Friday, March 09, 2007

Are You Using GMail for Taking Notes?

While I'm big on pencil and paper, and I enjoy sketching and planning ideas on paper, I'm also deadly good at losing papers in the quagmire that is my desk. So I'm looking for a way to take quick notes (like documenting phone conversations) electronically. Ideally, the solution should be:

- cross platform
- accessible from anywhere (ie. online)
- searchable
- simple to use


While I found a vast number of note-taking solutions, I'm leaning towards using Gmail. Here are some reasons why:

- I already use it extensively. No additional tools in the belt.
- I always have it open at work and at home, so it's quick to access.
- It's inherently dated and timed by virtue of being an email.
- It's Gmail so it's searchable and can be filtered.


I'm interested in making it a little more useful to me as a note-taking tool, so I'm trying to hone my use of shortcut keys, and I'm looking into how I can organize the subject line to make the Gmail filtering into a useful system.


Do you take notes? What do you use? Any ideas (or other sources) for using Gmail in this way? I'd appreciate the input.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Give this a look.
http://www.gtdgmail.com/

Shows how to categorize tasks and references using gmail's built in may to self functions.

Will Simpson

Anonymous said...

i dont use gmail, but i use google's notebook, its a nifty little thing am totally addicted to it. :) u must try it.

they even have a firefox extension plus u can have it open in ur sidebar too!