When that is the case, you need something like http://xournal.sourceforge.net/. Xournal is a “note taking” application that can be used for just about anything: school notes, random sketching, journals, etc. It’s very easy to use and, although in its early stages of development, seems to be rather stable and fun to use. In this article I am going to show you how to install and start using Xournal.

Installation

As you have grown to expect, the installation of Xournal is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “xournal” (no quotes).
3. Mark Xournal for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.
5. When the installation is complete, close the Add/Remove Software tool.

Once installed you are ready to begin taking copious notes.

Usage

Figure 1

To start Xournal click Applications > Accessories > Xournal. When the application window opens you will know exactly what you are in for (see Figure 1). Once the main window is open you are ready to start taking notes.

By default the tool selected is the pencil. You can jot down your notes with that tool or you can switch to a standard keyboard entry by clicking the “T” icon. After you have entered (or scribbled) notes you can go back and highlight notes using the highlighter tool, you can add basic shapes, you can change paper color or even paper style (lined, unlined, graph, etc).

Button mapping

A really nice feature of Xournal is that while the left button is your pencil (or highlighter), the left button acts as an erase. With this you don’t have to go back to the toolbar and switch tools. You can just click and hold the right button and erase.

You can switch the button mapping by clicking Options and then selecting either Button 2 Mapping or Button 3 Mapping. Within these sub menus you can select exactly what that button will do. NOTE: Remember, if you do not have a scroll wheel, button 3 on a Linux machine is buttons 1 and 2 pressed simultaneously.

Other features

Another nice feature of Xournal is the ability to export to PDF format. This allows you to easily share or print your notes. To do this click File > Export to PDF.

If you have a tablet input device you can also set Xournal to use pressure sensitivity. Without the tablet input, pressure sensitivity is pretty much worthless.

Final thoughts

If you are a student or anyone else that needs a tool for fast note taking, sketching, or even journaling, Xournal is a great tool to get this job done. With plenty of options, you should be able to keep any type of notes you need.

Gnote was cloned from Tomboy (to remove the Mono dependency), is used on the GNOME desktop, and uses a wiki-like interface. Gnote is simple to use and reliable. In this article I am going to introduce you to this tool so that all users of Fedora do not miss out on it’s handiness.

Features

Gnote offers plenty of features for you lovers of the note:

• Auto hyperlinking of matching words in body to note titles.
• Searching.
• Note linking.
• Plugins.
• Styles.
• Bulleted lists.
• Undo.

And plenty more.

Installation

If you are using Fedora 13 you have nothing to do for installation. It’s already there, just waiting on your panel for you to click it and use it. No configuration necessary…just click and use. For those not using Fedora 13 you can install Gnote (so long as you are using GNOME) with a command similar to this:

sudo apt-get install gnote

You can modify the above command to match your distribution. If you’d rather install from source, download the code from the Gnote download page and run the following commands (From within the directory Gnote was downloaded into):

• tar xvzf gnote-XXX.tar.gz (where XXX is the release number).
• cd gnote-XXX (where XXX is the release number).
• ./configure
• make
• sudo make install (NOTE: If do not use sudo, su to the root user first and then run make install).

Once installed you will probably need to add Gnote to your panel.

Usage

Figure 1

There are two ways to open Gnote: Click <Alt>F12 or right-click the panel icon and select Create New Note. When you do this the Gnote window will open to a new note titled New Note * (Where * is a number). You will notice, when you click the panel icon, the menu has a few interesting options (see Figure 1). From here you can quickly access most recent notes, access your notebooks, and search your notes.

Figure 2

When you do open up the Gnotebook main window (see Figure 2) you will see just how simple this tool is to use.

One of the best ways I have found to use Gnote is to first create Notebooks that will organize your notes into categories. Once you’ve done that you can start create notes within each notebook by clicking Gnote Icon > Notebooks > New * note Where * is the title of your notebook.

When you do create new notes, make sure you give that note a good title. Figure 2 shows the title of that particular note being “New Note 4″. That title would be worthless because the changes of me using the text “New Note 4″ in another note is slim. Why is this important? One of the features of Gnote is that when you type text within a note that is the same as the title of another note a hyperlink is automatically generated linking that text to that note. It’s a personal Wiki right on your desktop!

