Post Academic

Arnold has been talking about digital clutter, and I am going to make a shameless product plug. I don’t work for Evernote, but they have helped me tame both digital and paper clutter.

This program allows you to enter notes either through your desktop, through a Web interface, or through your phone, and it syncs the content from all sources. You can submit different types of content, including text, photos, and even voice messages recorded on an iPhone. My favorite part is the Web clipper, which allows you to select text on a Web page and send it straight to your Evernote account.

Evernote also lets you add multiple tags to your notes, which makes it easier to find content. You could type up notes from all those copies of Quicksand (hi, Arnold!), put them into different Evernote files, and then tag them “Quicksand.”

The best part of Evernote, bar none, is the ability to sync notes from anywhere. If you have an idea, and you aren’t around a computer, speak it into your phone or type it out, and then it can re-sync with your Evernote account later.

Now I feel like a person in a Ronco ad, but here it comes … but wait, there’s more! Evernote is free. You have to pay based on storage, so if you store a considerable amount of files, you might need to plunk down a little per month. That said, I use it all the time, and I still haven’t paid, although I imagine it is only a matter of time. I’d still set aside a little in my budget for it.

There, end of product endorsement. But, if you are a grad student or an academic swamped by digital files, Evernote is one of the best ways to sort out the mess.

Image of post-it notes by EraserGirl, public domain, Wikimedia Commons.