I've used a Moleskine Ruled Notebook for a little over a year.  In it, I keep track of blog ideas, meeting notes, phone numbers, to-do items, and other miscellaneous items that I need to jot down.  I love that it is small and rugged enough to be stowed away in my back pocket.

You don't have to look far to find lovers of the Moleskins and various "hacks" people have employed to make their Moleskines more personal/usable.  In fact, at the SEED Conference in October, a fellow employee of mine laughed when another conference goer noticed my Moleskine and showed me his collection.  Soon after there was a small gathering around our table showing off their Moleskines.  My co-worker can laugh, but Mike received accolades from 37signals on his sketchbook notes.

However, as great as they are, I commonly run into the problem with my Moleskine of being able to quickly find something I'm looking for.  I've numbered all the pages and have a table of contents, however the problem arises when I move to a second, third, or fourth book.  Notes and sketches become hard to find.

Enter the new Cahier Moleskine.  These are small enough that I make them topic specific.  As you can see by the picture on the right, I carry one solely for ideas about VitalSite.  It's useful when you're checking out at the grocery store and an idea to use LZW compression for your database blobs hits you and you need to jot down all your thoughts and reasoning.  I've had it happen enough times where I think I'll remember the idea by the time I get to paper/computer only to lose the idea and it's context a few moments later.

I've also started to use one cahier notebook per book I read, keep all the notes and thoughts a book generates in one tidy package.  The theory being that I can always go back to the notes on a book quickly and easily.  I also use one notebook per conference I attend, keeping conference notes handy and easy to find when I say, "I don't remember...but I know Jim Coudal said it at SEED."  I don't always fill them, but that's not the goal, clarity and findability are.

If you are a Moleskine lover then I'd encourage you to give these a shot.  They're handy and not too expensive.  They're not as durable as their big-brother original, however, I find that I don't use one nearly as long and therefore doesn't have to be nearly as rugged.