Blogs

So, what does an ECM guy do on vacation?

Try not to think about work, for one.  Turn off the Blackberry?  Maybe.

Actually, I couldn't turn off all of my devices last week on my vacation, because even outside of work we carry with us some useful tools for the rest of life.

I've started using http://www.evernote.com/ for my personal document, note, and data "capture."  It's always with me - on my Blackberry or on my laptop.  It lets me capture images and doucuments on the fly - wherever I am. It is more useful than I expected it to be.

I have trouble sometimes keeping all of my notes together.  I have stacks of post-its and to-do lists.  I can never remember where I put that one piece of information.

The problem is that all of this "life" stuff doesn't fit into our standard Metadata models for ECM, and even if it did, the effort required to tag each of these tiny pieces of data would outweight its usefulness in finding that data.

Evernote makes this light and fast.  A very simple tagging and titling system lets you quickly add short indexes to your captured data.  Any photos and images are processed (rather impressively) through and OCR engine and searchable.  Capture, tag, done.

Evernote has a free account with a monthly usage cap (metered in KB's transferred) and a paid full version.  They have apps for many phones and desktop OS options.

I'm sure there are alternatives out there - please use the comments to recommend what you like.