As a result of the ever increasing diffusion and utilisation of the Internet, the information and services available online grow every day. This implies problems that become ever more important and hard to solve, such as:

• where do I save the useful information I have found?
• how do I organize and search the useful information I have saved before?
• how can I share the useful information I have saved?
• how can I find and communicate with other people with the same interests as me?
• how can I quickly create web pages accessible by anybody without engaging a web programmer or requesting permission from the relevant web site authority?

Let's see how OnlineNotes addresses each of the above questions.

Where do I save the useful information I have found?

Consider the following facts:

• we may use several computers (hand-held, laptop, desktop, local server)
• some times we don't have our computer with us but can use someone else's computer (e.g. in a hotel or an Internet café)
• the computer we are using may break, get lost or stolen
• we may forget to back up data in our computer or simply not do it because it is time consuming and complicated.
• maintaining a private dedicated server is expensive, time consuming and requires specific skills

For all the above reasons, a web server managed by an Internet Service Provider is generally the best place where to save valuable information. You can install OnlineNotes in any shared or dedicated Linux-based server managed by an ISP (including daily back up of data) for a very low price. And in order to use OnlineNotes you only need a web browser. No need to install anything in your computer.

How do I organize and search the useful information I have saved before?

When you have a lot of information, you have to organize it properly, otherwise you will not be able to find it quickly when you need it. Having too much unorganized information is like having no information at all. With OnlineNotes you can organize your valuable information using the powerful functions of a datase. You can create records associated with particular sections and categories and find them using various filtering and sorting criteria, including full text search.

How can I share the useful information I have saved?

OnlineNotes lets you specify for each record, who can access it: only you, only a particular group of users or everybody. So you can share your records with other people and see other people's shared records.

How can I find and communicate with other people with the same interests as me?

Social networks are more and more popular because they allow people to meet persons with similar interests and establish meaningful relationships. OnlineNotes allows you to see the records published by anonymous or identifiable users and get in contact with these via the site's internal mail.

How can I quickly create web pages accessible by anybody without engaging a web programmer or requesting permission from the relevant web site authority?

OnlineNotes lets you create web content that can be accessed by anybody through an Internet web address. This address can be indexed by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Every registered user can immediately insert records with simple or rich text (HTML) possibly embedding images, video and sound, and every user (registered or unregistered) can query the database. Every search query corresponds to a particular web address that can be used by anybody to obtain the same results.

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The idea is about moving from a conventional, mainly passive, standalone studying method into an active, cooperative one by means of online note-taking with the optional participation of students, teachers, school authorities/employees and student parents..

An example follows of how OnlineNotes could be used in a school environment.

The OnlineNotes Company offers a dedicated, customized OnlineNotes installation to a given school. The system can be installed on any Internet server, so the school does not need any IT infrastructure in order to use it. Only students, their parents, teachers and employees of that school can register as users with "write" privileges). The system would carry customized database sections corresponding to the relevant study matters and areas of interests of that school. 

The school director informs teachers and students of the free availability of the dedicated OnlineNotes system and invite them to use it in all possible ways. He/she explains that using OnlineNotes is not mandatory, and should be seen as a service offered by the school to people who are willing to use it for their own advantage.

Examples of use:

STUDENT INSERTING  NOTES

Any student may insert and update study notes on a any particular subject matter. Notes may include concepts, quotations, summaries, "bullet slides", links to web sites and uploaded documents and images. The student will choose whether to make each note private, public or shared with particular users, including other students, teachers, parents. Public notes are indexed by Google and other search engines and therefore accessible by anybody. Thus the student becomes a publisher, which is an educational experience in itself. He/she can then send an email to the relevant teacher or any other people, notifying the insertion or update of one or more notes.

TEACHER VIEWING NOTES POSTED BY STUDENTS

The teacher may review the note(s) posted by theirs students and take various possible actions, including: correcting the notes, adding suggestions, testing the student for a possible improvement of his/her marks.

STUDENT VIEWING NOTES/DOCUMENTS INSERTED BY OTHER STUDENTS

Any students can view notes and documents related to a particular subject, posted by other students (of the same class or other classes, of the same year or any year before). This can help him/her to learn the subject and to write his/her own notes.

TEACHER PUBLISHING NOTES ON STUDY SUBJECTS AND ACTITIVIES

Any teacher can publish notes, links, documents useful to support his/her teaching activity. These notes could be public or restricted to the students of a particular class.

Teacher can also post reports about what they have done with a class, i.e. a log of all lections and events, with the relevant study material. This can be very useful to absent students and to parents who want to monitor what their children are learning at school.

PARENTS VIEWING NOTES WRITTEN BY CHILDREN AND TEACHERS

Any parent can monitor what their children are learning at school, so they can make sure their children are spending the necessary effort in learning what they have to, and maybe help them with studying if needed. Parents can also see notes published by their children as a proof that they are working properly.

SCHOOL AUTHORITIES/EMPLOYEES PUBLISHING  STUDY CURRICULA, RULES AND ANY OTHER USEFUL INFO

School authorities and employees may publish school curricula studiorum, rules and any other useful info. Although this is normally done in institutional web sites which are updated on a weekly or monthly basis, OnlineNotes can be used for immediate publication of any note or document by any person, without involving any webmaster or web programmer.

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If the school already owns a web site, the OnlineNotes could be presented as an addition to it and synergies between the two sites could be found, such as reciprocal links and reciprocal advertising.

The system could be tested in one class first and then, if the experiment proves successful, be extended to the whole school.

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People may think that OnlineNotes (ON) is just another solution in search of a problem, meaning that nobody really needs this web service. But there are indeed many needs that can be satisfied by ON.

As a matter of fact, about a year ago I developed the ON prototype for my personal use. Not that I could not find other web services that could fulfil my needs, but each service would only fulfil some of them, and not exactly in the way I wished. So, instead of accepting compromises and registering in many different web services, I thought, being myself a software developer, I could build the ideal solution I had always been looking for. 

Here is a list of features  that I wanted to have in a unique and consistent web site:

• an online personal information manager accessible by means of any browser from any computer
• a sharable database with a set of predefined sections, unlimited categories, powerful filtering and sorting functions and the possibility to embed images, video and sounds
• the possibility for the database  to produce search results as dynamic web pages indexable by popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.
• a place where to upload/browse/download files (documents or images)
• a link manager 
• a social bookmarking system
• a contact manager
• a to-do list and task manager
• an email scheduler to remind me or other people of things to do at any given date and time
• the possibility to share any information or file with all people or with a restricted list of persons
• an online notepad
• a mind mapper (useful for brainstorming) using database records
• an online image viewer with automatic creation of thumbnails, gallery indexes and slide shows
• a social network of users willing to share information and communicate with one another
• a chat system
• a forum
• a blog

There are plenty of web sites that can do the above things in excellent ways, for free or a fee, but I believe no one can cover more than 20-30% of the list. ON covers 100%.

Now, back to the original question: who needs all the features that come with ON? Maybe nobody needs 100% of them, but I think a significant number of people may find 30 to 50 % of the list useful and would be williing to use a solution like ON.  So the next step is to let these people know about ON.

But this will not be easy due to the fact that almost nobody wants to read more than large titles and slogans in a new web site, and it is impossible to explain in a few words how ON works and the many different things you can do with it.

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