NOTE-TAKING APPLICATIONS

Evernote is by far the leader in note-taking. That is not to say that there is no other player. Microsoft One Note, for instance, comes bundled with Microsoft Office. Evernote is free by default, unless you need more features. This application lets you type in notes, and has a voice recorder function so you can also record a talk while writing notes. It can also sync with the camera of your smart device to take pictures of the speaker or the notes or any other documents. You can attach PDF files, Word files, and images, and you can annotate them as well. Once you are done with a note, you can share it, stack it into a collection and tag it with smart tags. Evernote also runs OCR on images that contain text, which gets converted into searchable text.
 

Voice recorders are passe when you have a cellphone. But there is more to voice notes than just recording

In this digital day and age, are you still taking pen and paper notes? And are you racking your brain about some bit of
DIGITAL PENS
Pen and stationery maker Staedtler has a digital pen priced at 11,500. It clips a receiver to the top of your note pad, and records whatever you write. You can later connect the receiver to your computer via USB, and download the notes in digital format. It saves about 100 pages of A4 text. The downside is that you have to physically take notes. You miss something, and it stays missed. It works on normal paper, but only with a Windows PC.
An alternative is the Live Scribe Sky WiFi Smart Pen (starting at $169.95 or about 10,500). It has built-in WiFi, so you can synchronise notes to your smartphone anywhere. You can a lecture that you missed noting down. Why don’t you look at some options outside the tradition of notes and dictaphones, which really do what needs to be done, and maybe find the perfect way of note taking. record with the built-built in micromicro phonephone as well, to create a voice backup.
Listen to the notes via an in-built speaker or plug in your headphones. The 2GB variant can hold 200 hours of recording,. The downside is that the pen needs to be charged, and works only with a s pecial paper, which makes it expensive. On the other hand, you don’t miss a word. All you write is recorded, and it works with several apps.

YOUR SMARTPHONE

Make sure your phone has enough battery, turn on the voice recorder, there you are. You can write physical notes simultaneously, and at the end of the lecture, you can take photos of the notes. Voila! You have a slideshow, with audio! The lecture/ talk/interview needs to be audible enough,
though.
If you have a Google account, you can shoot the pictures with the Google Drive application, which uses your camera as a scanner and create PDFs of the notes. There are other apps that does this as well.

STYLUSES
Options include Wacom Creative (`6,475), which is great for drawing though maybe not for writing, and Jot Script from Adonit ($74.99) which claims a finer 1.9 mm tip compared to the 6 mm on standard styluses. But it is not available in India.
Speaking from experience, it is much fasterfa to type on a tablet and then the annotate using fingers or a stylus.sty Writing with a stylus is stillsti a cumbersome affair.

A PERFECT SOLUTION?

1. Snap pictures with your smartphone camera, rather than cutting out articles from magazines etc. Upload these to Evernote.
2. Use a digital pen such as the Live Scribe WiFi Sky to draw on paper or take notes that can be digitised later.
3. Use a stylus to draw on screen and to annotate notes.
4. If it is vital, you can get the voice-notes transcribed using a dedicated online service. It is an expensive proposition, though.