What IS Evernote? Evernote CEO, Phil Libin calls his product “your external brain.”
In short, Evernote is a server-based note and clippings application, which syncs to client apps that you install on your Mac or Windows computer and on your iPhone, iPod touch, or Blackberry.
Yes, that’s right, It’s cross platform. Foley is finally writing about something that the Windows users out there can enjoy too!
Evernote allows you to create Notes from virtually any source you could imagine. Your notes can be images that you’ve grabbed from iPhoto, or that you have snapped with your iPhone camera (or even your computer’s built-in iSight camera,) they can be an excerpt of text from an email, a sticky, or the contents of a web-page. Additionally, a note can be an audio file, voice-memos, and even video notes taken from your computer’s built-in camera.
You can then organize your Notes into Notebooks, and you can have as many Notebooks as you need to have.
You can add meta tags to your Notes, and then use Evernote’s built-in search function to quickly locate a Note, even if you don’t remember which Notebook you’ve stored it in.
In this way, you can quickly call up Notes which are topical, or which reference another note. You can also reference your notes by day, week, or month. It’s like having a search engine in your brain!
This might be you: I can think of several FoleyPod clients right off the top of my head who already perform a version of this with Microsoft Word documents and multiple folders. Think of Evernote as a note/thought organizer akin to the manner in which iTunes helps you organize your music, and iPhoto helps you organize your images.
Now once you’ve created your notes, Evernote syncs everything up to their server. This means that you can access everything on your mobile device,
from another computer running Evernote (Mac or Windows,)
or even from the computer at the library, by logging into your Evernote account via a web browser.
There are 2 account types, Free and Premium. The Free account type is, well, free.
The Premium account costs $5 per month, and gives you more storage space while removing the random yet completely non-intrusive ads which appear in the corner.
I’ve been using a free account for almost a year now, and have not yet felt the need to upgrade, but would do so if I needed the extra storage.
Additionally, Evernote provides excellent customer support, and hosts a great features and tutorial blog on their site, with frequent updates.
Give Evernote a shot for free, and you’ll never have to write anything down again!
Find out more about Evernote HERE.
Geek out!
~ Chris
{ 1 comment }
Hey,
Yes it’s true – Evernote is one of the best software/service ever and I recently migrated all of my docs into Evernote from old and underdeveloped Yojimbo. Now I am way more happy. Mac client needs some work, especially more integration with Services and programs like NetNewsWire and Mail.app where the most information comes to us. There is also some delay before Evernote appear on the screen and some inconsistency with clippers. For instance, a small elephant clipper in the menu bar can do screenshots, but does not save source URLs, but Safari button do etc. Overall, very, very good sofware. I can say: Leave back Yojimbo and get Evernote!