The Public Service Announcement for the day is for those who are always stopping to jot notes in a notebook. You see a notice on a board, or even something on a computer screen, so you jot it down before you forget it. I’m here to save you a lot of time with this tip. Use Evernote, and instead of jotting notes down everywhere, snap them with your phone camera.

Evernote is the note-taking app extraordinaire that lives on the web and does some seriously good things with your notes. The time saver I am sharing is the best way to get those notes into the system. When you see that sign, the notice on the board, or even something on your computer screen that bears remembering, pull out your smartphone and snap a photo in Evernote. There are versions of Evernote for the BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre and Windows Mobile, so just about every smartphone is covered. The desktop is covered with both Mac and Windows versions to go along with the web version that works in just about any browser.

Once you snap the photo in Evernote, it is sent to your notebook in the cloud where some cool things happen to it. First and foremost, Evernote looks at your photo image, and if it sees any words in the image, it indexes them for searching. That means that from now on, you can search for a word and every saved image that contains that word will be shown to you. Simple and easy. Try it, and you’ll quickly see how powerful this can be. This is by no means the only way to use Evernote, but I’ll share more on that soon.

Image courtesy Crackberry

Mobile browsers can transform a phone into a full-fledged web appliance with the right browser. We’ve covered many mobile browsers in the past, including the BOLT browser by the folks at Bitstream. BOLT is built on the ThunderHawk browser of old and is a fast, server-rendering browser. Videos can be streamed inline due to the server involvement, and pages render much like they do on a desktop. BOLT recently upgraded to beta 3 which has some significant improvements and is worth checking out.

This new beta version of BOLT adds copy and paste, the ability to organize bookmarks and, most importantly, the BOLT servers have all been upgraded to WebKit4. The browser should, thus, be faster and more desktop-like as a result of that upgrade. Bitstream has a full list of new features and enhancements here.

BOLT should work on most Java-enabled phones, and there is a version specific to the BlackBerry available. The download is free, so it might be worth a try.

(via Crackberry)

As a full-time Gmail user, one of the bits I really can’t stand is now fixed. Google implemented some changes to its Label system that I’m ready to pounce on, but the new features are rolling out throughout the day. At the moment, my account doesn’t have them. So what am I waiting for with high levels of anticipation? Three things that should help my productivity.

The Label system is now above the Google Talk or chat area, which is super helpful when I’m using my netbook. I use Labels far more than I use Chat, and I always wondered why I couldn’t swap placement of the two features. With only 600 pixels to use on a typical netbook display, the Labels often fall off the bottom of the screen. Of course, with several dozen labels, they’ll still drop below the small screen, so the second new tidbit will overcome that issue: configurable hiding or showing of Labels. Yup, you can now specify which Labels you want to see all the time, as opposed to those hardly used (but still useful) Labels. Google will start you off by showing the most used Labels, and you can modify as needed after that.

For the “old school” emailers, Gmail now supports dropping and dragging for Labels. You can drag messages to a Label or you can drag a Label onto an email. Using this feature will perform a “move and archive” function, just as it does with the Move button that Google added prior. Is it just me that’s excited over these changes? Perhaps I’m easy to please…

You have likely heard today that Firefox 3.5 has gone gold, unless your Internet Explorer browser is hung up again. I’m kidding of course. Firefox 3.5 has a very fast JavaScript handler that makes a big difference on many web pages.

WebWorkerDaily reports that this production version is not much different than the Release Candidate version. They reviewed that version so you can get good insight into the benefits you may receive by upgrading to 3.5 by reading their review. I have been using it since its release and it is definitely one speedy browser.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Dell is working on a Mobile Internet Device (MID) that lacks 3G to compete with the Apple iPod Touch. The device is said to be slightly larger than the iPod Touch and will use Wi-Fi to provide the connectivity to the web. The gadget is pocketable and designed to be used for web access and as a music player. It definitely sounds like it would be set to go up against the iPod Touch.

If Dell does produce such a device, and the report says it may get scrapped, Dell would be in a position to market it to those who find that Wi-Fi connectivity is good enough. Like the Touch, consumers could forego the expensive 3G data plans and dealing with carriers altogether, something many would find to be a good thing. Dell is not currently in the smartphone market, although it is supposedly working on changing that, and having no arrangement with phone carriers could be leveraged in marketing a non-phone device. Imagine loading the device up with Skype or other VoIP capability and showing potential customers the benefits of free phone calls without the carrier.

