Author: Ruud Hein

Piracy and the Future of Content

Piracy and the Future of Content

I love reading. Good books, great storytelling.

Movies. Movies too. From heart wrenching Sophie’s Choice to "must see again" Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Oh and music! Let’s not forget about music. Sure, you might want to after you see me do a silly high-hat groove-that-bass move in the kitchen – but music sure does add that *snap*, doesn’t it? Right on…

And have you seen some of these articles? Some issues of the New York Times read like a monthly magazine – only it comes out daily! Hellooo!

All this stuff, all this content comes from somewhere; it’s made by people who need to earn a solid, reliable long-term living. Just like you.

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Print the Evernote Note List with SnagIt [Printing]

Print the Evernote Note List with SnagIt [Printing]

Sometimes, like during the Weekly Review, I like to have a hardcopy of the note list (the top pane in the Evernote desktop client).

There’s no native option to print the note list but don’t let that stop you.

I use a “scrolling window” profile in the screen capture program SnagIt to capture the note titles I want to print.

In snagit I crop the list to only have the title and tags columns visible; you might have your own preference.

The note font is quite small but before printing you can play with the page setup: stretching the image makes it more readable at times.

During the Weekly Review I print out two of these lists: one with personal to do’s/someday’s, and one with work related to do’s/someday’s.

Make Your Own Query Language with Evernote Tags

Make Your Own Query Language with Evernote Tags

Finding back items in Evernote is usually as simple as typing something, anything, into the search box and seeing the results appear as you type.

For slightly deeper data digging some of us might be tagging our notes and use the [tag:] query to get to very specific notes.

The problem begins when you need that note with that Word document attached to it. Or when you want to pull all your notes with .ppt attachments.

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Evernote GTD How To

Evernote GTD How To

The following 15 minute setup enables you to use Evernote as a frictionless GTD list application. Easy entry, no multiple notebooks required. Works with you, not against you.

The setup features:

  • notebook independent setup: enter and use to do notes anywhere, anytime
  • Project List
  • list aggregating all next actions
  • @ context lists
  • Waiting For
  • Someday/Maybe
  • 5 “time required” levels & lists
  • done/audit list
  • toggle checkbox (/tag) to move items on/off the Someday/Maybe list

The description is for an old Windows desktop client, Evernote 3.1, but works anywhere Evernote does. Current versions of Evernote have no counts shown next to the saved searches: Evernote 3.1 gives a clear at-a-glance view of where you have how many open items.

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Creating & Keeping Persistent Digital Memories

Creating & Keeping Persistent Digital Memories

Recently I gave Rachel, one of my daughters, a collection of digital documents covering her teenage years and some of her childhood. The collection contains PDF’s, some saved HTML pages, WMV and MOV video’s, a few audio recordings in MP3 format and thousands of digital JPEG photos.

It’s a slice of a growing collection, a collection that encompasses the digitized memories of My Life. Thoughts, songs, clips, snapshots, links.

It’s a collection started in 1997 but by now containing items from long before that time; digitized photographs and video of my childhood and teen years, songs from back then, etc.

As time passed and the collection grew two main challenges emerged:

  • how do I make sure these items make it to my children?
  • where or how do they get the information about the items?

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Combined Searches: Powerful Data in TweetDeck

Combined Searches: Powerful Data in TweetDeck

As a data processor I just had to switch to TweetDeck. The built-in Twitscoop view is a constant finger on the pulse of the community’s conversation; I “see” a lot of news and events approaching this way before they hit the news.

Another great feature is built-in persistent searches. You can add searches the Tweets of which will appear in their own column.

A “drawback” — one is never satisfied — is that TweetDeck enforces a 10 column maximum. You’ll quickly run out of columns to add, having to delete a previous search to start to monitor a new topic.

Bundle Searches

Searches in TweetDeck are powered by search.twitter.com (the previous Summize).

The default operator applied is AND: evernote chrome.

tweetdeck search twitter and operator

But Twitter search recognizes the OR operator: economy OR coffee.

tweetdeck search twitter or operator

This gives you the ability to combine or collapse a number of searches into one and the same column, giving you “virtual unlimited columns” in TweetDeck.

Good candidates are searches which during most 48 hour periods, the timeframe TweetDeck considers, produce limited results. For example, I combine the streams for knowledge management and mindmapping.

Topics can be more thoroughly covered this way as well. Hot is The Economy at the moment but simply searching economy gives you a restricted view. economy OR recession OR “wall street” OR “credit crunch” is much wider, covers more ground.