While at TODCon early last month, one of the attendees noticed that I was taking notes during a session with Notepad, and recommended instead that I check out Evernote. So I gave it a shot … and I can say that I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever encountered a piece of software with which I so instantly fell in love.
Evernote takes the fairly simple idea of providing an application for note taking and then puts it on steriods. It’s ridiculously easy to use: you click in the “New Note” section and start typing. But here are just a few of the things I love about it:
- All of the notes are in one place – no more desktop cluttered with .txt documents
- Tagging – you can tag each note you add so that you can quickly filter the list. And unlike a lot of applications that use some sort of crazy-complicated system for tagging, Evernote makes it as simple as can be: simply right-click and choose Tag if you need to create a new tag, or drag an existing tag from the menu on the left.
- Web clipper: When you install Evernote, it will install a button in your browser that allows you to “clip” entries from web pages and throw them into your notes. Do you have some info in an email in your GMail account that you keep having to log in to get? No more worries: clip it into Evernote and it’ll be right there at your fingertips.
- Full-text search of your notes.
- Text and images. You can add both. ‘Nuff said.
- OCR. Believe it or not, but this thing will automagically scan any images you place in notes so you can actually search for words on the images. Wow.
So there are the main features, but wait – I still haven’t mentioned the one bit about this that truly makes it worth the money: auto-synchronization with your online account. When you sign up with Evernote, you not only get the desktop application, but you also get an account on their web site. Everytime you add a note, it is automatically uploaded to the site, so you actually have access to your notes both from anywhere. I just found out firsthand how handy this was last week. I was teaching PHP, and wanted to tweak the set-up to include an SMTP server so that we can send email in class. I created a text file explaining the SMTP setup and put it on the image so that I would remember how it’s configured. However, there are two separate PHP setups for different computers. So all I needed to do was log on to the site, copy and paste the text document into my Evernote account, and presto – I have a copy of it right here on my laptop, as well as a copy online so when I get on that other image, I’ll be able to get the text with no problems.
I’ve started using Evernote for everything now. Quotes I don’t want to forget. Keyboard shortcuts. Bug reports I need to file. Book ideas. Frequent flier numbers. When I travel, I can throw all of my flight/hotel/car info in a note so that I can get to it, whether I’m at my computer or not.
Oh, I mentioned above about how the online synchronization made it worth the money. Well, here’s another bit of Evernote awesomeness: it doesn’t actually cost anything. That’s right, you get all of this power and usefulness for nothing. (There is a premium account that lets you upload a lot more per month, but it’s only $5.)
Last week or so, Evernote moved from being a semi-private beta that required invites to a full public beta. So head on over to Evernote’s web site, sign up for an account, and install the program today.
Oh, and a great big huge thanks to Deborah for showing me Evernote in the first place.
