Easily Record Your Flashes of Inspiration
There’s one thing I’m never short of, and that’s ideas! There are thousands of them flowing around inside my head at any time of the day and night… That makes it very interesting when I’m trying to get to sleep sometimes too!
And as I surf around the ‘net and do my “research” I always come across LOTS of other great ideas that I might want to “do” something with later.
Up until now, I’ve been using a simple Notepad/text file to record the URL’s and ideas… but the trouble with that is that it lives on my PC, so if I’m out and about somewhere and come up with “the next big thing”, I’ve got nowhere to record my thoughts (yeah, I KNOW… but I’m not really a pen and paper person anymore).
Enter… Stage Left…
Google Notebook!
This is a free, web-based service from Google which allows you to record your thoughts and URLs into “notebooks” which you can then save.
The beaut thing is… they’re accessible from any computer connected to the net – just sign into your free Google account to get to them.
Once you get a pile of these notes happening, there’s a search feature that brings up the stuff you want instantly!
And if you are a Firefox user – you ARE using Firefox as you primary web browser aren’t you??? – then you’ll want to download the free Firefox plugin that allows you to open your Google Notebook as you are surfing… ready to simply jot down the details you want! Dead easy!
Your notes can stay private, however if you want, you can make them publicly accessible from the web.
You can also invite OTHER people in to collaborate on a particular notebook (they’ll need a Google account too) so they can add comments to your notebook.
What a great idea!
And have a look at the Web History option while you are there… It records the dates, times and pages you visit, but what I found extra exciting was that it also allows you to do a keyword search on those pages you’ve been to!
So now… that “whatsimagidget” you were looking at on the web a few days ago… or last week… and can’t find anymore?
Found!
Try out Google Notebook and Google Web History and let me know how you go with them!
P.S. If you are in any way concerned about someone recording your web browsing history being a breach of privacy – it CAN be turned off or paused. But if you are that concerned, you shouldn’t use the service in the first place!
And thanks to Lee McIntyre for this useful tip!
Comments
2 Responses to “Easily Record Your Flashes of Inspiration”
Got something to say?
Great post Stephen and thanks for the reference.
The web history tip is a great one. I had this turned off as I didn’t know you could search past sites in the way you described.
That’s a brilliant tip so thanks for sharing 🙂
Lee McIntyre
The web history option is a lot better than just bookmarking a site in your web browser – although it does have a bookmark option as well!
And looking over your web history will tell you where you might be wasting a lot of your time too 🙂