Travel Research Notebook

One amazing tool you might have right now... Microsoft OneNote. It has helped me keep track of all the research for this trip. 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 ad hoc from 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) 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, I cut and past it into OneNote. Items also retain their URL s. Just a click takes you back to the site where you originally found the information. OneNote also auto-saves. You will never lose your notes. Amazon has OneNote for around 60 bucks.

--Jerry F.