Opinions on OneNote

Once you have OneNote installed on your system you will notice that it adds an additional OneNote button to a few Microsoft Applications. The first of these is the Internet Explorer browser, which appears like:

Now you can simply highlight the information you wish to record in OneNote and then press the ‘Send to OneNote’ button.

So what I’ve done here is highlight some text and image from a previous blog post in Internet Explorer and pressed the ‘Send to OneNote’ button in the toolbar of the browser.

As you can see above, that exact information has been placed on a new OneNote page that I can file into any notebook I desire. One of the handy things it does automatically as well is also record where the information came from (i.e. the source URL). This makes it exceptionally easy to refer to at a later stage if required.

OneNote also provides the ability to ‘clip’ exactly what is on any region of the screen, much like a standard print screen. In the example shown above I have clipped part of my screen (showing a number of running apps) as an image directly into OneNote. OneNote will automatically time stamp the screen clipping for you as well as making searchable any of the text that actually appears in the image. Yes, that’s right – OneNote does OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the fly.

Apart from being able to simply type information into OneNote you can also tags. These allow you to categorize your information to make it easier to find later. Standard tags include things like: to do, important, question etc. You can even create your own tags. I’ll cover more about searching in OneNote in an upcoming post.

So there’s just a few reasons why I reckon OneNote is worth a look. As I have mentioned before you can download a trial version to get a better understanding yourself. If you do decided to buy a copy I think you’ll be surprised at how little OneNote actually costs, especially when you look at the benefits it can provide.

Ok, so OneNote is great but it does have a few drawbacks in my opinion including:

– No ‘reader’ program. This means you have to download and install the OneNote program before you can open OneNote notebooks. There are readers for other Microsoft Office products like Word and Excel, why isn’t there one for OneNote? How handy would it be to be able to send someone a notebook full of information that they could simply view? Please, oh please Microsoft a reader for OneNote!

– To obtain the best in collaboration OneNote needs to be back ended into a hosted SharePoint site for collaboration across the Internet. Admittedly, you can use Microsoft Office Live Workspace for free but wouldn’t it be nice if Microsoft could provide some space in the cloud for free? Microsoft has this facility via Skydrive for example, why can’t OneNote notebooks be stored there? (I’m still trying to work out whether this can in fact be done).

– Another similar product to OneNote that I use frequently is EverNote (which is free). One of the many handy things about EverNote is that it allows you to browse your notes via web page. You can even edit information in notes via this web page. I have found this invaluable when I’m out somewhere and I need a screen shot. I simply do a print screen, save it to a note in EverNote via the web and then when I return to my desk I simply sync my desktop EverNote with the web and I have the screen shot. Very handy!

I’ll go into more depth on EverNote in an upcoming blog post.
There are a few other minor annoyances I have with OneNote but these are the major three that annoy me constantly. Hopefully OneNote can learn from EverNote and add these few remaining features that would make OneNote a real killer app.

OneNote on SharePoint

One of the most overlooked applications available from Microsoft is OneNote. It is a simple electronic notebook that allows you to store just about any digital information you can think of.

You can even use it to clip information directly from web pages. It is just such a handy application that if you haven’t had a look I suggest you download a trial.

I will leave the virtues of OneNote to another post, what I want to demonstrate here is how much more powerful OneNote becomes when it is utilized in conjunction with SharePoint. Basically, if you save your OneNote notebooks into a SharePoint document library then you can share the notebook between people. If the SharePoint site is hosted on the Internet then people connected to the Internet can collaborate easily.

If you need a free hosted SharePoint solution have a look at Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Combine that with OneNote and you have instant team collaboration anywhere you have an Internet connection.

So, how do you create a OneNote notebook that lives on SharePoint? During the process of creating a new notebook you’ll see a windows like this:

Selecting the bottom option then “On a Server” will then ask for the location of the server. In this case you simply enter the full location of a SharePoint document library like the one shown below.

If you now enter a new folder name OneNote will store the new notebook there with all the sections in files below this.

Once the new notebook has been created you can add any information you require. The information is not only saved locally but also automatically synced with the information in SharePoint. This allows anyone to work on the notebook.

Next time you open OneNote you will see the local copy of the notebook appear. You can continue to work on this copy but if you are connected to the Internet you will see a prompt at the top of the page asking you to login to the SharePoint site as shown:

Once you are logged back in the notebook will synchronize again so you will see any changes that other people have made and that information will be copied to your local machine.

