We we’re very delighted to hear that MacWorld.co.uk re-reviewed Memonic once again – and found it improved enormously. In fact, it has. The reviewer concluded that:

Few tools try so hard as Memonic. With rapid development adding features frequently, it’s the note taking tool to watch.”

The reviewer especially liked the advancements in the (still world’s best) web clipper and Memonic’s sharing functions.

Much tweaked since we last reviewed the service, web clippings can be taken from any page using Opera, Chrome or Firefox using a bespoke extension. Web clips have more features too, with image annotation for screenshots that you take on the fly and website address clipping.

Memonic’s central selling point remains – and that’s collaborative sharing. While that’s possible with Evernote and Springpad – it’s absolutely central to Memonic. New collections can be shared publicy or with friends.

All in all we were given a 4 star rating, thank you MacWorld.co.uk!

What do you like most about Memonic?

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Winning clients is often a complex process. It all starts with lead generation and qualification. This is – from own experience – often a cumbersome process.

Instead of talking to the right contact person quite often the lead database produces unqualified connections, people simply not interested and other useless contacts.

Our partner MatchCode focuses on exactly this: With their Precision Profiling Method they are able to identify the correct contact person faster.

Once identified Squirro offers a digital research assistant to further enhance the profile information of your contact. Your sales team will know to whom they talk and about what they need to talk.

We invite you to join us this coming Wednesday April 18, 2012 to our event “Successful Lead Generation”. You’ll learn how the combination of MatchCode and Squirro will provide true value for your future lead generation campaigns.

Our special guest at the event is the renowned profiler Dr. Thomas Müller. He is one of Europe’s leading crime psychologists and won his fame with his work as profiler in some of Europe’s most remarkable serial murder investigations. He will talk about human behavior and how it can be decoded.

Dan, a student who was passionate about Legos back in the days of his childhood, uses Memonic for his everyday tasks and gathering research at school. However, since learning is a life-long activity, he plans to use it far beyond that. Please read on to get to know Dan and the way he integrated Memonic into his life! If you’d like to do such a short interview with us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at alex [at] memonic [dot] com.

You’re a Memonic user. Why?
As a student, Memonic offers me a research desk in the cloud. Being able to securely store my notes, bookmarks, and clippings where they can easily be retrieved is super sweet. I like that I can work privately in groups, or share clips just between friends. I was pleased with the desktop clipper which I used to capture presentation slides from a school lecture. That got me thinking about combining captured slides with notes and tagging them all into a collection that’s easier to search through and study.

While I may use Memonic as a student for now, I’m confident that I will be able to use it to synthesize all that I’ve gathered and want to learn about throughout my life. More than anything else, I see the web as an enabler for life-long learning. I’d be interested in figuring out how groups can use Memonic as a collaborative learning tool. That goes with my expectation that one day the Memonic squirrels will help their users pool together their gems of knowledge into a significant collective intelligence.

What do you dislike about Memonic and yet you keep using the service?
I have found that Memonic is not yet perfect. The browser tool sometimes slips away from me before I can tag or file the content I’m gathering. Also, while scrolling down through a large collection it takes too long to load. Maybe jumping ahead by page number would be quicker. But honestly, accessing all the content in an instant would be my preference. I’d also like a more granular search function that filters multiple tags and retrieves any mention of a word from content I’ve previously bookmarked. Another thing, where is the heck is the community at? Maybe there is one, but there should be an clearer way to discover fellow Memonic users.

How does Memonic compare with Legos?
As a child I loved Legos. I enjoyed discovering how the different building blocks could be combined to create cool structures. I compare Memonic to Legos because I see tagging like a way of identifying different blocks that can later be combined. The next step beyond curation is synthesis. I find tagging helps me determine the size, colors, and shapes of a given piece of content. These various types of content can be combined into larger structures. Building such structures is how we learn. Anyway, I admit that much of what I’ve accumulated in Memonic remain like scattered Legos in my messy childhood bedroom, but I’m getting more organised. I guess that’s part of the fun. Let me know if you want to come and play along.

In one of your last posts we talked about the development approach of “Mobile First”, which claims that instead of developing a desktop version of a web app first developers should start with the mobile application instead.

