There’s a fascinating new thread over at the EverNote Forum about “best practices” - how are EN users actually using their databases, how does EN make people more productive, etc. etc. If you’re an EN user, or are thinking about exploring it as a new tool, this thread is a great place to start for ideas on exactly what you can do with it. It’s not necessarily laid out in the most logical fashion - imagine walking into a room of people, all yammering about their favourite things. However, the enthusiasm of the users is most evident, and can be infectious.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. There’s a particular post in the thread, by marcclarke, which I found extremely interesting. Not because he was talking about EN, because he wasn’t. Someone noted that Marc is extremely prolific on the board, and how did he do that? Marc replied that he cheated, and proceeded to tell us exactly what he does to make himself faster/more productive, and what tools enable him. I loved the reply and asked Marc if I could reproduce it here. I think it’s begging for a larger audience, and I want to share his ideas with you.

So, shamelessly copied and pasted, and only slightly redacted, here’s Marc’s reply to the question “How do you find the time?”:

How do I find the time? I cheat. Shamelessly. Although I type at speeds well over 100 words per minute, I type only as a last resort. I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking v9 and a good noise-cancelling head set with a speech-optimized USB sound module to talk to my computer. Dragon will happily take what I say and transform it into text at about 180 words per minute, even on my little laptop’s modest CPU. The version of Dragon that handles Excel spreadsheets (as well as everything else out there) runs about US $200 these days, and anyone in the business world who does not use it is just plain crazy, IMHO.I can see that I am going to have to start another thread titled “The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword, and the Tablet is Mightier Than the Pen” or some such, to talk about how productive one can really be. I treat computers as nothing more than tools, just another chisel or hammer. I geek to live; I don’t live to geek. (I shamelessly stole that one from Gina Trapani over at the LifeHacker Blog.)

EverNote is the foundation tool in my tool suite, let there be no doubt.

The Getting Things Done gurus all seem to use Tablet PCs. I had a terrible time figuring out why. I thought it was just because a Tablet PC was a cool ubergeek toy. I was wrong.

One of the first people to really open my eyes was author Michael Linenberger and his great GTD book “Seize the Work Day: Using the Tablet PC to Take Total Control of Your Work and Meeting Day” and his GTD and Outlook-specific book “Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook: The Eight Best Practices of Task and E-Mail Management“.

I was listening to a podcast interview with Micheal Linenberger and James Keating (JKOnTheRun) and Marc Orchant. Both James and Marc are Microsoft Tablet PC Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and both hold Linenberger in high esteem. The interview was a real productivity eye-opener for me. Author Linenberger said that he wrote his books without every touching a key. He uses the Tablet PC OS’s voice recognition feature to capture his speech and then uses editing gestures with a pen on the Tablet PC in Microsoft Word to do all his mark-up and editing. Here was alpha-geek Linenberger blowing the socks of two of the most formidable alpha-geeks I know of (Keating and Orchant).

I have both written and edited a few large books in my day. I used EMACS outline mode and LaTeX. I thought I was one of the most productive authors anywhere in the world (and I have had publishers tell me that). I about fell off my chair listening to the interview with Linenberger. Here was someone explaining true high productivity to some of the most formidable high-productivity alpha-geeks in the world (IMHO). As I had both of Linenberger’s books on my shelf, I immediately cut an order for Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the optimized hardware to run it (noise-cancelling head set and speech-oriented sound dongle). I have never regretted it.

Linenberger writes his books using MindJet’s MindManager mind mapping tool, voice recognition (part of the Microsoft Windows Tablet PC OS), and a Tablet PC. He has a webinar on how he uses this combination of tools on the MindJet web site.

All the GTD and Tablet PC alpha-geeks seem to agree that one keeps three applications open on one’s Tablet PC all day: Outlook, MindManager, and OneNote. Personally, I have Outlook, MindManager, and EverNote open on my laptop all day every day. I think EverNote is even more powerful than Microsoft’s OneNote (though not as well integrated with Outlook, a minor problem that I easily work around by dragging links from EverNote notes to Outlook appointments, tasks, and contacts).

