Tech Tuesday: Google Keep

Simple and surprisingly powerful note and list and picture and all-around data repository, Google Keep has quickly become my favorite go-to app for capturing all my thoughts and ideas and to-do lists in my daily life.

For as long as I've been a paperless pianist, I've struggled to find the perfect system for capturing my brainstorms and mental reminders. I've tried Evernote, but found it clunky and cluttered. I loved the simple interface of Any.do, but it was TOO simple to be used for anything but to-do lists. A few months ago, I heard about Google Keep from a podcast interview with a tech entrepreneur, and quickly fell in love with the drop-dead simple interface and surprising flexibility to be able to not only capture a wide array of notes, lists, and pictures, but also to set reminders and even share them with friends.

You can access Google Keep from any web browser, and all your notes are stored on the cloud - it works best if you have a Gmail account to sync everything together. Google Keep is a total blast on my Android Samsung Galaxy 4 phone (yes, it's a reaaallllyyyy old phone...but hey, it still works!). It's simple interface allows me to re-order my note cards, or flick them away to archive them. Of course, Google has the whole search thing nailed, so it's super easy to find any text in my growing note pile.

Unfortunately, there aren't any native options for Google Keep on iPhones or iPads - you can try a third party app like Turbo Keep, or just make a bookmark in your Safari browser for http://google.com/keep and launch the bookmark from your home screen. This article from iMore.com does a good job of explaining iOS Google Keep options. Hopefully Google will address this in the future.

Best part about Google Keep is the fact that it's totally free! If you have an Android phone, then you definitely need to have this installed. Visit http://google.com/keep for more information.

Do you have a favorite note-taking or idea-capturing app? If so, I'd love to hear about it and why you love using it.