A real time, multi-user, online notebook. Real time is real time, with little delay. Public Pads can be set up instantly, with custom URL’s if desired, but have no security (and can’t be deleted). So, they are very, very public pads.

There are a couple of services that help do some of this automatically and give you a place to store and share the images. Scanr works with cameras, including camera phones, that take at least 1 megapixel images (that’s most newer phones and nearly all digital cameras). Quipit has similar requirements. In both cases, you take a picture of the whiteboard, handwritten/drawn document, or typed document, and send it to the service. They process the picture to increase the contrast, remove shadows and camera artifacts (like flash glare), and crop the background out, and provide a link or account where you can download, share, email, or fax your image as a PDF document. Registration for both requires an email address, and agreement to the terms of service, which are fairly standard.

For the most part, a standard 1 megapixel shot in either service will do nicely for a whiteboard or for handwritten notes, but not for typed documents. Both services have lists of phones that work for whiteboard, notes, or typed documents, so you can easily check if your camera phone will work. Lighting and careful photography are still important, no matter how good the image processing, so both services provide tips for improving your images.

Both Scanr and Quipit have Facebook applications for sharing classnotes. Quipit allows you to post documents to a blog. Quipit works in color or black & white, while Scanr says it is dedicated to high quality black & white images. Both services have tagging and searching.

Security is based on passwords and both services have SSL security for login, however transmission is not necessarily encrypted. You are sending images from your camera phone via the text messaging system, or from your computer via email, and neither service has control over that part of the system. So use care if you have proprietary or personal data.

So the next time you have been scribbling on a napkin, or brainstorming on a whiteboard, get out that camera phone and give one of these a try.

They are also working on an independent offline editor. Offline viewing is already available via Google Gears. No Microsoft Office required, just the Google Gears download. Very intriguing. Plus Zoho offers plugins for IE and Firefox to view documents in Writer (doc), Sheet (xls), or Show (ppt).

And I’m checking out the Notebook. Not only can you do web clipping (like Google’s Notebook), but you can incorporate documents and other Zoho services, add audio and video (like YouTube), record(!) audio and video, and use the built in chat or Skype. And all of this can be edited collaboratively and be published for public viewing (with comments, too.) I’m going to experiment with this for doing online presentations. (Oh, and did I mention that they’ve got a Web Conferencing module, too?)

(*Thinkfree will be offering an online/offline sync, but it looks like you’ll have to pay for it.)

I’ll be trying everything out and will report on the individual applications separately, but I couldn’t resist posting about the whole thing right away.

Meebo does not allow file transfer, webcam viewing, or many of the other additional services, but it’s great for basic chatting. In my own work, I have found IM very useful for short collaboration sessions, such as planning a meeting, working out some last minute bugs in a presentation. One group even edited a paper via IM. (We sent round the paper in MSWord by email before the session, then went through it paragraph by paragraph over IM, making suggestions and having one person act as secretary. Afterwards the corrected file was sent off to everyone to review the changes–we used MSWord’s Track Changes feature, which our professor also used for grading.)  It’s also nice for just getting to know people. It is often hard to stay on track for long periods of time, however, and since you don’t have the ability to split off new threads, those side tangents get distracting pretty quickly. My advice for IM conferences is to have a single topic to get through, get through it as soon as possible, and then let everyone chat who wants to.

Oh yes, and in IM you will notice connection differences. It’s easy to dominate an IM conversation if you are the only one with a broadband connection, so take it easy if one or more of your group is on dial-up.

Finally, many public libraries, schools, and businesses block IM and chat sites. I generally don’t agree with such policies; I believe that IM is a legitimate collaboration tool, but I do understand the “waste of time” argument. So I’ll include a link to the meebo repeater with a little hesitation. I generally feel that it’s better to work out the problems with the administration through education and pilot programs, but it can be very frustrating in the meanwhile, so I’ll just ask you all to use your best judgement.

The Vyew website has a good explanatory screenshot.

The programs available in the Suite (or separately) include: Firefox (web browser), Thunderbird (email client), OpenOffice (office suite), AbiWord (word processor), NVU (web editor), Sunbird (calendar & task list), FileZilla (FTP client), and Gaim (instant messenger). The whole Suite will fit on a 256 Mb drive. There is also a version without the OpenOffice (but including the stand alone word processor) that will fit on a 128 mb drive (which can be bought for $20 these days).

