OneNote is becoming a bit of an obsession lately. Its one tantalising step closer to a paperless life.

My latest project was to feed a large RSS reading list from Inoreader into OneNote (for offline use, archiving, searching etc). Inoreader has a paid version that can do this, but I’m always search for the free option…

The short version:

  1. Subscribe to an RSS feed with your Microsoft account
  2. Set up a rule to forward to me@onenote.com

    The longer and more powerful way:

    1. Set up a new Microsoft account (so we can use Quick Notes default notebook freely)
    2. Make a Google account (if you don’t already have one)
    3. Make the Google account an alias of the Microsoft account, and enable it for OneNote
    4. Burn the RSS feed you want with Feedburner (I am using a large list from Inoreader, so I take that folder and burn it so I can use Email Subscription)
    5. Subscribe to it via email with the Google account
    6. Set up forwarding from the Google account to the Microsoft one. (I use the Google account so that I can do another thing later…)
    7. Forward emails matching Subject line of subscribed RSS feed to the Microsoft email address
    8. Make sure the Microsoft account is an approved alias for OneNote (step 3)
    9. In Outlook email rules, forward emails matching the FROM address of the Google account to me@onenote.com
    10. Share the default notebook from this newly created Microsoft account to your ‘real’ one.

    Now, why do we use the Google account (step 6)? So that we can use this Google script to grab lots of stuff (from that Google account) and forward it to the OneNote Notebook and populate it with lots of interesting data. In my case, I had a few years worth of these daily RSS digest emails, and I applied a label to them in Gmail and then used the script to forward them to the Microsoft account. As the rule was set up in step 9 above, these are automatically forwarded to me@onenote.com and then added to the OneNote Notebook.

    Slowly but surely, this Notebook is filling up with thousands of pages of research that can be searched, taken offline and shared.

      Plug this into your RSS reader:
      http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/56667/tag/REVIT_FEEDS_RSS

      I also burnt this feed to allow for easy subscribing (via email etc):
      http://feeds.feedburner.com/Revit_feeds_rssInoreader

      I previously had used a shared folder on Google Reader to aggregate all of this into one RSS via Feedburner (and then into PDF), but obviously that method is broken now.

      Dare I say that I think that InoReader is going to be my Google Reader replacement…

      Some other notes
      Another way to view the Revit Feed reading list, check out:
      http://www.feedspot.com/folder/4RTJsGUe
      (this one will not be updated, as I think I’m going to go with InoReader, not Feedspot)

      Another idea
      I thought I had found a way to aggregate my Revit Feeds into one RSS for easy reading / viewing.  Without getting into all the details, it uses a Yahoo Pipe to turn an OPML (containing many feeds) into one RSS feed, sorted by date.  Here it is:
      http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=70129693f6803988c7fe858f4fb9822b&_render=rss&opml=http%3A%2F%2Fanonanon.p4o.net%2Fpipelist.xml

      In the end, the result is not very predictable or reliable…

      This is the pipe:
      http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=70129693f6803988c7fe858f4fb9822b

      Because at any point, it can get turned off.

      My problem – I use Google Reader, and I have a folder called Revit Feeds.  This folder has been shared, and then the resulting feed has been burnt with FeedBurner. 

      This is the Revit feed:
      http://feeds.feedburner.com/revitFeedsRssInGoogleReader

      This is the BIM feed:
      http://feeds.feedburner.com/bimFeedsRssInGoogleReader

      I’m expecting all of this to turn off tomorrow, or soon after.  This is how I view and archive Revit news to PDF, using this method.  Now, what can I replace this with?

      The answer?  Nothing.  Easy.  Yet.

      I have tried numerous so called ‘replacements’ and nothing comes close.  I don’t want a flipboard or some artsy style, I just want to be able to fast scroll until I find some really fresh Revit information. Here are a few that I’ve tried:

      • Spundge
      • Curata
      • Feedly
      • The Old Reader
      •  SwarmIQ

      These are the main things I want:

      • fast, clean reading
      • ability to create a curated list of blogs and generate a new RSS from that
      • ability to archive feeds (including all images) to local filesystem for easy indexing and searching

      Now, I’m hoping one of you has the answer for me 🙂

      In the meantime, I am going to use The Old Reader for pure reading.  For archiving…I’m not sure yet.

      Here is some further reading:
      Google Reader Is Shutting Down; Here Are the Best Alternatives

      The Old Reader

      How to Transition From Google Reader to Feedly: Plus Other RSS Reader Alternatives | Social Media Today

      Priorities: Keeping the site up, listening and adding new features. | Building Feedly

      WP8:
      How to Transfer Your Google Reader Feeds to One of These Better RSS Apps for Mac, PC, Web, & Mobile « Internet 

      So you have some electronic information that you really want to read, but you just can’t find the time?

      You are madly Revit-ing away, and you have some PDF training files that might really help you, but you are just TOO BUSY to read them?

      Then try out this free program. It basically uses inbuilt Windows text to speech tools to read any document. I use the SpeakComputer TTS Reader. Just select the text you want to read, and paste it into the box…

      Then press Play! There are a few other options to do with speed of reading etc – just tweak these to suit yourself.


      If you can’t find anything Revit related and interesting to read, head over to Scribd and search for Revit

      PS – Hopefully Microsoft Anna doesn’t distract you too much from whatever work you are actually doing 🙂