With so many things going on in your life how do you remember all the things you feel are important? You're at a great party and find you love that new wine you tasted. Will you remember what it was the next day? What about that list of TO DOs you started on a scrap of paper, where is it when you want to add to it? What about the string of things that are related but were captured at various times; How do you relate one to the other so all the information can be recalled together? This is the dilemma I faced not too long ago. I wanted a system where I could gather thoughts, pictures, audio, web clippings, and web links. I tried using a notebook. This worked well for jotting little reminders. However, this system did not work well for images due to the need to affix them to a page somehow. Another feature I unfortunately wanted the ability to access all of my stored items virtually any time, anywhere. At one point I started storing all of my items in an email and keeping it in the draft folder. Well, I could access it from anywhere, but soon the file became rather large and navigating through it or searching for specific information became very cumbersome and hit-or-miss. Then one day while surfing the net for something completely unrelated I stumbled upon the application that made all of my information management dreams come true! This web-based application allowed me to:

• Capture Everything
• Access it Anywhere
• Find Things Fast
• Export all information off the system

The application is called Evernote

Capture Everything

To begin your Evernote experience you create either a free account or a Premium account. With the free account you are limited to 40 MB per month of uploads and unlimited storage. With the Premium account you are allowed 500 MB per month of uploads and unlimited storage. At this writing the premium account costs $ 5 per month or $ 45 for the year if you make a full year payment. You can try the free version to see if you like it and easily upgrade to the premium version. Once you have your account you're ready to capture stuff. If you hear a tune you like do not just write down the track name and artist, also capture the actual audio using Evernote on your smartphone. Doing some price comparison shopping; create a new note and capture a picture of the item and description right into Evernote with your smartphone's camera. There is so much more you can do with Evernote.

This application is truly magical due to the number of platforms you can use to capture stuff and the fact that they all stay synchronized via the web-based main server. There are clients for the following platforms:

Computer Platforms
* Mac OS X
* Windows

Mobile Platforms
* iPad
* iPhone / iPaod Touch
* Android
BlackBerry
* Palm Pre / Palm Pixi
* Windows Mobile

Access it Anywhere

One of the great features of Evernote is the ability to access your notes on a host of platforms (see list above) as long as you have Internet connectivity. You can also access your notes by logging directly into your account at http://www.evernote.com . I have found this option to be slower than using the various platform clients.

Find Things Fast

Information recall is efficient and amazingly quick. You can use tags with your notes to help group information when it is recalled. All the tags you have created before are available for selection and use for new notes. Evernote can even locate search terms that are part of an image!

Export Information out of the System

It's very important to know how to get your data out of any data management system before putting it in. You have no worries with Evernote. The application let's you export your notes in HTML or XML format. Since the data is plain-text it can be manipulated as you choose. You can also perform a full database backup.

So there you have it Evernote really does let you remember everything by helping you capture it, allowing you to access it anywhere, and finding stored information fast! Enjoy.