And They All Lived Happily After Evernote…

Once upon a time, in a library far, far away, there worked a sad Information Assistant named Christopher.

Christopher was sad because on Saturday, having sat in the sunshine sipping coffee and eating cake till 5, he returned home to discover that he was horribly sunburnt! This made poor unsuspecting Christopher sad.

Furious at his own stupidity, and aghast at looking like a cross between ‘White Van Man’ and Peter Schmeichel, Christopher didn’t know what to do?!

“My nose hurts, and my face hurts, and my arms hurt!” cried Christopher.

“Who’s been a silly little Information Assistant?” retorted Christopher’s patronising & distinctly unhelpful parent, wallowing in her son’s solar demise.

“What am I going to do?” asked Christopher.

A caring and sympathetic response proved too much for the evil old woman*, so Christopher decided to turn to his trusty, reliable friend- the Internet.

Firstly, Christopher logged-on to SlideShare, and found some helpful (and scary) presentations on the dangers of sunburn and possible remedies; including a fascinating slideshow concerning Ultimate Frisbee:

Ultimate Sun – Developing Sunscreen Habits with Technology

[View more presentations from Jimmy Chen]

Christopher also came across a presentation entitled: 101 Ways To Cook Lost Children by the Candy Cottage Witch. Knowing that his friends, Hansel and Gretel, have had a problem recently with their parents ‘accidentally abandoning them in the woods’, Christopher decided to share this presentation with them via Twitter.

Secondly, Christopher came across this neat page on Wikipedia: Sunburn. Reading about the dangers of sunburn frightened Christopher so much, that he decided to spend time registering with UK Library Blogs in order to take his mind off things. Christopher also came across WikiPiggy, a specialised Wiki detailing construction techniques for building houses to withstand Wolf attacks.

Thirdly, Christopher decided that it might be helpful to bookmark the websites containing information about sunburn. So, he wondered if Delicious could be a helpful option, and who else might be using it already. Christopher discovered that Birkbeck Library had a small list of bookmarks, but none on sunburn. Then he discovered that one of his former lecturers had a medium-sized bookmark collection online, but with nothing about sunburn. Finally, Christopher searched for the term Sunburn on the Delicious website, generating a large amount of results, and found some information about treatment which was just right.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, thought Christopher, if I could store all of this information in one handy notebook, which I could access anytime, anywhere.

“Well,” said Granny, “my grand-daughter uses Evernote.”

“What’s Evernote?” asked Christopher.

“Evernote’s amazing,” said Granny. “It allows her to store loads of stuff, like websites, text and images in one place. She can access this information from home and on the go, using her Smartphone.”

“Wow,” said Christopher, “do you think she’d mind showing me how it works?”

“Not at all,” replied Granny. “In fact, she’s on her way through the woods to visit me now- said something about bringing me a basket of food.”

Ding-dong.

“That must be her now,” said Granny. “Early too, which makes a change.”

Christopher was curious as to why Granny’s grand-daughter had so many whiskers, really sharp teeth, and seemed desperate to get him out of the house as quickly as possible. Still, one mustn’t judge, he thought.

That night, Christopher slept peacefully; safe in the knowledge that, thanks to the wonders of Web 2.0, he need never worry about sunburn ever again.

The End.

(*Approval to use the term “Evil old woman” was agreed prior to publication.)