Difficulty: Straightforward

What you need: An Evernote account and a web browser

Why you need it:

“Evernote allows users to capture, organize, and find information across multiple platforms. Users can take notes, clip webpages, snap photos using their mobile phones, create to-dos, and record audio. All data is synchronized with the Evernote web service and made available to clients on Windows, Mac, Web, and mobile devices.” – CrunchBase

What to do:

Sign up at http://evernote.com/ using the “Create Account” link at the top of the page.  You’ll be redirected to the web interface for Evernote, and see a welcome note from the service. To help with getting started, here are a few terms you’ll see used in the application:

• Note: The basic piece of information in Evernote.  A note may contain text, images, audio or other attachments.  Everything that’s stored in Evernote is added as a note.
• Notebook: A collection of notes, just like its real-world equivalent.  Evernote notebooks are similar to folders on your computer, and any one note will only be associated with one notebook.
• Tag: A free-form identifier that can be assigned to a note.  You might tag a note “to-do” or “Projects” if you didn’t want a whole notebook dedicated to those kinds of notes.  A note can have as many tags as you want.

I wouldn’t worry about organizing notes yet (since you don’t have any of your own). Instead, we’ll “clip” a recipe from a website as an example.  I think the Web Clipper from Evernote is the easiest way to add sites to your account.  To download for Google Chrome, click here.  For Firefox, click here.  Other browsers may work differently, so head over to the main clipper page to see what they recommend.

Here’s the clipper installed in Chrome (all the screenshots below were taken in Chrome):

Now navigate to the test recipe (link here). Click that new icon in the upper right corner, and you’ll see a menu displayed:

The Web Clipper automatically fills in the article title, and you assign a notebook and/or tag.  In the example I’ve selected my Cooking notebook where I keep all clipped recipes. Once you click the clip button, the article is sent to your account, where you can use it and modify it later.

When you select “Clip Article”, the Web Clipper clears out advertising and other clutter from the page, making notes easier to read. This is a very nice feature that I use every day.  Notice that if you’re using “Clip Article”, the portion of the page being clipped is highlighted on the page itself:

If you’d prefer to clip the whole page instead of just the recipe itself, select “Clip full page” from the drop-down menu next to “Clip Article”.

Setup takes a few minutes to complete, but now that the clipper is installed, you can add web content to your Evernote account in a matter of seconds. The free version of Evernote does have limits to the amount of data you can upload each month, but I’ve never hit that limit.  I’ve been using the service for over three years, which is the most telling endorsement I can give; it’s an awesome accompaniment to the Web and helps save great ideas for the future.

Title photo by Michael Summers via Flickr.