All of these programs have desktop (non-USB) versions, so you can work on your files at home, at work, or on the go. (One warning: Sunbird is still in alpha and so may not be the best choice for a desktop calendar program, but Portable Sunbird can import/export to Apple’s iCal or any other calendar program that uses the iCal standard .ics file format. Sunbird does not sync with Palm OS devices. Yet.)

This would be a great system for Mac users who are stuck using Windows computers every so often, too. No worries about whether or not Microsoft Office will read your Mac files, because OpenOffice has a Mac version that reads/writes exactly the same files as the Windows version. OpenOffice will read and save to Microsoft formats, too, and save to PDF and HTML.

If you can publish pretty much anything in a blog, respecting your blog hosts Terms of Use and general copyright laws, you can use a blogging tool for notetaking. If you have an Internet computer handy in the place you are taking notes, you can type right into the blogging tool and have “live” notes. Otherwise, use the blog as a place to reflect and organize your thoughts afterward. This is perfect for the Reflect part of the Cornell Method of Note Taking or similar systems.

Reflection is a valuable part of the learning process. You go beyond memorization, and put the information into terms that make sense for you. How does this apply to your studies, job, or life? How does this relate to other things you’ve learned? Not only does the information become more useful, because you’ve thought about how it applies to you and what you know, but it also becomes easier to remember.
If having your class or research notes online for all the world to see makes you nervous, then take advantage of the privacy and/or draft functions available in most blogging platforms. In edublogs.org blogs, like this one, I could password protect a post. In Blogger (blogspot.com) blogs, I could use the Save as Draft function. When I downloaded the Opera web browser, I had the opportunity to start a blog that has private access functions. LiveJournal (popular with teens and students for personal use) also has privacy functions. Those are just a few examples.

You can also use a blog for collaboration. Group blogs allow all members to post. Or other group members can comment on your notes (if you turn on the commenting feature available on most blogs).

There are many social bookmarking services, and I’m using del.icio.us as a popular example of this type of service. The characteristics of del.icio.us and similar systems are: easy bookmarking of links, space for short notes (256 characters in del.icio.us), keyword tagging (more on that below), and full public access.

Keyword tagging is probably the biggest benefit of these systems. In your browser’s Favorites/Bookmarks list, you can organize your links into folders, but each link can only go into one folder (you could save a link more than once.) With a tagging system, you assign however many words you want to each link. This means you can personalize your “retrieval system”. For instance, if you find a site on mercury in fish, and you have an interest in environmental issues, you might tag the site “fish mercury pollution”. However, if you are interested in the medical risks of mercury to pregnant women, you might tag it “fish mercury toxicity pregnancy”. If you are have an interest in fish biology, you might add the fish species name as a tag. Etc., etc.

This provides an easy way of organizing notes for classes and projects. Figure out a unique tag for each course or project. The course number (ENG101, etc.) is a good place to start for course-related work. Sources for your final paper might be tagged “ENG101final”. Sources for a group project might be tagged “ENG101GroupB”. If your whole group uses the same tag, you can all find each other’s sources by searching for that tag. (It’s useful in this case to check to be sure you have a unique tag.)

While these services are designed for saving links to webpages, there are a few tricks for working with none online sources. You can link to the library catalog record of a book, for instance, or a webpage that cites the book or article you are interested in. Just make sure to note what it was you were actually saving in the note or description field. You can use a blog or other online publishing tool to save notes and save that link.

While all of the above will work for any social bookmarking service, there are a few reasons to use del.icio.us in particular. For one, del.icio.us is easy, quick, and quite stable. There are also dozens of addon tools for del.icio.us. The most useful for note-taking is Pasta. Pasta allows you to save a text note to del.icio.us and then access it just like you would any other link.

There are a few problems with del.icio.us and the similar services, as well. Your saved links are (almost) completely public. Also, since all you are saving are links, it doesn’t help if the page you had saved disappears. I’ll mention a few related services that help with these problems in separate entries.