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« Book Review - The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory by Torkel Klingberg | Main| I work with a great community of people... »

So do you keep an electronic "Articles of Interest" database?

Category Everything Else

I finally spent some time this week starting a project that's been gnawing away at me for awhile.  It started when I looked at my Starred category on Google Reader and found there were over 500 entries out there.  Some items were Notes tips I wanted to look at later, some were great posts on public speaking and presentations, tech how-to's, cool software...  you get the idea.  But listed as they are in a single category in Google Reader, they might as well have been missing in action.  I decided I had to fix that.

My new "Articles of Interest" application is nothing more than a database in Notes based on the Personal Journal template.  Going through my starred entries starting in June of 2007, I pasted the title link, date, and content of the RSS feed into the body of the document, added the title and date to the fields up on top, and then categorized it by name of poster/site and the type of content (Notes Tips, Cool Software, Personal Improvement, etc.)  I'm up to May of 2008 now, and in the next couple of days I hope to have my Starred category count down to zero.  Then I can use this new database to see what I actually have, and try out some of the tips I had forgotten about.

If you don't have something like this, you should really consider doing so.  You may only have two or three entries a week you want to keep, but those keepers could be what bails you out of a problem down the road.

(Yes, I know you can always search via Google to refind the information.  But if you forgot the tip existed in the first place, what's going to jog your memory to know what to be looking for?  I'd rather just quickly peruse a view to find it.)

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - I just Elguji LinkJam:

{ Link }

Free for the community to use and inexpensive for businesses to purchase and run internally.

/end of shameless plug

Gravatar Image2 - I use stars on google reader, and journal.nsf, obviously I still use iwatch daily too.

Gravatar Image3 - I can give you a short list of a long list of tools. I use ReadBag to make quick notes to read and catgorize something and then use tags and lists inside Diigo (more addons then delicious I found) and can create outputs from there. Take a look at how mine are sorted and tagged.
{ Link }
you will see the tags, lists and more (outside of private of course)

Gravatar Image4 - And I just read paper magazines, rarely online, so I have a stack of snipits on my desk.
I need a feeding scanner to get them all in one place.
I wonder if these articles are online..Emoticon

Gravatar Image5 - Years back I bought Script Coach Library from Mental Notes, it came loaded with code examples, but over the years I have used it to store everything that I found that is interest to me. I may not have the time to learn about some specific topic when I find an article\ web page, but if I suddenly have a need for something, I can jut refer to my library. I find it very useful.

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