I've always had trouble finding a good simple program on which to keep miscellaneous notes and other odds and ends. Most of the programs I have tried are either far too complicated, lack basic functionality, or are highly unstable. Yesterday I googled "personal information manager", which I do from time to time in the hope that something new will turn up, and this time it did!

Evernote has one great advantage right from the word go - in its basic version (which is all I think I need at the moment) it's free. But it has the look and feel of a highly professional program. What's more it's highly intuitive and extremely simple to use. I was competent in just about all the basic functions within 15 minutes of downloading it.

The basic idea is that it keeps all your notes in a continuous roll, rather like a blog. With the ability to categorise and carry out instant searches, it's easy to find stuff again. When I say it keeps your notes, that probably gives the wrong impression. The "notes" can be almost anything. Text, documents, webpages, links, clippings, images - just about whatever you like.

I've already established that it's very easy to put stuff into Evernote. The real test will come when I've put a huge volume of stuff in and want to get it out again!

I'll report back in due course.