Evernote

David Rothman's recent posting "Screencast: Evernote as a Medical Student’s Peripheral Brain" at http://davidrothman.net/2009/03/02/screencast-evernote-as-a-medical-students-peripheral-brain/ prompted me to look more closely at this tool. Offered in both a free and fee based version, it is a personal notebook that you can fill with documents (pdf), video, audio and links. While Google notebook and Zoho notebook offer similar features, Evernote adds synchronization between computer and cloud storage as well as the ability to run the application from a flash drive.


There is also apps for both the iPhone and iTouch to get to public folders.


There are other healthcare professionals who have been using this application for a variety of tasks. The Efficient MD blog posted a 3 part series that suggested several uses for Evernote including how it could be used as a "hybrid electronic health record" The Efficient MD - Life Hacks for Healthcare How Doctors Can Use Evernote As A Professional Memory Accessible Anywhere (Part 1 of 3) (http://efficientmd.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-doctors-can-use-evernote-as.html).


I downloaded and installed the application, created a flash drive version and saved several sites during the day. From my home computer I logged into the application and everything I had worked on from a different computer was synchronized with my home desktop.

In previous posts about Personal Learning Envirionments I have used PageFlakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/) as an example application which could serve as a repository of information and links for a variety of sites. Evernote is a serious tool to add the collection.

Here are the differences between the free and fee ($45/year) versions: