Last update: October 11, 2006

Recently I decided I needed a better way to store notes and documents for the long term. I am not concerned about short-term, task-related reminders. Rather, I'm thinking more of procedures and policies, how-to documents, and brief project notes that may be of long-term importance to a specific project and to other similar projects in the future. These are notes & documents I will reference and update repeatedly -- one week from now, one year from now, ten years from now.

With this in mind I set about evaluating many of the available tools and services. Below, I'll lay out my criteria for the perfect note-taking and document storage tool and then I'll declare one or two winners. Lastly, I'll highlight some tools that could be useful if your goals & criteria are different than mine.

My Criteria

• Must be very likely to remain available and viable for many years into the future.
• Must include a good system of categories or tags for organizing my notes, as well as a search engine for finding old notes.
• I want a web application rather than a desktop program so I can access it anywhere I have an Internet connection. If I have computer trouble, or am away from home, I want to be able to access my notes on another computer.
• Ease-of-use is essential.
• A reasonable amount of privacy. I don't want my notes showing up in search results.

The Winner: Google Docs
Honorable Mention: WordPress

Google Docs is an online word processor and collaboration tool. It was called "Writely" before Google acquired and re-branded it. Google says it will remain free. WordPress is a very popular, easy-to-use, open source blogging program. Neither was developed with my specific purpose in mind, but that hardly matters if they meet my criteria better than other available tools.

Both WordPress and Google Docs meet my categories/tags requirement. Both have a search feature for finding old notes. Both can serve as a private repository of content. Both are a breeze to use, but Google Docs is a little quicker sometimes when it comes to saving changes, and I find I can locate and begin work on a previously saved document in Google Docs slightly quicker than I can with a WordPress blog.

With Google Docs you can be up and running in seconds, using your existing gmail login. With WordPress, you can be up and running in a couple minutes by setting up a free, hosted account at wordpress.com; alternatively you can download the WordPress software from wordpress.org and install it on your server.

Unlike WordPress, Google Docs is very much geared toward collaboration. You can share specific documents with specific collaborators, and Google Docs stores your revisions, with changes highlighted, and allows you to roll back to prior drafts. These are features I wasn't seeking but could be useful at times.

WordPress is a publicly licensed program, so nobody can ever take it away from me -- a big plus. Google Docs, on the other hand, is under the control of a company whose interests seem to align with my interests today, but there is no way of knowing if that alignment will continue into the future. Google could introduce ads, or could change features in a way that makes the software less suitable for my purposes. The now-mighty Google could one day be acquired, go out of business, etc. Google Docs does have some useful export options, but as of today they are not appropriate for exporting content en masse to another comparable tool or blog if things took a turn for the worse with this software or with Google in general. In other words, there is an element of risk with Google Docs.

It is possible to use Google Docs to publish individual articles to a WordPress blog or any other blog -- this feature could provide an additional backup for your data if you are diligent about publishing all entries to a private blog. (I'm finding this feature a little bit buggy at present, but no doubt it will be improved.)

With Google Docs you can save your work with CTRL+S. With WordPress the process of saving a work-in-progress is a little less graceful -- though much better than with some other blogging programs.

Both Google Docs and WordPress allow you to upload files, but as of this writing, Google Docs does not allow you to upload PDFs, and WordPress does. In Google Docs, you upload a file outside the context of any of your existing docs, and the file is automatically transformed into a new editable document alongside all your other documents. In WordPress, you upload a file while you are working on a particular blog post, and a link to download the file is automatically created within your blog post.

Other Notable Tools and Services

Evernote
This is a very nice-looking desktop application that was created specifically for long-term note taking, organization and searching. It is not a web application, so I ruled it out on that basis. But it is worth a look; the interface is very nice and it has a good feature for "clipping" parts of web pages for later reference. It costs $35. For people who are nervous about keeping their notes online, this could be the perfect solution.

Netvibes
This is a customizable start page for your browser where you can add widgets like a to-do list, a simple notepad, web links, and a box displaying your latest gmail messages. You can also very easily add news boxes based on RSS subscriptions. It's a breeze to use -- you can drag your boxes around and you can even create multiple tabs and add different widgets and news boxes to each tab. It's sometimes a bit slower to load than I would like, but as of now, it's my new start page. I've taken to putting my RSS subscriptions in a separate tab, because they are a little slower to load than the other content.

Yahoo! Notepad
This very simple Yahoo! service allows for organizing notes in folders and searching them later on. Some may find the simplicity of the Yahoo! Notepad appealing, and if you use other Yahoo! services, you don't have to log in again to use the Notepad. I ruled it out because its folder system does not allow assigning notes to multiple folders, unless you duplicate your notes.

Backpackit
This is a full-featured planner with a calendar, reminders and a note-taking tool. This service has two major problems: no search engine for finding old notes and documents, and no way to put notes/documents in categories. This service costs $5-14 per month.

Zoho Planner
Very similar to Backpackit (see above). Still in the testing phase and free as of now, but they may charge for it in the future. It appears they are trying to implement a tag system for organizing notes, but I couldn't figure out how to use it.

Webnote
I doubt I'll ever use it, but it's certainly fun to play with. It has an unusual yet intuitive interface that looks like a big pile of overlapping post-it notes as you add more and more notes. You can color code your notes and there is also a search engine for finding notes in your pile. This service could perhaps be useful for planning presentations, but I'm really not sure. It may be nothing more than a novelty, but if you have a couple minutes to kill, check it out. Hint: When you open a new note, double click on it to begin typing. When you hit the 'X', you delete your note from the workspace. All notes are public.

Writeboard
This is a collaboration tool in the same vein as the Google Docs service. It has a nice, simple interface and you can integrate it with the above-mentioned Backpackit service. No system of categories or tags. Writeboard.com has a page with some suggested uses -- though Google Docs could serve all the same purposes just as well.

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Special note for Xaraya practitioners:

Since I already use Xaraya as my CMS, why not just create a new publication type for notes, or use the built-in "notes" publication type? In fact I did just this, using the articles module and keywords. It worked pretty well, but I decided I wanted a zero-maintenance solution and I also wanted an excuse to have a look at tools available to non-technical users. I wanted to be able to recommend some tools that a non-technical user could get started with in minutes no matter what their CMS. For a technically-minded user who has Xaraya as their CMS, it's true that a very good solution can be crafted with Xaraya in less than an hour. In the final analysis, Google Docs will probably serve only slightly better than my own publication type.