6 Great Tools for Taking Notes

As technology continues to advance, the pen and paper have all but disappeared from classrooms. More and more students are taking their laptops or their smartphones to school with them and taking notes on these gadgets instead of in their notebooks.

This not only goes for students, but for businesspeople as well.

Here are some of the best available tools for taking notes and jotting down ideas.

Evernote

Evernote is probably the most popular application for taking notes. Its main advantage is the fact that it supports multiple platforms. It works on Android mobile phones, iPhones and on Windows as well.  Its cloud synchronization also ensures you that you will have your notes stores and accessible at all times.

Evernote is also notable for ability to help you to better organize your notes. They can add descriptive tags , geo-locations, indicate the author, and much more. It is also possible to group your notes by date, by topic and by a variety of other categories. Furthermore, it is very simple to share the notes thanks to its web synchronization abilities.

It is also known for its extensibility and compatibility with third-party apps. It also integrates with browsers, mail clients, and more, so you can send notes easily from these types of applications to Evernote.

OneNote

OneNote is made by Microsoft and is included in all editions of MS Office.

The way that you take notes in this program is pretty characteristic. Instead of writing in it like in a word processor, you can click anywhere on the screen to display a floating text box that can be moved anywhere, and you will be able to write, draw, make lists, and perform various other types of note-taking procedures. It also records audio and video, and can be synchronized with the cloud as well through Office Web Apps .

OneNote is an ideal tool for students and professionals. One advantage that it has over Evernote is that many of the functions which need a plug-in for Evernote are already integrated into OneNote with no adding plug-ins to download. For example, it has an integrated scanner function which allows you to take screenshots and have them appear immediately in the note..

The two strikes against it are that it is not free and that it is available on fewer platforms Android phone or iPhone cannot use it in its full capacity.

Windows Sticky Notes

For those who just need something basic, Windows Sticky Notes is the way to go.

This tool is very basic, but it gets the job done when you just need to jot down some information or some ideas quickly. You can organize different types of notes by color, and an interesting detail is that Sticky Notes is integrated with Instant Search in Windows, which enables you to find what you are looking for very quickly.

Simplenote + ResophNotes

Another simple option, but with more organizational options is Simplenote. It is a web application with a Mac-style interface, which has basic options for organizing and sharing notes. You can search through your notes, tag them, or share and post the notes with a unique URL. In addition, Simplenote has a good API, so there are dozens of applications on all platforms that integrate with it. One such application is ResophNotes.

It works on Windows and has the same functions that Simplenote has on the web, but with the advantage that you can access the notes while offline as well. This is the recommended choice for those looking for something simple for taking notes and the ability to synchronize with the cloud and share the notes easily.

Gumnotes

This is a hybrid of notes and reminders. You can use Gumnotes to write notes and attach them to web pages, documents, emails . When accessing the file or website, the written note and attachment emerge as a pop-up, which acts as a sort of reminder.

It is pretty much an attempt to create a virtual post-it note.

Springpad

This is a powerful web app for taking notes in style. Springpad has a panel-based interface, which shows the different types of saved notes: text notes, check lists, important notes, etc.

With Springpad it is easy to share notes with others, and every note leaves room for you to attach other items such as files or comments. It even includes a panel called “board” in which you can drag and drop post-it type notes, or other items. The search for notes is excellent, including the Instant Search with advanced filtering options.

It has no application for Windows, although it is hardly necessary since it has offline mode options as a Google Chrome web app. Despite being full of features, it is actually a much better brainstorming and collaboration tool than it is a note-taking application.