| Review: Evernote – Everything you never knew you always needed |
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Monday, 13 July 2009 16:58
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I am currently busy with a barrel load of projects at work and personally. As a result my brain has fired into creative overload with new ideas constantly bubbling up to the surface. I find myself making tons of notes daily on scraps of paper in the little notes editor on my phone, in text files on my work laptop, on keynote on my home pc or on a mind map in freemind. All in all I make a lot of notes all over the place which is not bad, I'd rather have all of these bits of information in existence on paper and out of my head. I'm really not that bright and as such need to keep the clutter to a minimum. Enter Evernote which I have now been using for a week and have been thoroughly impressed thus far!
What is Evernote? It's basically a bit of space online where you can capture your notes, lists, e-mails, pages you've visited, pictures, audio clips movies and pretty much anything else under the sun you need to keep track of even friggin tweets. "Bah humbug" I hear you snorting, yes I know there are tons of other alternatives that can do the same. The Devil they say is in the details though and this site and it's associated apps is one horny bastard. Grab you pitch fork and waddle along with me now as I explain why Evernote rocks hardest. Ok first up, Evernote comes in two flavours free and premium. I have not tried the premium membership but it seems it offers more space to store information, faster text recognition from image notes and stronger security. The free version is extremely feature rich and you don't have to upgrade though I'd like to in the near future, if I use as much as I expect I will. Not because I have to but it's nice to contribute when you find a really useful product.
One of the really nice features of this product is that you can stick pretty much anything in a note, on it's own this is really useful, throw in neat tricks that can extract text or even handwriting from pictures and all of a sudden the cool meter is running up faster than a medical reps odometer. Hell when you search it even searches the text it was able to decipher from images.
The interface on the website is very simple and keeps the tools you need easily at hand. It is lightning quick, really it is, everything about Evernote is slick and effecient. Once in the site you have the option to set up multiple notebooks to organize your thoughts as you capture them. Once you start you can add tags and edit attributes to help organize everything and that's about that. When you're looking to simplify your life the last thing you need is big fiddly solutions with millions of options this is simply a note taking application that takes the hell out of a note. Added to all of this web goodness there's a free desktop, iphone, windows mobile or OSX application which is for me is one of the highlights of the package allowing you to work offline, organize your notes and sync your web notes on the go. The desktop application also integrates with your browser and outlook allowing you to right-click on a web page to add it to your notes or allowing you to add an e-mail or attachment to your notes with one click. Have a Symbian phone use the wap site and review your notes their or capture a new one. If for some reason none of these options are appealing to you, you also have a dedicated e-mail address, send a mail to it and it will automatically get added to your default notebook to be reviewed at your leisure.
Updated Evernote Review on Monetize your Life Comments (4)
  written by OS GIKEN, July 14, 2009
Can't download it...dont have admin rights to add ANYTHING on this work laptop BLOODY CR@P
written by MikeZilla, July 14, 2009
Yeah I have a similar problem with my work laptop, so I just use the website or my phone to capture and organize notes at work and when I'm at home I use the desktop app.
written by Dissol, August 28, 2009
Ah! Oh! Hmm! Yes... Err...
What I mean is good! Someone else is giving this evernote thing a bash. I read about it, and put it on my phone and computer, and I think it may be really useful... But I have not had chance yet to really get my mind around how I can get it to work for me, and the way that I work... I have a feeling, from the little I understand, that this could be another kitten app for me along the lines (or even to replace?) MS Onenote. I will try to do a post about these at some stage, as both programmes lend themselves ideally to be aced with tablets and smart phons with touch screens. And it would seem that I am the only person in the whole MyDL community who has realized that the pen is mightier than the keyboard?
written by MikeZilla, August 28, 2009
I'm still using it pretty much daily I have become rather disenchanted with the desktop app it's not rubbish but it doesn't really give me much more than the site gives me so I tend to capture notes straight onto the site. I use it on my phone more than anywhere else though. I've found it's great for brainstorming post ideas or outlining a blog post in the bath or while driving :zzz yes I know it's dangerous I only use it while stationary tho promise. While driving I normally just open up a new e-mail message type and then mail it to the evernote address where the evernote elves copy it into my notebook it's really helped me consolidate my mental clutter.
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As you probably noticed I'm quite enamoured with the program this first week I've been using it and it's already saved my bacon this week because I was keeping drafts of my posts on Evernote. Go try it out this is the upside of cloud everyone has been hammering on about. For applications like note taking the time really is now for the cloud.
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