I’ve just uploaded a new version of NoteScraper for Evernote (download) that supports exporting all of your Kindle notes and highlights from a particular book to a single Evernote note. You can still export each of your annotations to separate notes too, but I had a request for the all-in-one feature. (Thanks Will.)
The new version also includes the authors name in the title of the notes.
Visit my software page for a bit more info, or just give it a spin.
My reading habits changed the moment I got my hands on an iPad. I’d been considering getting a Kindle for a while but held off in anticipation of whatever magical device Steve Jobs and his minions had in store. I’d installed Amazon’s Kindle app on my iPhone some time before, but the small screen never drew me in enough to make it anything more than a occasional reading device. The Kindle app on the iPad’s big screen made all the difference though, and I now find myself buying 90% of my reading material in Kindle ebook form.
About that same time I read Will Richardson’s post where I learned that the electronic notes and highlights that I was creating in my Kindle books could be accessed online at kindle.amazon.com. Wow. To quote Will, “Game. Changer.” I’m not sure I’ll ever buy a non-fiction book in dead tree form again if I can help it. (The inability of Apple’s own iBooks app to make my saved notes and highlights visible in one place is the single biggest reason I have yet to buy a book from Apple.)
Before Kindle, my typical practice was to make my highlights and margin notes in pencil and transcribe them into OmniOutliner so I could have easy access to them later. Effective, but laborious. What if, I thought, I could write some software to “scrape” the web page that displays my notes and highlights and import them into OmniOutliner directly using AppleScript. If nothing else, it sounded like a good excuse to learn AppleScript.
I had the OmniOutliner version working soon enough and added a generic OPML export too for those who don’t happen to own OmniOutliner. By that time I’d started playing around with Evernote and noticed that they had built AppleScript support into their Mac client. I decided to build an Evernote version too.
Enough delay: I’m calling it NoteScraper and making both versions available for download. Please note that there are likely bugs. This software is definitely beta. You can get more information and download the software at the newly minted Savvy Technologist software page.
I hope someone (besides Will) finds this stuff useful. I’d love to hear about it if you do.
I don’t even remember where I saw it now, but I ran across a QR Code on a website a couple nights ago and got curious about it.
QR codes are 2-dimensional bar bodes and can be used to encode a variety of data. The barcode above represents the URL of the Wikipedia article about QR codes. If you had a QR code reader on your cell phone, you could use it to scan the barcode and load the Wikipedia article in your mobile browser. QR codes were invented in Japan, and they’re used commonly there for everything from posters to produce packaging.
QR code scanners are available for most major mobile phone platforms. It looks like most recent Android phones have the capability built in. I tried a few different apps before settling on Optiscan (iTunes App Store link) on my iPhone. It works by turning the phone’s camera into a barcode scanner that understands the QR format. The scanned code can be used to direct a browser to a specific URL, make a phone call, send a text message, send an email, load a Google map, or even load someone’s contact information into your address book.
I also found an Adobe AIR application called QRreader that runs on my Mac and turns the iSight camera into a QR scanner.
Generating the codes is easy too. There are dozens of sites on the Internet that will create the codes and make them downloadable as images. The best one I’ve found is by Kerem Erkan, though this one is good too.
So how could we use these things in school? Since we’re involved in a pilot project exploring the use of student-owned technology in a number of our schools (cell phones included), we’ve got many students who could take advantage of these QR codes. Here’s a short list of ideas some of my colleagues and I generated yesterday:
There are a ton more, and I’m eager to figure out some real uses for our students that are bringing their phones to school. Here’s one more example, a link to my LinkedIn Pingtag:
If you’ve got other ideas about how to integrate QR codes, let me know in the comments.