Reminder Fox
Never have been one for actually taking notes during a lecture or meeting, as key concept just stick with me. However, little reminder notes about things I want to do or look into are helpful if it not part of such a major concept at the point of making the note. I tend to make them all over the place, including the calendar (physical and virtual), note cards, several smaller notebooks, two different notepads in executive folders, the occasional napkin, side of the palm of my hand, any odd scrap of paper, and even my white boards on occasion. This leads to more time in general spent trying to make sense of the notes and keeping them organized that actual action the notes (which is not for those wondering, one of the seven habits of highly effectual people).
I had thought for some time that there had to be a way to do this on the computer. So I began looking at options that would accomplish just what I desired several months ago. After several looks I had most settled on Reminder Fox, a plug-in for Mozilla’s Firefox web browser. I was unsure however about having such an option the web browser and at least at the point in time, the options for synchronization across machines was very limited in the best of cases. I used it for a while and enjoyed its use, but you may recall that I had a drive crash in the main laptop I use for office (which is where the Reminder Fox install and hence data files resided). Given that I had not gotten the synchronization to work correctly, without an easy point to restore from I was left with a bit of a sour taste.
Shortly after this is when the new version of Ubuntu Linux (Lucid Lynx) launched. I was happy to find a note making utility that worked really well, at least in Linux environments, named Tomboy Notes. I was happy and easily hooked from the start because it had a robust synchronization option that worked extremely well with minimum setup. Additionally, the categorization options and overall look and feel was just much more robust for making the kinds of notes I typically needed to ‘jot’ down here and there about something to come back to later (often blog topics). After a few months of usage though, I find that I tend to not act on the notes I make specifically that require follow-up actions – like actually writing the blog. This is largely because there is not any sort of timeline, calendar, or reminder option. A note is made and unless I remember and go looking for the note (or at least in the category) it never comes up again.
A bit more searching over the weekend led me back to Reminder Fox. I re-read the documentation about the synchronization. I am not sure if I missed it the first time or if it is a new option since my original attempts, but in addition to synchronization with specific servers they suggest, one can set up simple FTP connection to any place one has FTP read and write access to and push/pull a .ics (I think that is write, but do not quote me) file from the site. This can even be set to trigger automatically. I was happy to give it a try to use one of my domains, a folder for this transfer was set up. It all works like expected, pulling things into which ever session I am running (Windows or Linux) shortly after launch of Firefox.
The great thing about Reminder Fox is the ability to set a date on the calendar for something to be completed by or the reminder to occur. Additionally, can be set to auto-remind daily until it is marked as complete. So I can make notes, pop in there, and they pop up in the morning as a reminder as well as anytime I go looking for them. Additionally the top two or three will show up in the status bar (depending on length and settings) of the web browser window. As a potential bonus, though I am not at all sure how I feel about it at this point, a future planned update plans to allow integration with Google Calendars.
All I have to do is get all those scrap notes here and there, as well as the Tomboy notes converted. Now, if I could only figure out a way to make the notes directly into Reminder Fox while driving down the road… 
** – Image from Reminder Fox website
