, you’ve got all that great stuff into Evernote now; what are you going to do with it? I’ll tackle part two of the quote-magic on another day: Processing Quotes in Your Inbox.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/186485/DP_Headshot_2009.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN3mk0JZkZ Darren Prince darrenprince Darren Prince
Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:40:34 -0800 Best of 2010: Favorite iPhone Apps http://darrenprince.posterous.com/best-of-2010-favorite-iphone-apps http://darrenprince.posterous.com/best-of-2010-favorite-iphone-apps

I still maintain that the iPhone was one of the best purchases I ever made.  That's going to sound strange coming from a guy whose life calling is incarnational mission among the poor and marginalized, but I'd be prepared to defend it if necessary.  For one thing this single device has replaced several other potential gadgets and gizmos our family would likely use on a regular basis: it is our camera, our video recorder, our gaming device, our home stereo, our eReader and much more. Secondly, the pricing structure here in the UK is actually much more reasonable than the non-competitive pricing plans offered by the Apple+AT&T combo in the US.

Okay, justifications aside, let me share with you some of my favorite and most-used apps from 2010, in no particular order.  (One note: links below will directly open the iTunes app store. Oh, and most of these should work fine on an iPod Touch too, so keep reading even if you don't have an iPhone!)

1) Omnifocus for iPhone

I could probably do a whole write up on how I capture, organize and track all the tasks I have listed within the multiple projects I'm managing at one time.  But for now I'll just say that OmniFocus has become "command central" for all my project and action lists.  Yes, it is primarily a Mac platform, and yes there are other options out there (which I've tried), but the iPhone app is pretty slick and automatically synchronizes "through the cloud" with the desktop client.  If you're a GTD enthusiast and you're ready to bump your game to the next level, this is the one for you. Don't let the complexity of Omnifocus in general throw you off - there's a whole mindset behind the software which takes some getting used to before mastery.  I'd suggest reading David Allen's Getting Things Done, or better yet Making It All Work to immerse yourself - then dive into Omnifocus and make use of some of their helpful screencast tutorials to get you off and running.

2) Reeder

Maybe you haven't quite gotten the hang of subscribing to your friends' blogs through RSS using a free tool like Google Reader.  I understand - sounds complicated, right?  The thing is, isn't it a pain to check everybody's blog all the time to see if they've updated recently?  Plus organizing all those bookmarks?  Once I got the hang of just clicking the "Subscribe" button on websites and organizing things in Google Reader, the data deluge became much more manageable.  Reeder for iPhone (by the way, they've got a sweet Mac desktop version in beta right now) pulls all that data from your Google Reader account and puts it on your phone in an attractive, minimalistic view that just lets you read your favorite content without distraction.  Plus it incorporates some very easy other services you might be into, like saving to Instapaper, mailing to Evernote, etc. Definitely give it a try!

3) Vonage Mobile

The Prince fam has been solid Vonage fans for several years now (since 2004 or 2005 even?) It's what allows us to make free, unlimited calls to our friends and families in the US using a VOIP service similar to Skype - only it functions through our telephone lines (and phones) rather than our computers.  Vonage also lets our friends and families dial our long-held 415 number and ring us here in England at no international charges to them.  Pretty neat.  Since we're already Vonage customers, the mobile app allows me to make unlimited, free calls to the US from my iPhone anywhere where I have available wifi access.  In other words, if I'm at home or at work I can dial up someone in the US and not be charged a penny - as well as not have it count against my mobile minutes either.  It's a great money saver.  (Oh, and Vonage and Facebook recently teamed up to offer a nifty service where you can call your FB friends for free using this app as well - pretty sweet.  Check out http://www.vonagemobile.com/ to see what I'm talking about).

4) Egretlist + Evernote

It's not often I chose an app based purely on aesthetics, but Egretlist comes close.  They basically created one of the slickest, most visually stunning integrations with Evernote (one of my favorite clipping, storing and filing services) I've ever seen.  If you like making lists, or are a moleskin journal junkie, you'll love this one.  To get a better feel for Evernote in general, poke around on their website (and they're on many platforms as well; I'm looking at YOU PC-using friends!).  Basically, Egretlist has made tedious checklists (like my "packing-for-travel" list) fun and easy to use.

5) Google Voice app

I realize I'm using all kinds of weird telephony workflows here, but essentially when you live in one country but a lot of your work (and family/friends!) are in other countries, you get creative with how to call people or be called without breaking the bank.  Enter Google Voice, which is not available outside the US but then again, what if you happen to have a US based phone number because of Vonage or Skype?  Teehee!  There are some limitations to what you can do with GoogleVoice for iPhone when you're not in the US (like it won't dial out from my mobile), but the way I use it most is for free, unlimited texting to US-based numbers without paying a single cent in either country. That's right . . . FREE.  So if you don't want to bother with google voice but just want to turn your phone into an unlimited texting machine, give it a try.  (Also, there are several other great alternatives to the free google app - one of my favorites is called GV Connect).

BONUS: GAMES!

I probably sound like all work and no play (what with the money-saving telephony tricks and the obsession with productivity), so just to round things out a bit, here are some of the highly addictive iOS games I, ahem, I mean my kids and I enjoy playing together.

  • Angry Birds - no way to describe the fun of launching cartoon birds at round green pigs.  plus, they're great at updating and adding more levels.
  • Plants v. Zombies - one of my friends describes this game as stressful because you're constantly in crisis management . . . try and build your garden to stop the zombies from reaching your back door, entering your house and eating your brains.
  • Battleship - yeah, the classic game - which is loads of fun just on pass-and-play but even more fun when another i-Device is in the room and you can battle it out over Bluetooth or wifi. Jesse, my 7 year-old, loves it.
  • Solipskier - this was a late entry in the 2010 favorites list . . . I didn't get turned on to it until just a couple weeks ago.  lets just say it has ruined my ambitious holiday reading goals, but then again it has meant more fun time playing games with the kids, right?!?

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/186485/DP_Headshot_2009.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN3mk0JZkZ Darren Prince darrenprince Darren Prince