Review - Evernote

Evernote is a universal capture tool for capturing notes of all kinds.  These notes are synchronized to a server and will sync to any other machines where you have Evernote running.  

Platform Support and Synchronization

Evernote runs on Mac, Windows, iPhone, Windows Mobile, or over the web.  It will synchronize your notes across all your devices.  Evernote will synchronize your data between all the devices where you have Evernote running.  Unlike many apps that claim to synchronize your data, this has worked extremely well for me.  The desktop app is quick and easy to use.  

Capture

The content of notes can come from any of the following:

•  Text Notes.  You can directly enter text notes.  The editor is pretty basic, but getting much better.  The newest version I downloaded (1.1.6) has added support for bulleted and numbered lists as well as basic text formatting (italics, bold, underline).  It also contains checkboxes that can be added to notes where each items represents a To-Do items.  You can then search later across all your notes for “Not Completed” items so you can capture and manage all your action items.  
•  Image capture.  On the Mac you can directly capture images using the iSight camera.  This is extremely helpful, especially if you don’t have an iPhone running Evernote.  The images in the notes are then scanned by the Evernote server and indexed so you can do full text search on text that appears in the images.  This can be used for business cards, documents, etc.  The iPhone app also has an excellent interface for capturing images into notes which of course automatically synchronize.
• Ink -  Capture directly from supported tablets
• PDF - You can load PDF files into Evernote so they are available on any of your devices.
• Voice - Voice notes can be captured using the microphone on your mobile phone.
• Web-clipping.  There are a variety of tools called clippers that allow you to get notes entered from e-mail, a web browser or other apps.  My favorite is just a bookmark I have in Safari that when I click it lets me capture the current web page as a note, enter tags, and submit.  Almost instantly its available on multiple platforms.

Text recognition

The device will attempt to recognize text in images after being synced to the server.  The full-text search on the Notes will then (hopefully) find the notes with the graphical text.

 

Organizing Notes

On the desktop version you can display your notes visually or in list form which is very handy.  You can also organize notes into different notebooks based on topic (work and personal).  You can then select the notes based on tags or attributes (Created date, Last Modified, Contains (image, audio, etc.), Source (whether it came from a web clipper, email, mobile, or desktop apps), TO DOs (Completed, Uncompleted Tasks).  Full-text search is available as well including searching on text in images (after the notes have been synced to the Evernote server). 

There is also a sharing feature that will allow anyone (who knows the URL) to see the notes in a particular notebook.  This can be quite handy for sharing notes.

iPhone Support

The iPhone app is excellent.  The screenshot below shows the basic options for creating notes.  You can create Text notes and directly enter text.  You can immediately create a Snapshot Note using the iPhone camera or create a note from a Saved Photo.  You can also record a Voice Note as well which is create to use while driving.  The Snapshot notes can be used for capturing business cards or even taking pictures of people with their name tag and using text search to find their picture later.  

 

 

 

Wishlist

• Better reliability on iPhone.  The app has locked my iPhone several times after taking a picture, but the new version may have fixed this.  The jury is still out.
•  Easier ability to mix images and text in a note.  Currently you create a snapshot note, but I’d like to just insert the image into the note I’m working on. 

Cost

The cost of Evernote is quite reasonable.  You can transfer up to 40MB/month to the server.  Beyond that you’ll need the Premium service for $5/month or $45/year.  It provides larger transfer range, better security, and priority text recognition.  I have managed to live within the free service limitations so far, but I’m impressed enough that this is one tool I would happily pay for.

Conclusion

Evernote is one of the apps I use almost every single day and is a really invaluable part of my workflow now.  It has cleaned up all kinds of little files on my computer with lists of things I’m keeping track of, or odd/miscellaneous things I wanted to capture.  I highly recommend it if you are looking for a way to manage a lot of disparate items, particularly things that are a combination of text, video, audio notes, etc.

No related posts.