Microsoft claims that a Tablet PC is about 20% more productive across the board for an average user.

Quote:

“Results from post-deployment surveys exceeded expectations, showing that productivity improved by an average of nearly 20 percent per user. Longtime Tablet PC users reported much higher levels of productivity and were particularly impressed with second-generation technology.”

I tended to discount that claim as marketing fluff until I had a chance to play with a friend’s HP TC1100 Tablet PC. For the power user, I think Microsoft’s 20% number is low by at least an order of magnitude.

Mind maps are about an order of magnitude more productive than even the best outliners. In fact if you turn off almost all of MindManager’s brains you can run it as a classical textual outlining tool (and you can switch back and forth between the textual outline mode and the graphical mind map mode). MindManager understands the Tablet PC and pen gestures. My buddy with the Tablet PC can blow me off the map when we race making mind maps, me with my laptop and him with his Tablet PC using his pen.

For uber-productivity, you use a Tablet PC, Dragon NaturallySpeaking for voice recognition, and MindManager. You enter information from your brain using Dragon. You edit using the pen and the Tablet PC. You organize using MindManager. You capture bloody everything in EverNote. You do your e-mail and task management in Outlook. You cross-load projects and tasks from MindManager to/from Outlook. You schedule your day using Taskline.

As I said, I found Marc’s post fascinating, and quite inspiring. I’ve always wondered about a tablet PC, and decided that I probably would only use the tablet part for marking things up, like highlighting a document that I was reading, or maybe making a few quick drawings. In addition, I’ve always thought that voice recognition software was not worthwhile for me - after all, I’m a pretty quick typist, and pretty quick on the mouse too. But Marc’s experiences hint that I should rethink my position. I’m planning on checking out his links, and who knows, maybe, when I have more disposable income, I can think about ramping up my productivity with some pretty neat tools.

Last month, I posted about finding a way to get three monitors working with my laptop (well, two external), one of which was actually attached to my desktop computer. The magic behind this is MaxiVista, a program which “installs a virtual video driver onto your primary PC which fools Windows into thinking that an additional monitor is installed.”

It’s not free, so I decided to try it out for a few weeks and see if it was worth the coin. I’ve tried it and I like it. There are actually times when I *need* three monitors, in order to see three different programs at once. Other times, it’s just nice.

So, here I am, putting my money where my mouth is. When I first posted, MaxiVista was advertising for about $20 USD. Unfortunately, that sale is over. They have a three versions of the software to choose from:

• Standard, which only does extended screen (the scenario that I’ve described)
• Professional, which adds remote control, clipboard synchronization, and supports up to three secondary PCs
• Mirror Pro, which adds desktop mirroring.

I went for the professional version, for $39.95 USD. A bit steep (my sweet spot for software hovers between $20 and $30), but I think it’s going to be worth it. First of all, the remote control mode means that I no longer need Synergy in order to control my desktop’s iTunes from my laptop. I can essentially flip MaxiVista from extending my laptop to remote controlling my desktop. It’s very seamless and smooth, and I have to admit, more robust than Synergy (but keep in mind that Synergy is open source, and does a pretty damn fine job). Clipboard synchronization means it’s easy to copy things from one screen/machine to another. For example, if I copy a URL from my laptop, I can easily paste it into the browser on my desktop.

Anyway, if you’ve got a couple of computers sitting pretty close together, and they’re on a network, and you’re interested in being able to maximize your desktop, I suggest trying out MaxiVista. It’s a software-only solution to a typically hardware problem, and it does a wonderful job.

I once read that having a second monitor on your computer made you 20% more efficient. Does that mean that a third monitor will make me 40% more efficient?

P.S. Apologies if you see a double post - I somehow hit some magic buttons that posted this entry before I was done!

In yesterday’s post introducing the GearFire blog, I commented that I wished I could have another (third) screen for my laptop. Two commenters came to my rescue. Mathew pointed out that it’s possible to buy a USB to VGA adapter, which was convenient, although perhaps not amazing speed/quality. Alexander gave me two links, one for a VillageTronic set of products and one for a Matrox line of products.