Final thoughts

Gnote is the perfect tool for keeping track of your thoughts and organizing your notes. I have found this tool to be indispensable for work and for home. Give Gnote a try and you might find yourself as dependent upon it as I have.

A click on the New Note entry will display a new post it note on the desktop. This note can be moved around freely and is always on top by default. Several formatting options are available to create lists, bold text, change colors or change the font size. It is furthermore possible to change the size of the note itself.

A right-click displays additional options that include docking the note to the computer screen, adding it to favorites or configuring notifications.

It is possible to create multiple notes and place them in different locations on the computer desktop. Notifications and other settings can be edited in the preferences. Users can for example enable transparency effects, different skins, fonts and colors, define docking behavior or add hotkeys for faster access of some of the program’s features.

PNotes is a feature rich Open Sourcesoftware program to post notes on the computer desktop. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Evernote

Everyone, it seems, has covered Evernote in the past, talking about how great it is, how to use it, and all of its wonderful features. You’d think it would have been done to death by now, right?

Nope. Here are six features of Evernote that are equally awesome and useful, that don’t get the press or coverage they deserve.

Saved Searches

One of the great features of Evernote is the ability to use Notebooks and tags to sort all of your notes – its organization features are among the reasons it’s so useful. Saved Searches add even more functionality to tags and notebooks, because it lets you weed out only exactly what you want. You can search for, say, everything in your “School” Notebook that doesn’t have a “History” tag, or only things that are tagged with “To Do” and are in either your “Home” or “Office” notebook. The more notes you have, the harder it can be to weed out exactly what you want – Saved Searches are a lifesaver.

To create a saved search, right-click on the left side of the Evernote client, and select “New Saved Search.” Then, enter your parameters, and you’re set!

Sub-Tags

Within a given tag, you can create sub-tags that will make it even easier to sort what you’re looking for. To do so, right-click on a given tag and click “Create tag in ___”. You can create as many tags as you want within a given tag.

I have a ton of tags within my Evernote, but sub-tags lets me put them all underneath the general topic of what I want. This isn’t so much a feature as it is a way to further organize your notes under umbrellas, to be able to access all the appropriate ones at the same time, in the same place.

Global Shortcuts

This is the single most-used thing in my Evernote workflow. From any window or application on your desktop, a particular keystroke (that you create) can create a new note in Evernote, clip a screenshot into Evernote, or paste selected text right into Evernote. This means getting information into Evernote is super fast and simple, and makes Evernote the easiest place on your desktop to put information.

HTML Export

One worry I hear from people, when I tell them to use Evernote, is “what if it goes away?” It’s a fair point, as Web apps are prone to up and disappear without any warning. With Evernote, though, there’s no worry. First, because the desktop app works offline, and will still function even if something happens to Evernote.

And second, there’s no worry because Evernote lets you export notes to HTML. Most other applications will read an HTML file, so exporting it that way makes it easy to import into another application, or even keep accessible on your hard drive. Thanks to this export, there’s no fear of ever losing your Evernote data – you just might, possibly, one day, have to move it around a bit.

To-Do Lists

Since Evernote is aiming to be your “second brain,” your place to keep everything in your head and in your life, it’s a natural place to keep a to-do list. All the information is there; why not have your action items there too? Evernote does a great job with this – you can easily, with a mouse-click or keyboard shortcut, create a checkbox next to any line of text.

You can also search for to-do items, and keep track of any number of lists within Evernote. It’s flexible, easy to add to and edit, and a perfect solution for to-do lists simple and complex.

Formatting Goodness

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Evernote actually works fantastically as a word processor. It’s not especially feature-rich, but it has all of the basics you’d need when you’re writing – font, color, size, bold, italics, underline, justifications, bulleted lists, and even tables can all be featured in your documents. They’re all saved automatically into Evernote; it’s great for writing everything from a journal to a novel.

What about Evernote works (or doesn’t work) for you?

I am not a huge fan of mobile computing (as in phones), but Evernote is one app I would use myself. Phones basically suck for surfing. I mean the biggest smartphones still have tiny screens, so, at least for me, mobile surfing is a long way away. However, I do frequently have the urge to jot down a few things, which I currently can’t really do. Evernote is a huge help in this, and now that you can take it with you on your BlackBerry everywhere (or you iPhone), taking notes are as easy as… well, taking notes should be.

