No matter how many times you’ve repeated what you need to buy on the way to the store it always seems that something get lost. You can stand in the dressing room for a quarter of an hour with the mantra “pink, size 38, Marni ruffle skirt” but when you get home all that remains is a vague memory of the colour. If only it were easier to make a permanent memory. A screenshot, if you will, of what’s running through your brain to save for later.

Evernote, a brilliant mobile and web tool and winner of the TechCrunch Crunchies award for best mobile startup, aims to do exactly that. Their three part software works on the web, on your phone and on your computer desktop to take a snapshot of any text, images or audio. On the web or computer you can select just part of a page or do a full screen grab and save the clip, along with any media recorded from your phone, to an online web library that syncs notes from all three sources.

What is so impressive about Evernote is that their software can read words in images, automatically tag every new note with the words that appear and allow you to search through entire audio, image and text media collections for words and phrases. Want to look at all the window shopping you’ve saved? Search your Evernote library for $ or £ and it will find every instance of that character, whether it’s the label of a gadget you’ve been lusting over that you snapped with your iPhone, a must-have handbag you selected from the web with the Evernote Firefox addon or a screen grab of an email campaign from Amazon that caught your eye. How about searching recipes saved from the web, your books or captured on your phone? Simply search for an ingredient and Evernote will scan your collection.

The range of uses for Evernote is nearly endless but whether you are saving your best ideas, “borrowing” your favourite designs or snapping sales, Evernote is the ultimate library and search tool for what’s on your mind.

Now if only you remember to sign up.