I was impressed by all of these potential solutions to my need. I took a peek at the links above. They’re for different companies, and offer a hardware solution, i.e., some kind of adapter to which I would attach monitors. I’m sure they would work very well, but I was a little put off by the price - $100 to $300+. That, and I’d most definitely have to order online and *wait* for delivery.

So, I decided to Google “USB to VGA” to see if such a thing was more common, perhaps even available at my local Staples store.

One of the first links I found was to an awesome page at Tom’s Hardware, clearing describing how to install and use a Sitecom USB 2.0 VGA Adapter. Sweet. I bookmarked it for later perusal, something to read once I found the actual hardware to use.

Back to Google. I was scanning the results page, trying to decide where to go next when I spotted an intriguing “Sponsored Link”. Yeah, I try not to use the sponsored links too often; I don’t know why, but it’s like rushing out to buy something when you see a commercial. But I couldn’t resist it. It’s tag line “Usb to vga Your Laptop as an extra monitor for your Primary PC. Try it now!”. Hmmm, “Try it now!” is always appealing.

The link was to MaxiVista.com, and here is where my search ended.

Let me just bring you up to speed on my hardware set up. I have a laptop as my primary computer. To the left of that is a new flatscreen monitor that my wonderful mother bought me as a “whatever” present (thanks Mom!). On the right side is my desktop computer - I’ve set up the monitor on a diagonal so that I can see it from either leg of my L-shaped desk. This is a super nice computer, but I tend to use it for light-weight things, such as backup, music playing, bit torrent, etc. etc. It’s on all the time, but mostly as my radio.

I used to use this monitor as my laptop’s secondary monitor, using a physical KVM switch to switch the monitor from laptop to desktop. The system worked very well for me. When I got my new flatscreen, it became my laptop’s secondary monitor. The desktop’s monitor was no longer useful to me - well, I could still connect it to my laptop, but it would just mirror the other monitor. I ended up installing Synergy, which lets me control both my laptop and my desktop from my laptop’s keyboard/mouse. Very sweet - means I can skip a song in iTunes without having to leave my laptop.

Anyway, now that I’ve found MaxiVista, my desktop monitor is about to become much more useful to me. With MaxiVista, I can connect this third monitor to my laptop, using software alone (my computers are networked together). The MaxiVista’s web page is nice and clean, and explains pretty well what you can do with the software. There’s even examples on how it would work if you were connecting two systems, each with two monitors. In addition, there’s a free trial (14 days or 50 starts) and even a video to explain installation. Installation is a breeze - and I mean, a breeze! (As an aside, one of the reasons I was so willing to try this product out was because their web presence was so good - appearance is everything.)

So, I’m going to be trying this product out for a a couple of weeks. Odds are pretty good it’s going to be perfect for me, and worth the $20.96 that it costs to buy. I’m thinking that I probably won’t have it on all the time - especially since I still use my desktop a bit - for iTunes and all. What I see happening is that when I get into some work that would benefit from three monitors, I’ll turn this bad boy on, and get to work. When I’m done geeking out, I’ll turn it off an go back to my synergy set up. I foresee much geeky “fun”ness in the next couple of weeks.

And thanks to Mathew and Alexander for pointing me in the right direction - if I hadn’t known it was possible to attach additional monitors, I never would have looked for a solution!

By the way, UltraMon, as suggested by Mathew, Rocks! I’m already using it for my dual-monitor set up. When I enabled MaxiVista to get the third monitor going, UltraMon was right there with me. Awesome.

In my last post, I discussed my new Mobile NoteTaker and how great it works.

My original plan was to use the software that came with the NoteTaker and simply import notes as images into my Evernote database. I tried that for a couple of notes and decided that I didn’t really like the results. It’s not that the images didn’t paste nicely (they did), or because EverNote doesn’t support the NoteTaker results as actual ink documents (they don’t), but because each note is basically a large piece of paper, and I have no desire to scroll through my notes, looking at large images. I basically keep things in EverNote that I want to refer back to, and these notes are more like minutes - I want to be able to access them if I have to, but I won’t be actively looking through them.

