I recently started using Evernote, a cloud / local hybrid application designed to facilitate the storage of “notes”. In Evernote, a “note” can be darn near anything: a note you type in, a PDF file, a web page, a link, an image, etc. etc. etc. The application offers myriad ways to get your notes into your database, and you can choose, on a note-by-note basis, whether to keep notes confined to your local machine or sync them to your Evernote cloud account.

Evernote has built-in support for a variety of scanners – the Fujitsu ScanSnap line stands out here. I have one of these, and it does, in fact, “make scanning a snap”. I just drop a stack of pages into the thing and hit a button – it scans both sides of each sheet, converts the images to a single PDF file, and stores that the Evernote folder that I have selected at the time. I’ve started scanning everything: bills, magazine articles, artwork the kids create, and more.

In tandem with this, I’ve started taking hand-written notes with my iPad, using a stylus and an app called UPAD. Each day I take a minute to export the days notes into the iPad Evernote app, and then it syncs right to my desktop as well. With this setup I can add sketches, go back an annotate in the margins, and so on, all the while “coming across” as a guy taking notes in a notebook, instead of an early adopter fighting with the latest popular gadget.

With Evernote all of your notes live in your local Evernote database, and all of the ones you’ve decided to trust to the cloud live on the Evernote servers as well. As an extra safety net, I shut Evernote down once a week, copy my whole Evernote database into a TrueCrypt volume, and drop that into my Dropbox folder, so that I have a totally secure copy of everything in a second cloud location.

I have a feeling I’ve just started to scratch the surface of the potential here – I’ll post updates from time to time with the latest.