The best part of the deal is obviously that you can sync fully with your PC version, and this is the selling point for me. I can write notes on the fly, view some in offline mode, take a pic right into the app, or create a quick voice note. This is an especially big help for me, since I usually drive places, which inhibits my texting capabilities.

Anyway, Evernote is a great note taking app weather you use it on your PC, on you Phone, online or offline, so take a look!

You can use a simple key to add a quick note, just select any text and press ctr+shift+q. Your note will be instantly created, which you can then edit, add a subject to and save. This is not so new, a lot of apps offer this functionality, but the little things that Quotepad offers add a lot of extra to the program.

Just as an example, clicking the taskbar icon brings up a note list. Clicking it again (or double clicking) brings up the interface to add a new note. Simple, but very effective and efficient use interface. You can mark notes, have the whole window stay on top, change color schemes, change reading order, use filters to narrow your notes, Quotepad can become a great research tool, not just a copy-paste companion!

I find it very useful when I’m thinking about post ideas. Even with tools like Google Reader, it is sometimes hard to keep track of what I want to write about, and a quick copy paste into Quotepad is a big help, firstly because I can paste the intro paragraph from a blog post, or a description from the app main page. Quotepad shows the source of the text, so I can save the url copy-pasting time. I can then narrow by keyword, making all my blogging work much easier and faster.

The Tomboy feature set includes:

• Notebook Creation: Keep notes organized in notebooks.
• Quick Access: Open Tomboy quickly from the panel icon.
• Table of Contents: All notes are arranged in order of creation.
• Search: Search all of your notes.
• Formatting: Format text, even add bullets and indenting.
• Synchronize your notes: Either with a local file, ssh, or on a WebDAV-enabled server.
• Plugins: Add plugins to Tomboy to extend its functionality.

Getting and Installing

The quickest way to install Tomboy is to open up the Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for Tomboy, select the results, and click Apply. Once Tomboy is installed there is one other piece of software you will need to install, and that is mono-addins. If you do not install this final app Tomboy will install but will not run.

Tomboy Applet

Once you have Tomboy installed log out and log back in and you will see the applet living in the GNOME Panel (in the Notification Area as shown in the image to the left.) The applet is the yellow “note” with the pencil. If you left click on that you will see a small menu appear with three option entries at the top and, below the separator, a list of the newest notes.

Left click menu.

If you know you are going to be a power-user you might want to first create a few notebooks in order to keep the mass of notes you will generate organized.

To create a new notebook just click on the Notebooks submenu and select New Notebook. Once you have a notebook created you can go to the Notebooks menu and click the Create Note entry for whichever notebook you want to create a note for.

Synchronize Your Notes

This is my favorite feature of Tomboy. I tend to use ssh to handle the sync details. In order to sync with ssh you have to install sshfs on your system. To do this open up the Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for sshfs, select Fuze-Filesystem, and apply the changes.

SSH Sync options

Once you have installed that you might want to either kill tomboy or log out and log in. If you do not do this Tomboy will not be able to find sshfs. Once you are ready right click the Tomboy applet, select Preferences, go to the Synchronization tab, select SSH from the dropdown, and fill out the necessary information.

One of the nicest aspects of Tomboy is the ability to sync your notes from one machine to another. You can set up synchronization from the Preferences window (accessed from the right click on the Tomboy applet.)

Once you hit Save you will be asked for the remote user password.

In the Folder Path, if both local and remote machines have Tomboy installed, you might select ~/.tomboy if you want to use the same directory on each machine. You will also have to set up both machines for ssh syncing (if you plan on using ssh).

Using WebDAV is the easiest, but it will require a WebDAV server setup.

Final Thoughts

I try very hard to keep myself organized. Tomboy is one of the many tools I use to accomplish a semblance of organization. I am fairly confident once you try Tomboy you will find it one of those tools you can’t go without.

The main interface makes use of tabs to categorize notes into different subjects. The window is fully scalable to display as many information as needed on the screen at once. Several skins are available to change the design of the desktop notes taking application. There is also an option to change the opacity of the window.

