Best way to take notes?

I like stickies myself - just recently found that this Mac has them; I used to use them a lot on my old Mac. I do remember there was a space limit per sticky - don't know if that is listed anywhere.

Have you tried this technological solution?

what version is that?

Not sure what you are taking notes of but my job is enormously multi-tasking for a dozen clients. I have so much stuff going on at one time that I had to set up an excel spreadsheet, with a separate tab for each client, and then keep a running list of the "to do"s for each, with a note section and a marker for "urgent", "pending", or "complete".

It's the only way I can manage my time, not let anything fall through the cracks, and get things done.

ebrown, it's a ton of copying and pasting, so some sort of computer program makes the most sense.

Basically, I do two things. One is keep track of my work on the site in question, as there isn't currently an automatic way to do so. I keep track so I can go back and see if there is anything new after I submit, and for my timesheets (what I did, how much time I spent on it, etc.)

That's almost all urls (copied and pasted) with a short text description.

I also do a lot of online research, and make notes on things I want to come back to.

Except for the notes, my work is all online.

Stickies are perfect except for the non-hotlinking part. I tried to export as RTF (rich text format?) and RTFD, neither seemed to yield clickable urls.

I can copy and paste the urls of course but being able to just click is nice. I have tabs, and I frequently click a whole run of them (from Word) and then go through and check and close each one as I'm done.

Hmm, this is a little ugly but could work.

Use stickies to take notes throughout the day.

When I want to do my review (go back and check on things by clicking on urls of where I've been), copy from the stickie, paste into Word. Word automatically converts the urls.

Worth a try.

Has to be a simpler way...

This might not be what you're looking for, but there's a wonderful program I use called VoodooPad that allows you to link sections of notes with other sections as you see fit. There are various versions with varying degrees of features, including versions that can be downloaded for free. The version I use is VoodooPad Lite, which suits my note-taking tasks perfectly.

Best way to take notes?
What are "stickies"?

Thanks shapeless!

TomKitten, "Stickies" is a program for Mac that opens little windows that look just like if you took a post-it note and stuck in on your computer screen. You can make them different colors -- yellow, pink, blue, etc. You can type whatever in them.

My new system is working quite well, I'm happy with it. I take the day's notes in a stickie (I haven't run up against a word limit yet -- you can stretch them out or else leave them standard sized and just scroll), then at the end of the day select all, copy, and paste into the Word document with my weekly activities. When I click "return" after each line that has an url in the Word document, it becomes a hotlink, so can just click away from there to revisit things that I've done over the past week. (And save each week's work to go back further if I need to.)

How about writing e-mails to yourself and putting them into a "notes" folder? Most e-mail editors hotlink nowadays.

Hey... good idea.

I'm happy with the stickies thing for now but may switch over to that at some point. One less step.

Best way to take notes?
Thanks, Sozobe - I wonder if there's an equivalent for PCs?

Sure there is. Both Outlook and Outlook Express have Notes.

Best way to take notes?
I don't use Outlook Or Outlook Express; I use Firefox. Maybe they have some equivalent, or maybe Yahoo Widgets have something similar.

Com to think of it,I did have a Post-It kind of thing some years ago, but lost track of it when I got a new computer. I may be able to track it down via A2K where there was a short discussion about it.

Textedit works good, soz. A small quick program that allows hotlinking. It would save you the trouble of copy/pasting.

I tried Textedit, it didn't seem to do hotlinking.

As in, if I paste this:

www.able2know.com

Into Textedit, it will just sit there, it won't convert to a hotlink.

If I paste "www.able2know.com" into Word, then hit "return," it becomes hotlinked -- if I then copy that hotlinked url and paste it into Textedit (or Stickies), it remains hotlinked.

But I can't find the way to copy an url from the address bar and make it hotlinked in Textedit or Stickies. I believe there's a way but I haven't found it yet.

How do you do it?

Ah... you are right.

Once you paste, you either have to right click (two button mouse) or cntrl + click on it (one button mouse) to make it a link. It brings up a contextual menu with a "Make Link" option.

Still might be faster than copy pasting, but not ideal. I noticed you can do the same thing using sticky notes

Sounds promising, couldn't get the "make link" option though. I do get a menu, but "make link" isn't on it. Just spelling, cut, copy, paste, font, etc. (No "make link.")

You have to do it right after you copy paste (ie. no typing anymore characters). Alternatively, you can highlight the link and then do the right click/ cntrl + click and that should give you the make link option.