Here is a secret!! I am a screenshot junkie! I take lot of snapshots of portion of computer screen for any of the following reasons..
- I have to remember that stuff for future use.. (say I made some money transaction over internet, and bank website has provided me details about transaction confirmation.. I dont copy stuff and mail them or store them somewhere.. I just take a quick snapshot and save the JPG on the disk!)
- I like some website or software interface and want to share stuff with somebody! (I share such stuff a lot! I send snapshots through email attachments a lot)
- Though, this activity has been taken over by Mento now! And coolest stuff is, it posts the thumbnail and hyperlink on my WWW Activity Stream..
- I need to refer to something later on.. for research purpose.. (If I am just surfing internet and found something on interesting which I dont have time right now to do research on! I just take snapshot and put reference to it on my ToDo widget on desktop!)
Till now, I had been using Inbit's FullShot software (thanks to one of my friend who gifted it to me!) Its undoubtedly awesome piece of software for taking arbitrary screen snapshots! If you learn that software entirely, you increase significant percentage in productivity!
Main problems that I was facing with Fullshot was, snapshots taken on one machine were only on that machine.. Many a times, I had to remote into my office machine just to take a look at the damn snapshot that I took during office hours! I was looking for a solution that includes S+S model.. where I can integrate snapshots of all my machines (there are bunch of them that I work with regularly.. sometimes it becomes painful keeping things in synchronization!)
Before I got evernote into mainstream, I added my snapshot folder in Live Mesh profile so that all the snapshots on all the machines are synchronized! (Even before I got live mesh into mainstream, I had been using Windows Foldershare.. there is a lot of history associated with this dragon!)
But then, I got Evernote which is exactly what I wanted!! I moved all my snapshots into evernote (there are appx. 780 screenshots in my store increasing everyday!).. Here are advantages that I get using evernote over all my past systems!
- Add it once and get it everywhere! (No more synchronization issues.. Take snapshot on any machine and with just one click snapshot gets saved to evernote, which all other machines get automatically - of course, through evernote system!)
- Search within snapshot! (Would you believe it?? But, this is Evernote's Mastery!)
- Just imagine, I have taken snapshot of my bank confirming payment of my Mobile bill.. and after 15 days I have to refer to that confirmation again due to some issues.. now, I just search for my mobile number in evernote and that confirmation surfaces in matter of milliseconds!) It searches images like its a text stored in there!
- No computer access, dont worry, access it from Web Interface!!
- This is high relief for me.. Sometimes it happens, I am at somebody's home and need to access these snapshots quickly.. Its just a login away.. I login on evernote website and get access to all my snapshots along with search features, on the web!!
- I dont use Windows Mobile or iPhone right now, but evernote has mobile client as well!
- Storage : I am using free account from evernote as of now! which gives me 40 MB of uploads every month! (appx 100 snapshots every month = ~3 everyday!) If I am running out of this limit, I think I would be happy to pay for it!
- Screenshot Taking procedure is awesome!
- Evernote has a small tool called Universal Clipper which takes snapshot like charm! Not just it can take plain screenshot, It can also add it to the Evernote collection with just one click OR copy the clipped area to clipboard (as bitmap for pasting it in outlook email!) OR save it as external JPG! OR Mark it with various color pen provided by the tool (to highlight or something!).. In short, love this tool!
So, after a long time, I have Good bye Fullshot and welcome'd Evernote to my always running tool! Like they say, One needs to welcome change.. and Softwares are no exceptions to it!!
Stay tuned.. 