Evernote or ever not??
Evernote was first recommended to me about a year ago, I gave it a quick perusal and promptly put it on the back burner as something that may be useful down the road. Well, that road has finally ended and I have decided that I should give Evernote another look over as a useful tool to use in my day to day life.
Evernote has been around for awhile now, Wikipedia lists that their web service launched into open beta on June 24, 2008 ok they have been around for a couple of years but …
What the heck is Evernote?
Their website states that you should “Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.”
Sounds promising so far but a little vague.
How do you use it?
I guess that all depends on how you work, since I am on my computer all the time (at least it feels that way!). I have added the Firefox extension to my browser.That way I can use it as a basic book marking tool, but this is where it starts to get cool. Say, I don’t want to just bookmark the page, all I want is a small section of the page like a certain color or font. I could simply add a ‘clip’ of the page to my evernote notebooks.
Which brings me to notebooks. Notebooks are the categories that you are creating notes for. For me I use them for client designs. So I would create a new notebook for every design that I am working on, if I stumble across something on the web that I want to remember than, I just add it to my notebook. When I am ready to work on that site the first thing I open is the Evernote notebook I have already created for my client.
To be honest, this is where Evernote lost me the first time, I simply did not see how this would be much better than xmarks or any other bookmarking tool. And then I realized that there was Evernote for the iphone (and others) in fact it works on all types of devices. Check out the list here.
This is a deal Maker for me, so many times I am out and I see something really cool that I want to remember. Now I can simply take a picture on my iphone and add it to Evernote, they also support text and voice notes for the iphone.
Good for design, but what else?
Ok so admittedly not everyone cares about design or has client projects that they need to keep track of. How can Evernote help them? Well here are a few ideas (from Evernotes site)
- Snap a photo of a business card with your phone, and have an easy way to store and access contacts.
- Capture plane tickets and confirmation numbers, hotel invoices, and receipts for your expense reports.
- Get inspired. Keep a file of anything cool you want to buy for yourself or as a gift, whether it’s online or out in the real world.
- Keep notes from your meetings all in one place. Take a picture of a whiteboard and you’ll be able to find it later.
- Plan your next trip. Clip web pages, maps, and itineraries. Capture sights, sounds, tastes, and anything else.
- Research web sites and clip pages directly from your browser
- Keep a record of your favorite wines by snapping a photo of the label when you find one you like
- Remember the things you were supposed to remember. Create to-do lists, jot down random thoughts, leave a voice memo, and more.
- Create notes right from Twitter and save tweets that you like by following @myEN on Twitter.
Summary
I know there are probably a million other things you could use Evernote for with a little creativity, so how about it? What do you use Evernote for?
