C.R.S.? What the heck is that? Well, it is a problem that has been around for quite some time but only recently has been named–Can’t Remember Stuff (or the other 4 letter word that starts with “S”. Yeah, that one.) This particular malady can hit anyone at anytime for any length of time. There is known cure but there is a treatment that can almost eliminate the problem. That treatment is Evernote:
This little gem, which is available free for private use, can easily become your “offline memory”. It certainly has for me. This cloud-based program will allow you to store all sorts of information, pictures, notes, etc. and then access that info from your smart-phone, tablet, laptop, desktop or just about any other device that has or can support a browser. You get to organize material the way you want. The way you think. So you will be able to remember stuff later.
Here is a snapshot of my notebooks (one organizational structure that you can use if you so choose).
As you can see you can create a boat-load of notebooks or just one. If you are using the free version, you are limited to how many you can create but I have not hit that ceiling yet. You can also add tags to your notes to make it easy to search for later. The tags can be single words or phrases. They are case-sensitive so watch out for that later on. Here are some of my tags just to give you an idea. The numbers in parens are the number of notes associated with that tag.
One of the really cool features that I like a lot is that you can “clip” an article from a web-page and put it into your notebook. Then you can change the title of the “note”, add a tag or two or three, and then be able to later go into that note to add additional text or explanations. Kind of like a smart-bookmark.
I know some of you are probably thinking about security. “Do I really want to put my important stuff in Evernote?” I don’t see why not. It is probably just as secure as any other place you keep personal or important information (Wait, you do have your smartphone/tablet secured right? Oh yeah? Do you know where it is right this minute? Just asking…..) Like anything else on the web or cloud these days, use a strong password (10-12 characters with upper/lower-case, numerals, special characters, etc.). You can even encrypt notes if you like. Would I store passwords to other systems in my Evernote? Ummm, probably not. But I do have lots of other stuff in there. Just remember this little story I once heard at a seminar, long, long ago (paraphrased, remember I have CRS):
Is my system secure? Well, I don’t know. It’s on the network. Let’s unplug it. Am I secure now? Hmmm, well it is still powered up but it is in a locked room. EMF what? OH, ok. Faraday cage it is. Now am I secure? No, you want to unplug it until we need the data? Ok. And, you want to encase it in concrete? Bit excessive, don’t you think? Alright. Well, after we put it in concrete, why don’t we just drop in the middle of the ocean as well? WHAT!? It still won’t be secure?
The point of the story was that if whatever is on that system is important enough and valuable enough to someone, all you can really do is make it so expensive for them to get at the data that it is not worth it. Only thing is, it probably won’t be worth it to you either. So probably not a good idea to put state-secrets in Evernote.
So if you have C.R.S., give this a lookey-loo.You might find it useful. OH, and lest you think I am a shill for evernote or that I get paid for anyone who signs up–Nope not at all. Just a happy camper/user.