I blogged about Google Notes and Zotero before, and I liked both of them. But, if you really need a note taking tool which can pan across web-desktop- mobile; which comes with a very usable desktop (PC / Mac) version as well as web based version - you need Evernote.

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at anytime, from anywhere.

On the web. On your desktop. On your phone.
Everything you put into Evernote is always synchronized across all of your devices. That way, all your memories are available to you wherever you are.

It comes with a powerful Web Clipper, a Desktop Clipper, a great Desktop tool with a nifty editor. It synchronize with the web based note automagically! Desktop Evernote indexes itself - makes searching really easy. Also I was most impressed by the fact - it stopped indexing when my laptop was running in battery (small things matter)! Tagging is easy. Display of the web clips, specially images are good (one up against Google Notes).

Top of that a screen capture tool comes along Evernote desktop, which is very handy to quick snap any app and paste it in your note.

The browser clipper and the web version is very usable, specially the thumbnail display of the notes. Sharing the notes via email or publishing is neat too!

Yet to try out the mobile options, but already I am impressed!

Here goes an overview video of Evernote:

BTW : Evernote is still in private beta. But I have few invitations left. if you want one - drop a comment here.

Stanford University’s Human-Computer Interaction Seminar, is now available at iTunes U consisting of no less than 36 lectures by people such as Bill Moggridge, Bill Buxton, Elizabeth Churchill, Paul Dourish and Donald Norman.

A great resource for folks interested in HCI and usability field.

More on iTunes U

Jonathan Harris’s & Sep Kamvar’s most recent visualization project "I want you to want me", explores the search for love and self in the world of online dating. Created for the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA.

I Want You To Want Me chronicles the world’s long-term relationship with romance, across all ages, genders, and sexualities, gathering new data from a variety of online dating sites every few hours.  The system searches these sites for certain phrases, which it then collects and stores in a database.  These phrases, taken out of context, provide partial glimpses into people’s private lives.  Simultaneously, the system forms an evolving zeitgeist of dating, tracking the most popular first dates, turn-ons, desires, self-descriptions and interests.

The data is presented as an interactive installation, displayed on a 56” high-resolution touch screen, hung vertically on a wall in a dark room.  On screen is an interactive sky, whose weather (sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, etc.) can be controlled by the viewer.  Through the sky float hundreds of blue (male) and pink (female) balloons, each representing a single dating profile.  The brighter balloons are younger people; the darker balloons older.  Trapped inside each balloon is one of over 500 video silhouettes, showing a solitary person, engaged in any number of activities (yoga, jumping jacks, nose-picking, air guitar, etc.).  The viewer can touch any balloon to select it, causing its photo to dangle from a string and its sentence to appear in a thought bubble overhead.  Touching any balloon a second time pops it.  The balloons move through the sky along different paths and at different speeds, bumping up against each other, sometimes traveling together for a time, but only ever getting so close, as each silhouette is ultimately confined to its own balloon.

Latest installment from Lee Leefever.

View Licensed Version in The Common Craft Store

We are (GetIT Comms) using Salesforce Group Edition for last 4 years and started using Google Apps since last year for our mails, documents and calendar. Evidently we are delighted to hear that Salesforce and Google Apps now working together.

BTW: Integration is very easy, I did it in 5 minutes.

From Techcrunch

Google is in effect becoming Salesforce’s productivity suite. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentation can be created from within Salesforce’s CRM application. GTalk works as the de facto instant messenger within Salesforce. With one click, sales people who use Gmail can send any email correspondence with potential or existing customers to Salesforce, where it becomes recorded as part of the sales cycle. Sales events and marketing campaigns can be overlayed onto a Google Calendar (see screen shot below), as well as colleague’s schedules for figuring out convenient meeting times.

Lee Leefever did a wonderful job (as usual) to describe Google Apps + Salesforce in plain english.

Some more detail on the integration

Salesforce and Gmail

E-mail and CRM—Joined Together. See your productivity soar when you use Gmail for business and send messages to contacts from inside Salesforce or log e-mails in Salesforce from Gmail.
Learn More

Salesforce and Google Talk

Instant Messaging Inside Salesforce. Instantly communicate with colleagues right from Salesforce—> during sales or customer services calls, in discussions with partners, or when reviewing CRM data in Salesforce.
Learn More

Salesforce and Google Docs

Real-Time Document Collaboration. Share documents with your colleagues, partners, and customers so that everyone can work together in real time—no more e-mailing attachments or worrying about different versions floating around.
Learn More

Salesforce and Google Calendar

Multiple Calendars Managed Together. Manage your various work activities plus your personal and outside calendars all in one easy calendar interface with the checkbox simplicity and drag-and-drop convenience you would expect from Web 2.0.
Learn More

Salesforce and Google Start Page

Everything That Matters—in a Single Glance. Start your day with a customized, all-in one view of everything that matters to your business.
Learn More

An awesome 13 page manifesto by the author of Bounce!, Barry J. Moltz : Strive For Minimal Achievement [PDF] .

From the excerpt :

“Failure is valuable only when we realize it is a normal part of the business process even when there always isn’t something to learn. So it does not hold us back.

The real fear and pressure in this whole process is not brought on by our competitors or other outside people. It mostly originates within us. The biggest fear we have is that someone in our position would have done better than us, made better decisions than us and would have built it faster and more profitably than we did. We believe that that we should be in a different place than where we are right now, and that we would be, if only we had made better decisions. Nonsense.

In our business life, in order to move forward, past the fear, past the failure, yes past the success, we actually need to just let go. Letting go is the key to gaining true business confidence. Not by holding onto what people have taught you are the keys to success. Not by looking for the 7 steps. You need to let go of the idea that there is always something to learn from failure or that you can always build and duplicate your success. Get ready for your next great success by letting go and bouncing.”

Some more quotable quotes :

Perfection only happens in Hollywood.
The perfect moment in real business doesn’t exist.

This is why there are so many books out there with numbers in their titles like:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra

One that just came out is called, The Business Laws: The 7 Irrefutable Laws That Determine All Business Success by David Eichenbaum. How can he be so sure?

There are not 7 steps to success. It is different for everyone. We can all get at financial success if that is our goal, but there isn’t one single path that will work for all of us.

Since the very beginning of civilization FreindFeed.com gathered lots of positive attention. Although I really really like the application (it converted the phrase ‘can I subscribe to your brain‘ into reality), but it was a bit overstretch when FreindFeed.com was getting touted as Google Reader killer or Facebook Killer.

I posted a question  at LinkedIn asking  "Do you think LinkedIn should add a ‘life-streaming’ service like freindfeed.com? Where users can aggregate the feeds from other places like blogs twetter etc? Why and why not?" followed by a clarification : "I think all of you must be thinking - why this weired thought came to my mind? As you might be aware of freindfeed.com is being touted as facebook killer / google reader killer etc. Just wanted to get a vibe from the users of LinkedIn - what they think about lifestream + social network equation!".

Go there and checkout the violent responses I got!