Today, we’ll have a closer look on “Responsive Web Design”, which aims to deliver one single application that adapts its output depending on the device it’s being displayed. In other words: The underlying application stays the same, but what you’ll see, when you use it, depends on the device you’re using the application on.

Why use Responsive Web Design?
Admittedly, you’ll have to do a little more to the application to make it fit any device. However, these additional efforts will pay off since you don’t need to develop completely new applications for each platform and device. Eventually, you’ll end up with one single application – and changes in logic or features won’t need you to rework different clients for different devices – it’s a snap to ensure consistency throughout.
However, consistency in functionality does not mean consistency in how things are being delivered. Depending on the device, certain features might need more space or attention in general. With Responsive Web Design, an individual emphasis on each element of the layout can be achieved, while the functionality does not change across different devices. Content basically stays the same – just how it’s being displayed is depending on the device.

How does it work?
The ideology behind Responsive Web Designs are so called “Fluid Layouts”, which means that you don’t even have to care about the exact screen sizes of all layouts. The layout itself will adapt according to certain criterias. For those of you who are knowledgeable about HTML and CSS will know the new CSS3 media queries. With those, you can query the browser for things like screen resolution, screen size, and other things. That way, it’s pretty easy to detect if the user is sitting in front of a desktop PC or is using a mobile phone. Or a tablet. And deliver a design that displays content in an appropriate way for the respective device.

How’s that going to look like at Squirro?
As we adressed in the “Mobile First” post, we’ve got a number of design drafts for a first mobile version. Building upon that one, we then extended to the desktop interface. Which – as Responsive Web Design claims – offers the same functionalities but tied to a different set of input and output devices: high-resultion screens as well as keyboard and mouse. At Memonic, while the clients shared a big portion of the same code basis with the web platform, they were completely own applications. Even the desktop and the mobile versions differed in many ways. So did the features across all clients. Now with Responsive Web Design, backend developers are able to work on features and functions while the frontend designers do their best to assemble them in ways it makes sense for each device.

For those of you fluent in German, a few sneak-peaks of the upcoming desktop application have been revealed in the video interview posted yesterday. For all the others, here are some tiny little extractions of what we’ll come up with in the next weeks and months:

You are collecting clips and would like to know what social media says about a certain topic? Thanks to the new features of the Netbreeze Social Media Reports you’ll immediately be able to see how hot a topic in social media is!

Extending your notes and collection in an easy manner
Extend your notes quickly and down-to-earth fashion with a Social Media Buzz-Chart. Find more pulsating news and articles that match your favourite topics directly from within the Social Media Report! Netbreeze now allows Memonic users to easily integrate social media data into their note collection!

Social Media Report as a data basis
Already numerous public topics have been analysed on the Netbreeze Community Page whose findings are free to use. A constantly updated Buzz-Chart can be integrated in to your Memonic collection using a tiny snippet of Iframe code. Use these Social Media Reports to gain greater awareness of topics you care about. With just a few clicks you can filter data and refine results – which you can add to your Memonic collection.

Cool – how does it work?
It only takes three easy steps: Either look for an existing Report on the Netbreeze Community Page or create one yourself, copy the embedding code and save it as a new note in Memonic (switch to “Source” mode first!). Done! An example for an embedded Social Media Report can be found in the Memonic Collection with its core topic “Big Data”.

Is it going to cost me an arm and a leg?
No! Both, the Community-Report as well as the Buzz-Chart are being processed by Netbreeze for free. It’ll only cost you a few seconds of your time for the initial setup. After singing up on the Netbreeze website you can add any reports and immediately start monitoring.

About Netbreeze
For over a decade Netbreeze observes online media. They work closely with their customers and offer customized solutions in addition to self-configurable software and expert advice from experienced consultants. The browser-based monitoring systems are available as Software as a Service (SaaS). Whether SMEs or multinationals – Netbreeze offers the right solution. Their social media monitoring systems are often used in communications and marketing, such as online reputation management, consumer feedback and campaign tracking. With their latest innovation, Netbreeze visualizes the discussions on the Web.