Google Reader, Google’s free online RSS reader is how I keep up with hundreds of websites and Evernote, my “ubiquitous capture” has become the repository of everything I want to do, read and have done.

I use them both every day, but I’ve never been happy about how I get articles I want to save from Google Reader into Evernote.  My solutions have been either pulling up the actual web page from Google reader and then clipping either text or the entire article from the page or trying to highlight text within the reader and clipping it directly to Evernote, both seemed awkward.

The answer is simple.  While in Google Reader you can send articles via email and every Evernote account has it’s own email address that allows Evernote to capture emails that you wish to keep. So I’ve  started happily reading article in Google Reader and then emailing them to my Evernote account. Very simple and very cool.  The command for emailing from Google Reader is letter “e”.

Me? Kind of slow, but eventually I figured it out.

Your Evernote email address found on Settings Tab of Evernote website

Entering “E” while reading articles in Google Reader opens an email form, just enter your Evernote email address and send.

Oh, yeah and if the term “Ubiquitous Capture “  sounds overly pompous, it’s from David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology for the place where you can trust that you can put everything important that needs to get done — it can be a notebook.

Here at Enquiring Mimes we have a set of Web apps that we use every single day.  We’re always happy to see them improved, so here’s a summary of what’s new around our world of working online.

Oh yeah, it’s also a good time to give them a try if you haven’t yet.

Gmail – Our always favorite web mail has made it easier to perform Google searches while you’re reading your email.  Through the Labs technology, you can place a Web Search widget into your sidebar that when searched, does not disrupt emails you might be reading or writing.  Also, new today, Google has made it much easier to import email from older web email services (read Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL).  Now you have no excuse not to move to Google, Jim.

Google Calendar – The Google To-do list function called Tasks which had previously been integrated into Gmail is now also available in Google Calendar.  It’s a good way to create tasks with due dates and be able to see the To-Do items created in Gmail in your calendar.

Zoho – The Zoho office suite continues to develop and evolve, some of the more recent updates include being able to gadgetize (a word?) your Zoho documents and apps and put them in blogs, websites and Facebook.  Zoho is an excellent alternative to Google Docs for a free web office suite plus extras.  It is now spiffily accessible from mobile devices such as the iPhone.

Evernote – The best note-taking, information sharing uber-app around continues to update their product.  Recently they’ve added support for Blackberry mobile devices, the ability to direct your Twitter messages to Evernote account and localization into Russian.  We’re still waiting for Evernote for the Android G1.

MindMeister – This web-based mind mapping tool continues to be spruced up and enhanced.  What’s new includes localizations for German and Japanese, inline images, new formatting and a new widget for embedding your mind maps externally.  Since mind mapping is not a skill that’s in everyone’s repertoire,  playing with Mindmeister is well worth the time.  If you are of us who find it easier to visualize your world rather than just see it as lists, you’ll be surprised to find how intuitive it can be to create a mind map of exactly what’s on your mind.

VLC – While not a web app, VLC, the open source video do-everything is approaching their production 1.0 release with a release candidate.  The RC sports a spiffy new user interface and, as always, VLC is the best and easiest way to view your digital videos.

I continue to find new uses for Evernote, my ubiquitous memory. Evernote is the web and desktop services that allows you to capture just about anything, anywhere.

I had this recipe that sounded pretty good that I had torn off of a rice package. I wanted to put it somewhere I’d be able to find it again. So, I held it up to my webcam, took a shot and then dropped the image on the Evernote icon, that took care of putting it in my PC desktop Evernote database, also uploading it to the web and then running it through their text recognition technology making the entire recipe searchable — see the highlighted search terms “rice and cream” in the image from Evernote. Also nicely done since Evernote synchronizes, the recipe will also be available on my MacBook.

Download the free Evernote from evernote.com.

I love it when something I really like, gets even better.  That’s the story with Evernote on the Mac.

A bunch of new Mac-ish features include adding a clipper to the Safari browser similar to the plugin that’s previously been available for Firefox, support for the Safari 4 beta, the ability to merge notes and integration with the Growl, Mac notification system.

Especially useful is the Safari clipper which has three modes:

• Click the Evernote elephant button in the toolbar with nothing selected, Evernote clips the entire page
• Click the elephant button with a selection, Evernote clips only the selection
• Shift/click the elephant and the page is converted to a PDF that is clipped to Evernote, great if you want to keep the original formatting of the page.

Evernote says they are working on changes for Windows, too, so similar changes are probably in the pipeline for that platform.

Check out what’s new.

Want to read that web page but there’s so much junk and distraction? How about saving it for later, like in Evernote?

Use Readability, which the developers call a “bookmarklet on steroids”.  It takes the web page you’re viewing and reformats it to just include the text, by pressing the bookmarklet. At that point you can select the text and add it to your clipper, like Evernote.

You can get the  Readability bookmarklet by visiting their site, configuring your page for margin size, style and font size – then drag it to your bookmark bar.

Before:

After:

Get the Readability bookmarklet [via 43Folders Clips]

As I’ve mentioned before, notetaking applications are near and dear to our hearts here at EnquiringMimes as I spend so much time online sifting through websites I need a place to keep notes and a reliable way to keep track of what I find.

The last notebook I reviewed was UberNote which is a relatively simple web service. Today we’re going to kick it up a notch with Evernote, a notetaking application that has both web and desktop components allowing you the best of both worlds.

Evernote describes itself as your “external brain” which while an exaggeration, it would be accurate to say that Evernote can be your external memory. You can store everything in Evernote of which you want to keep track and there are several useful ways to get your information into Evernote. Evernote also have a couple of unique features that makes it very powerful way to keep your information.

To get started with Evernote create an account and download the application for your desktop, Mac or Windows and install. Press the New option on the toolbar and you can type information directly into the note. That’s the most basic way to get information into Evernote.

You can send graphics to Evernote and then search the text within the graphic. This is very powerful, it means you can take a picture of business card with the camera in your mobile phone email the picture to your Evernote notebook and poof — when it gets to your account it’s searchable. If you’re using a Mac laptop, you can use the built-in iSight camera and the application Photo Booth to take a picture of any document or card and send it to Evernote. Evernote also interprets and index handwritten notes — very useful if you’re using a tablet computer or again, take a picture and send it to Evernote.

Web clippers are available for Firefox that allow you to “clip” portions of web pages or entire pages to add to your notebook. The clippers are also available as Firefox add-ins.

As you send your clip to Evernote you are given the opportunity to add tags to the note to make it easier to find later.

When you’re finished adding information on your Evernote on your desktop, you can synchronize the new information to your account which is visible from the web so it’s available to you wherever you are. You can synchronize your home computer and then have it available at the office by synching again.

Evernote accounts have their own email address that can be used for emailing into your Evernote notebook. Evernote is also available on your mobile phone so you can send your grocery or todo list to Evernote and have it with you when you leave home.

There is, of course, the ability to upgrade. If you find yourself a heavy user of Evernote, for $5 a month you can upgrade your account to allow 500 MB of uploading each month rather than the free 40 MB.

Download Evernote