If you take a look around your desk at all the information on bits of paper you should ask yourself why these aren’t in digital form. Once they are entered into a digital form they are easily backed up, searchable and shareable. I can guarantee that it will improve your productivity and reduce clutter. If it can do that for one person imagine what it can for a team of people?

If you are looking at tools to improve your productivity look no further than OneNote and SharePoint. You won’t be sorry you did.

Enough time

That’s something that no one ever seems to have these days, yet many seem to go out of their way to waste what they have. The problem is that time is not like money, you can never get more and you can’t accumulate it. Once it’s gone, it gone – forever. Have you ever stopped and looked at how much time you are wasting every day? Have you ever stopped and thought that perhaps you can do things better? With all this technology we have we should be, should we? If so why are so many people struggling to get enough time?

With that in mind I’ve created a new document called “Enough Time – 7 suggestions for reclaiming yours” which you can view and/or download from my Slideshare. It should help you firstly better understand where your time is being spend, secondly how to ensure you are giving things the right priority and finally how to eliminate distractions and get things done (as David Allen would say).

If you have any suggestions about how you have improved your productivity and eliminated time ‘leakage’ I’d love to hear. Simply send me an email (director@ciaops.com) with you comments, thoughts, recommendations or suggestions.

Wireless Networking Course

My Wireless Networking course is once again running at Macquarie Community College at Carlingford starting this Thursday night. It runs over two consecutive weeks from 7 to 9pm.

The course covers the basics of wireless from keyboards and mice through to WiFi. It also provides you with a basic understanding of TCP/IP networking including configuration and importantly security. The course also covers a complete configuration of a wireless access point including how to implement strong security.

To enrol or obtain more information visit the following link.

http://www.macquarie.nsw.edu.au/index.php?action=course&course_action=detail&code=209M299

BPOS Review

Here’s a worthwhile review of Microsoft’s Business Online Productivity Suite (BPOS). Called “Microsoft’s BPOS: Cloud Computing’s Silver Lining?”, it concludes:

“We couldn’t think of a single reason why an average person under real-world circumstances wouldn’t be better off with software as a service provided the look, feel, and functionality of the cloud app was identical to its packaged counterpart…except one.”

That one reason is simply if you have an old line of business application (like an accounting program).

One of the interesting points the article does raise is that the standard desktop software we currently use is only licensed. We don’t own it, even though we pay big dollars for it. So, licensing a package across the Internet is essentially very similar to way it has always been done, with some major benefits. You only pay per month, per user and you get access to the latest updates of the package rather than having to apply updates or install new versions.

Everyone agrees there are challenges for online software however as the article again says:

“If Microsoft doesn’t carry this service model to fruition, someone else, Google being first in line, will.”

As the article also highlights, we seem to believe that small businesses won’t make use of things like SharePoint and Live Meeting, where in fact quite the opposite will be true. They are going to embrace these tools since they allow them to run their business more efficiently. I feel these are businesses that are going to shed their existing infrastructure first (bye, bye SBS) and move en masse to online applications.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the world is changing. Are you?

Stsadm tech ref

Much of the administration of SharePoint can be done with the command line tool stsadm. Like any command line tool you need to know all the syntax to get the most from it but remembering or looking up all the parameters can be quite painful at times.

Here’s a nice graphic reference you can use when you work with stsadm commands.

It’s interactive so you can click on the command to get more information. I especially like how it is graphically coded so you know which commands are not available in the UI and which commands are new in Service Pack 2. This should make working with stsadm much easier.

You’ll find them site at:

WSS = http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/windowsserver/sharepoint/dd418924.aspx

MOSS = http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/office/sharepointserver/cc948709.aspx

Look familiar?

Now where have I seen that face before? I’m proud to say that I’ve been profiled in a recent CRN (Computer Reseller News) article called “CIA man is an agent of change”. The article covers some of the history about my starting off on my own as well as my current thinking on the state of business as a technology reseller. For those who read this blog then there should be no major surprises (always nice to be consistent eh?).

One of the things the article didn’t cover is how I’m generally bullish about moving technology into the cloud via hosted services (especially email). Although detractors can point to many valid problems and challenges these are no different from those facing any previous instance of technology and because of this I am extremely confident that they will be overcome. As such, my advice to resellers is that at the very least you need to be aware of what hosted technology can provide rather than locking yourself into only on-site infrastructure. But then that’s a whole ‘nother article isn’t it?

Have a read of the article and let me know what you think (director@ciaops.com).