So, I decided not to keep my handwritten notes in EverNote. How else should I keep them? In the NoteTaker software? Nah, it’s pretty ugly. But you can set the option to have OneNote as the default program for these notes. So, I gave it a whirl. And I have to say WOW!, does OneNote ever work nicely for this application. Because of the size of the notes, each one is basically the size of a page in OneNote. I can create a new section for each note-taking session, and then just keep each note as a separate page. The OneNote navigation is perfect for just flipping through the pages, like in a real notebook. (Keep in mind that I’m not tagging any information, and not searching for anything, I’m treating OneNote exactly like a paper notebook.) And, I can erase scribbles with the eraser (excellent), and even add ink on top of the note, like a checkmark in a box, or even typing in a little additional information. Now, that’s great functionality for these kind of minutes.

There are a couple of weird things though:

• When the NoteTaker notes are brought into OneNote, the date/time of the OneNote page is off by an hour. Almost like my OneNote is on daylight savings, but the NoteTaker isn’t. Strange, because my computer and my NoteTaker are set to the same time.
• When the NoteTaker notes are imported in OneNote, each page is saved as one page in a separate section - that get’s annoying, because I have to then move pages around. What I want is one section per note-taking session, with one page per handwritten page.

So, I guess I’ve just added OneNote back to my stable ;)

Several weeks ago, I ordered a Mobile NoteTaker from NexConcepts. Touted as a “the ultimate handwriting capture device”, it seemed a reasonable alternative to the Logitech io Digital Ink system. (While I like the fact that Logitech is a well-known brand name, and the system seemed quite suitable, I was put off by the initial cost of the newest version of the pen, as well as by the fact that I would have to keep buying expensive paper products.)

Anyway, my Mobile NoteTaker finally arrived (it was on back-order) and I’ve had the chance to use it. The first few days, I just played around with it, getting to know its functionality. But yesterday was the big test - a 5.5 hour meeting, with 16 pages of handwritten notes. The Mobile NoteTaker was GREAT! It’s a two part system - a calculator-sized thingy that clips to your pad of paper (any paper - up to 8.5 x 11) and a digital pen (a little fatter than a normal pen). Write out a page of notes, click a button, the page is saved to the NoteTaker. Bring it back to your computer, download the notes (I chose to use OneNote as the default receptacle). Print all the notes to pdf, and you have handwritten notes that you can share with anyone.

There’s a couple of little niggly annoyances, but overall I’m quite pleased with it. Well worth the $99 US plus shipping that I paid. I bought mine through the NexConcepts online store. I originally found this product through a review, which was for the Pegasus version (don’t ask me the difference between Pegasus and NexConcepts), but Pegasus wants $189 US (and that’s a sale!) for their version. I’ve also seen the NexConcepts version being sold on TigerDirect for $135 CAD. (I’m in Canada, eh.)

I particularly liked the fact that 16 pages of handwritten notes in pdf took only 1.69 MB of space, while a previous set of minutes (say 12 pages of scanned notes, plus 3 pages of typed notes) took 4.2 MB.

As for the annoyances:

• had some initial difficulty getting the drivers to stick in my Windows installation - every time I reconnected to my computer, WinXP asked me to install the drivers. I ended up uninstalling/reinstalling the software several times, as well as just installing ever driver I could find on the disk. It seems to be stable now though :)
• the web page(s) all said it was easy to find pen refills (they’re tiny little refills); however, when I searched for the refill suggested by my manual (i.e., Staedtler 930-9 Black Fine Point), I couldn’t find any online for Canada (i.e., not in Staples, Office Depot, or Grand & Toy). I found quite a few different office supply places that offered them for sale, but exactly ONE online store (Du-All Store, link to refill) offered to ship to Canada! The refills are a reasonable price, but they basically cost me twice as much because of the shipping.

Related links:

• review of Mobile NoteTaker
• review of Logitech io Digital Writing system
• AceCad DigiMemo Digital Notepad
• comparison of Logitech and AceCad

Note that EverNote supports the Logitech and AceCad systems, but not the NoteTaker. Well, you can import the NoteTaker pages as images, but that’s not the same…