As a home-based-entrepreneur you are required to write well. By writing in a efficient manner you can easily communicate various aspects of your business. This articles discuss the two most popular note taking program available to the home-based-entrepreneur

You are reading this article most likely because you are a home-based business entrepreneur. In this capacity, it is required that you write for many aspects of your business. There is ad copy, writing news releases, job descriptions, how to use your products and services, and a host of other tasks that involve writing.

You may also write articles to post in article banks for others to use, and, by including a resource block about you and your business, this becomes a source of free advertising for you.

All of these require some research on your part, and when you search the Web, you will uncover countless items of interest that you would like to use at some time in the future. The question is, how in the world will you find it when you want to use the information?

Because I love writing, this is a continuing problem. There have been several very satisfactory programs I have used to organize my work, but somehow they have all become less useful, or they have just gone away. I recently discovered a establish file manager in Evernote.

While researching Evernote, a number of other file managers and note taking programs came to light, and these are the subjects of this article.

The programs presented here are some of those found in searches of the most popular Google programs in the file management and note taking fields.

OPEN ATRIUM
This is an Intranet platform with open source abilities. In plain language, the dictionary defines Intranet as “a computer network with restricted access, as within a company, that uses software and protocols developed for the Internet.” This means Open Atrium can be used to communicate throughout your group of computers, along with members of your team. Atrium allows many users to share resources, like documents and notes, and enables efficient collaboration of efforts for your entire group.

There is even a way for individual teams to have their own group discussion and cooperation. It allows you to develop your own personal improvements to the system through open source abilities that are included. They have a section called “How to Build a Feature,” which shows exactly how to create any new feature you may want. 

Open Atrium comes with these main features:

BLOG: The program includes a regular blog format which allows comments, attachment of various files and documents, and unmodified notifications from blog users. This looks and works just like any other blog, and may be used to promote the ideas of users.

CALENDAR: With Open Atrium you get a calendar feature that not only lets you add events, but you can also factor in Mac’s iCal and other calendar feeds like Doodle or Google Calendar.

GROUP DASHBOARD: This feature uses a number of widgets to show you everything going on with all your groups. You can turn activities on or off at will, as well as arrange them in any way you want.

DOCUMENTS: Open Atrium includes an online handbook showing how to share and mutually work on documents, how to store and review changes, how to include all kinds of information in your work, and ways to publish the final result when you have finished it.

SHOUTBOX: This element lets you share messages and all kinds of information exclusively with members of your group.

CASE TRACKER: Case tracker gives you the power to assign things to do and create necessary projects for your various groups. You can establish priorities for these items and track progress of every element of your ongoing project. Additional content is easily attached to projects already in work by creating extra “child pages” to your current project.

While using Atrium you can use the archive function making certain information invisible to most people using your site. Archived material is taken out of all listings and cannot be found with a normal search; generally, only you can view these documents.

The Atrium developers plan to keep all their code open so you can keep your copy always up to date for the uses you want by creating any improvement you wish on your own. They want everyone to be able to use a basic program that can always be updated with self-created plug-ins to do anything one wants to do.

Because of its open source ideas, Open Atrium seems to be a versatile management tool for any kind of project. It’s free, so you can try it with no cost.

REFWORKS
This app was created eight years ago by a group of experts in managing bibliographic information. They have produced a high-quality program that provides management and collaboration facilities for all kinds of Web-based research and writing groups.

Should you choose to use RefWorks, all you  need to do is to established your account, this could be a trial or regular version. Just login using your password and username.

After you have established your account, it is a simple process to accumulate data by importing from Web sources, or typing manual information. As you develop your document, enter specific ID numbers for your references. When you are through developing your document, ask RefWorks to build your bibliography and format your document. That’s all you have to do to have completed work ready to publish in some form.

The trial version has all the features of a real subscription; you may try it for free for 30 days, then you will be notified that you need to upgrade to a regular subscription at a cost of $100 annually. This price includes all improvements and upgrades that may occur from time to time.

RefWorks program allows your references to be quickly imported from text files or online databases. You can automatically insert references to generate bibliographies along with manuscripts in only a few seconds. You can eliminate index cards with your notes as you automatically import your references.

The program allows changes in your paper and automatically rebuilds your bibliography and reformats your work. RefWorks lets you automatically receive information from RSS feeds, along with information about the source, the author, and descriptive terms to help you quickly access the information. There are many other notes taking programs available however, I only choose to discuss Open Atrium and RefWorks note taking programs.