Bsquare is a software developer for the embedded device community, and it has announced the release of an Adobe Flash browser plug-in for the Android platform running on ARM-based devices. The Flash plug-in requires Android 1.5 (Cupcake) or higher.

“The next version of Google’s Android operating system, ‘Cupcake,’ should be attractive to a wider segment of developers,” said Larry Stapleton, Bsquare’s vice president of global sales. “Our Flash Platform technology browser plug-in will be valuable to OEMs building ARM-based smartbooks and to those who are developing other types of Android devices requiring a rich media experience that is fundamentally different than anything else available for users today.”

We have recently seen an upcoming Android phone, the HTC Hero, running Flash in a browser, but there is no confirmation this is the same implementation announced today. One has to wonder why Android is the platform that gets Flash working first — perhaps because it is open source.

Image Credit: Mobility Site

The Mozilla team has extended Fennec, their mobile browser, to Windows Mobile devices with a second alpha version now available. Although there are a few other great third-party browser options for WinMo, I have high hopes for Fennec. The browser makes great use of the small screen by adding virtual space off-screen, both on the left and right sides of the display. Fennec is also designed to work with Mozilla’s Weave project, which synchronizes the browser experience between computers and handheld devices.

This latest alpha build cleans up some features and bugs, according to the release notes:

• Improved panning performance
• Newly designed theme
• Improved add-on support
• Improved UI polish

The prior alpha version already had these handy bits:

• Bookmarks, including tags
• Smart URL bar (”awesome bar”)
• Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images
• Integrated Web search – built into the URL bar
• Easy access to multiple search engine
• Maximize content by auto-hiding controls and URL bar
• Password manager
• Popup blocker
• Searchable download manager
• Preferences pane
• Add-ons manager, including ability to directly find and install add-ons

Sounds like a pretty complete browser for an alpha to me. Mobility Site took the latest version for a ride on an AT&T Tilt and found some issues with zooming and some other UI controls, but your mileage may vary. Fennec requires Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional or better, but you can also install it to a Mac, PC or Linux box to kick the tires.

If you’re like me, you use Gmail all day, no matter what computer you are using. Maybe you sometimes use other people’s computers to access your Gmail remotely. It is always a good idea for security reasons to log out of Gmail whenever you finish using a given computer, but we users don’t always do what we’re supposed to do.

Gmail has our back, with the ability to sign out of any Gmail session remotely from any computer we are using at the time. It’s been available for a year, but bears reminding for those who forget such things. Just click on the details link at the bottom of the main Gmail screen:

This will pop up a window that shows the details about your recent activity and list all currently open sessions. Just tap the button to log out of all other sessions remotely to start a clean slate.

Good news if you’ve signed up for a Google Voice invite. The company announced today that those invitations are now starting to trickle out to new users. Didn’t sign up for an invite yet? No worries, but you should run, not walk, to the sign-up page to request one.

Now that I have a second mobile line but no landline, I use Google Voice to manage my incoming calls. For folks who have my Google Voice number, I have it set to ring both my iPhone and Pre. In fact, I had my sister call me to test it just yesterday when she stopped by. She dialed and immediately both phones were ringing, which blew her mind.

Google Voice is also capable of handling incoming text messages and voicemails, both of which can be transcribed for you. I hit up my Google Voice account on the web using my iPhone yesterday and was able to read the most recent voicemail messages, which were transcribed with great accuracy. Here’s a screen-cap to the right showing the mobile web interface and a text message conversation I had on two different phones. There’s other flexibility as well: You can define which phones ring depending on who is calling or if it’s late afternoon on a weekend.

All in all, I’m thrilled with the free service. I still can’t wait until I can port my main mobile number to the service, though. I’ve had that number since 2000 and, more importantly, it’s the number that nearly all of my contacts have. Speaking of contacts, Google Voice uses your Gmail contact list for an address book. Glad I moved to that a ways back for my contact needs.

GigaOM does some nice one day conferences and our cloud computing focused Structure09 conference is happening right now. The conference is being streamed live and it’s looking pretty darn good. The conference stream can be accessed for free here.