I confess: I’m a serial note taker. As I type this tech review, I am surrounded by Post-Its, index cards, notebooks and legal pads, all bearing task lists, reminders and other notes to self that I’m unlikely to look at again. I write things down to give my brain a break, but it’s impossible to reliably retrieve information stored all over the place. The office supply list that I penned during the day often isn’t on hand when I swing by the store after work. The inspirational quote I jotted down while reading a business tome may languish in a “to file” folder for months before getting tossed.
So, like many overworked multitaskers, I need a way to capture and organize the myriad tips, ideas, recommendations and insights I accumulate so they are handy when I need them at home, in the office or on the move.
Even at work, some of the information you want to save doesn’t easily fit into rigid systems of to-dos, milestones and appointments. Sometimes you’re saving things to cherish them, not to act on them. Sometimes you’re storing information just in case it might come in handy down the road. How do you label an idea whose time hasn’t yet come?
Where do you file a fond memory?
Luckily, Evernote, a Mountain View, Calif., company, has come to the rescue with a free service that allows users to collect, tag and search all of the miscellaneous, hard-to-categorize text and images that we feel compelled to salt away.
The service launched in 2008, reached 1 million users faster than Twitter and has garnered more than $10 million in venture capital.
Here’s how it works: Users upload audio, images and text from desktops, mobile devices or the Web to Evernote by typing notes, taking photos, clipping web pages and grabbing screenshots. Evernote automatically indexes the captured content and makes it all searchable (even handwritten and printed text within images!), and users can add personal notes and tags to further categorize material. Then users can retrieve notes by keyword, title or tag, whenever and wherever they want.
The service is so elegant and intuitive that it can solve numerous storage and retrieval conundrums for professionals. You can create text notes and attach PDF, JPG, WAV, PNG, MP3, GIF and AMR files to them. Multimedia notes are a snap, too — with the help of your computer or mobile device, Evernote can capture audio notes and photos. You can drag its web clipper into your link bar to clip an entire webpage or a selected portion. And thanks to an April upgrade, Twitter users can send tweets — your own and those of people you follow — into Evernote easily.
To upload content to Evernote using a mobile device, you’ll need to download the free Evernote application. I’m a Blackberry Bold user and found the Evernote App in the Blackberry App Store. Both downloads took just a minute to complete. Then I had to adjust a couple of my Blackberry security settings to allow Evernote to snap photos and record audio notes.
The service automatically synchronizes notes captured from different computers or mobile devices as long as you are logged in and online with the same user account. This means you’re only an Internet connection away from all of your notes.
That said, Evernote doesn’t do everything you might expect. Its web clipper only captures pages’ text and images, not their formatting. You can record and upload audio notes directly into Evernote using a mobile device app, but you can’t do the same with the desktop client. You would have to record a note using Garage Band or another application then drag and drop or copy and paste it into Evernote on your computer. But its benefits far outweigh these shortcomings.
So far I use Evernote for contact management, online research and meeting notes. I snap shots of business cards, signs, bulletin board postings and anything else that catches my eyes. I clip articles and web pages directly from my browser and tag them for future reference. I store text meeting notes as well as images like whiteboard diagrams or event signage in Evernote. Soon those Post-Its, index cards, notebooks and legal pads I mentioned earlier will be history.
Visit the Evernote blog to see how dairy farmers, lawyers and restaurateurs use Evernote to get down to business.
Maya Smart is a Richmond-based freelance writer.
I love Evernote, and here’s a bonus tip for mobile paper haters. File receipt, articles, and anything else with a virtual scanner in your iPhone pocket. The JotNotPro app not only takes great scans, but their image processing works wonders on hard to read receipts, white-board notes, and such. The best part is after you take, you are one click away from Evernote upload/sync – or PDF conversion and email. I’ve used several times in meetings to send clients mindmaps, white-board notes, or sketches we’ve just created; before I even leave their office, they have copies of the notes, and I have them ‘tagged’ by client name for my desktop and on-the-go access. Never again will you carry old receipts in your pocket while traveling – JotNot pro them, and throw them away. Oh, and if you want a free version (not as many features) basic scanner – check out Genius Scan app. It’s not bad for the price (free) just has less to offer in features.
JotNot looks like a very useful app and seems to be getting some pretty nice reviews in the mobile community. It’s a shame its only a iPhone app, I’d love to have this on my Android and I know a bunch of Blackberry users that could take advantage of something like this.