Ask HN: How do you organize notes?

[papercutter]

Hi!

I'm interested in knowing how you organize/store your notes (quotes/code snippets/random notes/todo etc)

I take a lot of notes myself, and I currently store them as text files in the dropbox folder and sync them across my computers and iphone. (iphone notes can't be edited :( ) I think it is the best way as it is simple, easily accessible and open (text files).

Earlier I used OneNote and then Evernote but found out that though they've lots of features, they're pretty slow when it comes to accessing the notes. SimpleNote is tempting but I didnt want to register with yet another service.

So, how do you store your notes?

[michael_dorfman]

I use OneNote, and have my notebooks in my Dropbox folder. I've just downloaded the MobileNoter app for the iPhone, but haven't used it yet, so I don't know how well that will work-- but I haven't had any problem with the OneNote/Dropbox combination yet, and I certainly haven't found it slow to access my notes.

[adulau]

I'm using text files stored by days (notes/2010/09/19) in a git repository. The git repository is replicated between my work and my home system. I have a quick-and-dirty(tm) script that generate automatically the daily file especially with the date and some recursive ASCII art I'm using like [ ] ( ) or TODO/tag list. The script is also adding a template for those "bloody" meetings that you are forced to go to.

For searching back, I'm using git-grep.

I'm sometime using todo.txt (especially for some large projects @work), I described the process some years ago: http://www.foo.be/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/2008-05-24_My_Git_To-Do_Pr...

I'm still missing a nice/simple way to add the photography of the whiteboard notes into my text notes.

[papercutter]

Interesting approach!

[pealco]

I swear by Notational Velocity (http://notational.net/).

[santry]

Syncing with Simplenote (http://scrod.posterous.com/interesting-facts-about-simplenot...) to get the notes on iPhone/iPad is great, so is Syncing with Dropbox (http://wiki.github.com/scrod/nv/synchronizing-with-dropbox).

[chipsy]

Zim ( http://zim-wiki.org ) + Dropbox. It's available on all three major desktop OSes, it starts quickly, it has the hierarchical outlines that I like, and it doesn't flake on me.

[rasikjain]

I use TreePad Lite. You can organize notes in one single file and creating multiple nodes. Using it for more than 3 years.

[tsally]

Spatially, with post-it notes. It's gonna be a long time before software can replicate that kind of experience. ;)

[papercutter]

Haha! true, but you can't sync them! ;)

[JBerlinsky]

I don't go anywhere without my Moleskine.

[owg]

use what douglas adams used, james fallows uses, and dan brown would use: www.brainstormsw.com