just an asterisk

When I write for JAA, I often visit a plethora of articles, from Wikipedia to the New York Times, in an effort to see if there’s any interest in the subject of the day.  Once I start researching, my notes tend to get a bit scattered: handwritten reminders on my trusty pad or links sent to my Gmail.  Moreover, for each site, I worry slightly that I’ve missed something – what phrase exactly did I want to quote again…?  By the time I sit down to write, my thoughts are spread around and require some serious consolidation.

 

Recently, I’ve discovered a solution… I have found a free new toy, something that has greatly improved my ability to research these articles.  It’s a simple product called WebNotes.net (.net not .com, just in case you can’t find it…) and it’s pretty nifty.  Here’s a rundown of what you get.

The Setup

The first step after you signup for WebNotes, is to download either the toolbar (which is a straightforward install) or a bookmark for your browser.  The latter is actually a fancy pants sort of piece of code disguised as a bookmark (called a bookmarklet), and it lets you tell WebNotes that this page should be added to your notes.  The have great instructions on the site for both options, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.  I recommend putting the link in your bookmarks tool bar (that space above the website in your browser with links to microsoft products and such) – it’s clean and quick.

Now take notes!

Once you’re up and running, WebNotes can become a trusty partner.  My use tends to go as follows:  I Google the topic of interest and start following links.  Each time I find something of value, I click on the annotate bookmark and WebNotes allows me to highlight passages of interest and leave myself little notes on the webpage (they look like post-it notes).  I don’t bother to write down any web addresses, as these are captured with my notes.  Once I’ve seen all there is to see on a subject, I log into WebNotes and voila!  My notes have all be saved together, along with references, and I can start writing. 

There are other features of WebNotes (like annotating PDF documents and creating reports of all the research in folder), but to be honest, I’ve been very happy with the basic webpage annotation function.  However, there is one feature that I’ll probably use more in the future:  Once you’ve created a report of your research, you can email it to someone (even if they don’t have a WebNotes account).  I foresee that being useful for team collaboration (and when I get a team… I’ll use it).

Future Improvements

All in all, WebNotes is a great product.  Obviously, there are always things to work on.  For example, I’d love to be able to add notations to my WebNotes.  I love products like EverNote because they allow me to do brainstorming on the site.  To be able to do this with my WebNotes research would be brilliant.  Another example is for pictures – Many web articles that I use for research contain great images that I try to use in my posts (when I’m allowed).  If I could grab these (or a visual link to them), that would be fantastic!

The Final Rating

It’s probably obvious from my enthusiasm, but WebNotes is a great product.  I really do believe that it adds speed and accuracy to my work.  Give WebNotes a try and let me know what you think in the comments.  I’d be curious to hear of any other interesting uses…

~ab

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 7:10 am and is filed under Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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