How to Keep Track of All Your Great Ideas

Evernote is a great tool for everything.

From Evernote's website: Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.

So what is Evernote good for? Simply put, everything. If you see it, you can organize it and file it away. Two months and another few hundred notes down the line, you can search for and find it. Save something on your iPhone, get it on the web later.

For example, you could use your iPhone to take a picture of every card in your old, falling-apart Rolodex. Or when you're at a trade show, save some paper - grab the business card from the vendors and contacts you're even remotely interested in, snap a photo, and file it away. Later you can take your time entering your new contacts into your CMS (contact manager software) of choice. (Or better yet, delegate the task to your assistant!)

You can also use Evernote to capture voice memos and type in text notes. Once you've done so, you can use tags to organize your notes, and even separate them into different notebooks. Everything you enter is automatically made searchable - even photos and handwritten notes!

Some of the other wonderful uses listed on Evernote's website are:
* Snap a photo of a business card with your phone, and have an easy way to store and access contacts.
* Capture plane tickets and confirmation numbers, hotel invoices, and receipts for your expense reports.
* Get inspired. Keep a file of anything cool you want to buy for yourself or as a gift, whether it's online or out in the real world.
* Keep notes from your meetings all in one place. Take a picture of a whiteboard and you'll be able to find it later.
* Plan your next trip. Clip web pages, maps, and itineraries. Capture sights, sounds, tastes, and anything else.
* Research web sites and clip pages directly from your browser.
* Keep a record of your favorite wines by snapping a photo of the label when you find one you like.
* Remember the things you were supposed to remember. Create to-do lists, jot down random thoughts, leave a voice memo, and more.
* Create notes right from Twitter and save tweets that you like by following @myEN on Twitter.

Posterous is currently my favorite way of keeping track of my story ideas. Since little snippets of life and media are constantly making me think, "Gosh, that would make a great story," I need a way to note them down wherever I am, without a special tool at hand.

In comes Posterous.com. I signed up for a free account, and registered my email addresses. Now, whenever I send an email to "post@posterous.com", a post goes straight to my blog. I can add tags to each post - also without having to log into a separate system.

When you decide you need a blog for different topics instead of just separating things with tags, you can sign up for another blog from the same email address. Then you'll get a different email - something like "post@abc.posterous.com" - to email your blogs to. Posterous automatically separates them.

If you already have a blog and decide you absolutely love Posterous and want it to be your one true Blog Love? You can import a huge variety of other blogs into your Posterous.com account. I switched my WordPress blog over after I discovered how cool it is. You can switch 14 different blogs over, including: Ning, Tumblr, TwitPic, TypePad, WordPress, LiveJournal, Blogger, and ActiveRain.

OneNote is a great tool - if you're willing to shell out the cash.

Generally I only like to feature free or low-cost services, but OneNote is a great tool, and worth taking a look into, especially if you've already paid for the super-mega Microsoft Office version that OneNote comes with.

OneNote is a lot like Evernote - except imagine that you're given an unlimited size sheet of paper, that you're allowed to clip other files to it, paste pictures on it, and type wherever you want, even if it then exceeds normal paper sizes.

That's OneNote.

OneNote also lets you create Notebooks (like Evernote), Tabs within your Notebooks, Pages within your Tabs, and Subpages within your Pages. There's a lot of organizational structure there, and more ways than I can imagine to implement it.

And just when you thought there was nothing more to say, you can share OneNote between computers using services like Dropbox.com, synching it across multiple computers...like Evernote.

Oh, how I love thee, notebook of mine. I like spiral ones and journal ones. Lined ones and blank ones and grid ones. I like cute ones and ugly ones, cheap ones and leather ones. Basically, you would be hard pressed to find a notebook I don't like.

From my seat here in my living room, I actually count 18. And I could tell you where there are another three that I can't see.

It's a bit of a problem, sometimes.

But notebooks are great. You can have one per subject, or just have one that you use for all the notes you encounter during the day. Sure, they aren't high-tech, but then again, they don't have "fatal server errors", either. You don't have to worry about dropping them, or getting them wet - that just gives them a little character.

When I think journal, I think diary. That little thing with a lock on the side that girls keep and that keeps getting them into trouble.

Journals don't have to be that. Journals can be just really nice books of blank paper that you use to take notes, write a novel, a lot of anything.

I use proper journals in fits - very rarely do I actually use a journal as a journal anymore. My father has been using journals for years, however. Recently he was able to use all his entries as the basis for a novel.

Whatever your use for a novel, it's note-taking abilities are not hampered by the fact that they're packaged as a way to track your dreams, record what you eat, what you feel, or even just what you need to buy at the store this afternoon.