There is a fantastic travel tool that you might already have: Microsoft OneNote. This multi-functional software has helped me keep track of all the research for this trip, down to every detail. The structure is simple: Create a notebook (called "Italy Trip" or whatever). Open tabs (called sections) titled for each part of your trip (Rome, Florence, etc.), add other sections to keep track of travel reservations, hotel reservations, etc. You can clip and paste on the fly as you do your research on the Web... URLs, photos, bits of text, just about anything you can see on your screen.
In fact, a great ability is to use the print-screen key on your keyboard to print a web page or photo that typically can't easily be copied... then paste it from the buffer (control-v on Windows PCs) into an image editor (I use Photoshop) to crop out unnecessary items, and then to paste the image into. This is an excellent way to capture an copy-protected image of something you want to reference later on. As long as you can see it on your screen, print-screen will print it to the copy buffer. You can then add pages to each section, although since the section spaces are truly virtual (without boundaries) I haven't found a need for that. Everything gets pasted onto one page and I just zoom in and out or scroll around. Every time I come across a travel tip, an interesting site to visit, contact information for a B&B or hotel--whatever--I cut and paste it into OneNote. Items also retain their URLs. Just a click takes you back to the site where you originally found the information--an incredibly useful feature! OneNote also auto-saves. Just quit and leave the program whenever you want and everything will be there the next time around. You will never lose your notes. After gathering info on different regions we were planning on visiting, it was an easy task to gather my wife Lisa and son Lucas around the computer and fine tune our plans. The really great thing is nowadays, OneNote is free for download and syncs to all your devices! --Jerry Finzi Comments are closed.
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