Evernote use case for students!

Evernote for students

Evernote have their own excellent blog, which I always read from time to time, as it is an excellent place to pick up tips on using Evernote. This post by high school student Ryan Kessler really caught my eye.  Ryan demonstrates how he uses Evernote as an extremely effective research tool, note taker and organiser for all his school work.

Evernote as a platform

You will note that it is not just the use of the Evernote client that is important to his particular use case. It is how well the client combines via the digital cloud with both the Evernote web client and his Android Evernote app, and how these in turn are used with other useful mobile apps to create a total system. 

This is where the power of Evernote really resides. Evernote is not just a note taking application it is actually a platform for generating effective,  working personal information management systems for all sorts of people, in many different ways.  I plan to explore  this capability more in future posts.

Does Evernote work as a platform for you, or is it just a note taking app?  Add a comment and let me know!

The Digital Cloud is back!

After a long hiatus I have decided to start to update The Digital Cloud again.   I have always found  that blogging is a state of mind, a habit perhaps, that once you lose the grove it is very difficult to get back.  When this happens a real effort or a perhaps a regained interest in a specific topic is generally required to get going again. 

Today is is a bit about taking action and getting started again, but I have also become really interested in personal information management, and a lot has happened in the tech world in the last year or so, that make this a very interesting area that is worth discussing more.

One piece of technology that I have been using on and off for a long time is Evernote which has recently come of age as a cross platform information store.  It is an extremely useful tool as it stands but what is really driving its potential is the integration with other tools and technologies that are arriving in the digital world. 

This is going to be the main focus over the next coming months.  It feels good to be back!

What is a digital cloud?

What is a digital cloud? That is an interesting question and one that many people seem to ask themselves judging by the number of people who find this site from a google search for that phrase. 

When I first started this blog 4 years ago I could see that there was an increasing convergence of computing hardware and software fueled by the growing use of the Internet as a platform as well as WiFi and other wireless technologies.  The effects where being seen in the interactions driven by smart phones, online gaming and online productivity and collaboration tools. This was all happening around digital content in the cloud. Hence the name for the blog.

These days the term "Cloud Computing" is probably the most common term applied to providing the ability "to do stuff" on the Internet or in the digital cloud.  The "cloud" term essentially comes from a lack of knowledge of exactly where or how stuff is actually happening, so it is referred to as happening in the cloud. I don't know exactly where my blog is hosted for instance and I certainly don't know where my gmail account sits.  But that doesn't matter as its the service that counts, the fact that it works as advertised.   The computing infrastructure required is someone else's problem and can be accessed when required just like electricity is today.

This video from Common Craft called Cloud Computing in Plain English explains it quite nicely.

What does a digital cloud mean to you?