What makes the application stand out are its features though. Some of the more interesting ones are the ability to define hotspots that will display the desktop notes taking applications if the mouse is hovered there for a time, url highlighting, the automatic ability to capture clipboard items and paste them into a pre-configured tab in the application or reminders that can inform the user about a specific event in regular intervals using various means including sounds or popups.

The desktop notes taking application can be downloaded from the official homepage of the software developer. It is compatible with most versions of the Windows operating system including Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. No information about Windows Vista on the developers homepage.

Click 2 Log It created by TINJAW was a contribution to the Donation Coder Nany Challenge. The application is available in the system tray if it is running. A left-click writes a new note while a right-click opens a context menu with the option to change the text that will be logged from now on.

It’s a little bit complicated – I think – that a left-click is not opening a form where you can enter a log text by yourself but you get used to that. Maybe the author reads this article and will update his version with this option, it would be great.

Another thing that bothers me is the sound that is played whenever a new log entry is created. It would be great if it would be possible to turn off the sound completely. Still, the application is nice and fast and makes my life easier. With the proposed changes it would simply rock.

Knot is a small application that displays notes on the desktop. Those notes can stay on top if you want and you can start Knot with Windows so that your notes appear instantly after system start. It does have some fancy options like different colors and shadows for the notes as well as multi-monitor and network support.

Users can create new notes by pressing F4 when a note is active which is my biggest problem with that application. I prefer a system wide shortcut that would create a new note instantly. The method Knot is offering is still better than the previous one using text documents.

Does anyone know a desktop notes application that is lightweight and offers system wide shortcuts ? I would like to use an application that would create a new note whenever I press a keyboard shortcut and that would allow me to write down notes afterwards instantly.

Shock Sticker is an old application. You can see that if you try to install it, the installation menu looks like Windows 95 but it works fine. Once installed a small icon in your system tray appears which creates a new sticker when left-clicking it. A right-click displays a menu with additional options such as to display all created stickers, creating or changing the password or saving everything that has been created.

Newly created stickers have a title bar and a text area. You can write as much text as you want into the text area but for the sake of quickly looking notes up I would suggest to keep it as short as possible. Basic text editing possibilities can be used, those include changing the font and the color of the font.

The title of the sticker can be modified by hitting F2 or left-clicking the upper-left icon which opens a menu with the option to do so. All notes can be made sticky which means that they will always be on top.

Clicking the minimize icon shrinks the note so that only the title is shown. Another click changes the size to the default one again. Setting a password might be a good idea if you write down personal notes. If no password is set everyone can read all the notes that you have created with Shock Sticker.

If a password is set the password has to be entered before a note can be viewed or edited.

Shock Sticker is a good but basic way of keeping notes in a Post-It like format on your PC.

Read More:

Shock Sticker
via Freeware Genius

The main advantage that I can think of is that it is easier to protect the software diary with passwords, this can’t be done with a notebook. You could hide the notebook but if someone finds it the information are all there. Another advantage is that it is easier to add pictures and links to the software diary although you could as well ad stuff like this to the notebook too which would probably grow to big if you add lots of pictures and paper to it.

Using iDaily Diary is pretty easy. You set a password at first start and may read the tutorial that is presented afterwards. The interface looks similar to Word, the main difference is a calendar that is added at the bottom of the page. You can easily switch to entries using that calendar.

Writing entries is done like in any other text processing application. You can format text, use pictures, tables and links and all the other benefits that word processing programs offer. Diary pages can be exported to html if desired, this could be useful if you want to publish them on your personal website.

New Tasks can contain a description and subject, dates which have been mentioned before, a budget, attachments, categories and a set behavior (auto completion of task when all children are complete). Tasks can be sorted in various ways, filters can be applied and they can be exported in html, xml and calendar format.

It is open source and versions for windows, linux and mac exist.

source: winaddons

Ipodlibrary is able to import txt, doc, lit and html documents avoiding the 1000 notes limit of the iPod (by setting some to inactive which means that they do not count against the limit). It keeps track of the position that you are currently at which makes it easy to continue where you left of.

You have two options to create a new note. First you can right click the A note icon and select new note or double click the icon which has the same effect. Another great feature is that you can make the notes transparent in windows xp and NT.