Three Little Tips for Capturing Info Bits Quickly

I consume a lot of information - all of it, digitally. In fact, I recently completed the transition a 100% media green state. I continue to use Gmail as a nerve center - my primary capture system. But sometimes, I want to flag something quickly to review later. Usually, these are tiny bits of info - notes or bookmarks - I need to capture very quickly. Here are three ways I do that.

Use the Google Web History for Quick Notes

Google offers a handy history feature that archives all of your searches by date and time. You need to have a Google account and activate it. Once you do, the search engine will remember every search and  search result you clicked. You can star items and even subscribe to either your history or these bookmarks as a feed.

If I am on phone with someone and I have an idea I want to capture real quick, I go to the search box in my browser (which is always open), type in my quick note and search. Now it's archived in my history, which I can always go back and search later.

Annotate Bookmarks and Feeds with a Private Friendfeed Room

Friendfeed has a feature called Rooms that you can use to share links with either the public at large, a small group of friends or just yourself. The feature is great on many levels, but it's especially handy as a private info trapping system. Here are two ways I use it.

The first is to grab this bookmarklet and start capturing stuff you find in the wilds of the web and stuffing it into your private room. You can annotate it in the process. In addition, later on you can go back and leave additional notes as comments. All of this is searchable too via a box in the upper right hand side of the room. In addition, all rooms can be accessed on a mobile device via FFtoGo.

The second way to use this is to start importing RSS feeds into a private room. This essentially sets up a mini private River of News that you can also review, annotate and search later on.

Use a Link-Trapping Service for Reading Lists

The final tip is to use a link-trapping service for compiling articles you want to review later. There are three I have experimented with - Instapaper, Readbag and LaterLoop. Each of these services saves bookmarked articles into reading lists. They offer bookmarklets and other tools for easy flagging, a personalized RSS feed as well as mobile versions that strip down the articles down to just text for low-bandwidth reading on the go.

Of the three, LaterLoop takes the cake for two reasons. First, it keeps a running archive of all the articles you have read. You can go through these and star items for later. Second, it lets you download virtually your entire archive for offline reading. I use this all the time when I am on planes. It's invaluable.

Those are my latest tips. Enjoy!

Comments

[Eric]

Great advices. I like to use Gmail and google history is a good solution.

[William]

Google history - never thought of using it for capturing thoughts or as a feed. Thanks for great productivity ideas Steve.

[Tom]

Thanks. Immediately useful.

[Prashant]

Using GHistory is a neat idea. It works as a great tool to save notes on the iPhone too...

[Atul Karmarkar]

Was aware of Google history, but never really gave a thought to using it this way.. Thanks.

[Ulla]

Thanks for the info - will try Ghistory!

[Stefan]

Steve,great advice. You are really living the digital life. Btw, it was great meeting you ip at the social media immersion. Also, have you tried google notebook or scrapbook for the same purpose ?

[Michael]

Great topic. Also as part of the "Google nerve Center", another tool I find very useful is the "Note This" feature at the end of Google Search results, that saves a Google Search item in your Google Notebook. Very cool.

[Srini Kumar]

Steve,

please check out our new site:

http://the-time-log.com

it's a PRIVATE TWITTER which date-stamps all of your thoughts & recollections, rendering them taggable. works with every smartphone (not just the iphone) and supports direct messaging between users too (i'm @sonicsrini, drop me a line !!!)

we believe the time log is the way kerouac would have written. bookmarklet coming soon. would love to know what you think !!!!

- srinihttp://the-time-log.com

[Evgeny]

Steve, to better deal with info overload, you may want to check polymeme.com, which also answers your earlier question on how one can still be a polymath in the Web age. it uses a Techmeme-like approach to determining what's important in fields like economics, law, books, etc -- can definitely help you stay on top of what's happening in many fields at once.