Webnotes was created for the simple purpose of taking fast and simple notes. Over a short period of time, more features were added. Now it’s handy for far more than taking simple notes. It can easily take the lead in being a meeting place for groups.

Here’s an example page I created long ago. (same as image below)

Keep reading and I’ll give you some tips on how to use Webnotes.

How can you create your own Webnotes page? There are two ways. The first, is to go to the home Webnotes page and type the name of the page into the box provided there. The second way, is to type in the address of the new page directly into your browser.

Example: http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/(New_page_name)

Organizations and Tools

The organization of content on the Webnotes pages is easy to grasp. Everything is contained in little sticky notes that you can create, edit, move around or delete. Using the toolbars at the top of the page, you will be able to manage the notes and the page.

Create a Note

To create a note, you’ll have to click the little yellow square in the very top corner of the page.

Next, double click on the new note to enter editing mode. At this point you can start entering text, HTML codes or embed codes. You can also change the background color of the note while in editing mode, by using the color boxes at the top border of the note. To finish editing, you only need to click outside of the current note. Just remember, you can lose all of your changes if you don’t save the page.

Organize and Find Notes

Once you have a note finished, you can drag it around and drop it anywhere on the page. This makes organizing your notes very easy.

If you get to the point where you have so many notes on a page that it’s hard to find what you were looking for, you can use the “Filter” box. Type in any text you are looking for and the rest of the notes will fade to reveal the note which includes matching text.

You can also pick individual notes from the index array at the top left of the page. It shows the notes by color, but more importantly, when you hover over a little box, it pops out a display of the text in the note.

What Can You Store in Notes

As you can see from my Webnotes page, you can add text, pictures, videos and even music in a note. Some code for web gadgets doesn’t work and while others do.

• For pictures, I recommend using image hosts, such as Imageshack.us or Photobucket.com. Others work, but I like the simple way that these services offer you pre-made HTML code to place in a page.
• For video, YouTube.com embed codes work well. I’m sure many others do as well.
• For audio, Skreemr.com is my favorite for music and Podomatic.com is my favorite for audio files you create yourself.
• Documents and Slideshows display fine with Google Docs share codes and SlideShare.com embed codes.

Other Features

Webnotes keeps copies of every saved page and you can cycle back through different versions of them. There is even an undo and redo feature. I’m not sure how well these features work though.

RSS feeds are available for Webnotes. The feed will notify you whenever a change is made to the page.

If you are a webmaster, you can also download and install your own copy of Webnotes.

Techie Buzz Verdict:

Webnotes is a much overlooked free web service. It’s simple to use and very flexible. The only drawback to the service is that there are no security locks on a page. The only protection you have against anyone defacing a page is that most people will never find it.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5 (Excellent)