3,000 Ever Notes and Counting

If you don't yet use Evernote, but do use a smart phone and/or tablet plus one or more computers, you may be missing an important productivity application.  Stay tuned for how this could be useful for the way you work.

First, how important IS Evernote to me (and potentially to you)?

Well, the counter on my Evernote rolled over 3,000 this past week....a little more than 1,000 notes per year, or around 20 new notes/week.  I mention this because it is a measure of usefulness.  I use Evernote multiple times daily, either referring to, editing, or adding new notes.

What does Evernote DO that makes it so useful to me and 50 million (February 2013) others?

For me, two things: 1) store digital snips of life, and 2) allow easy access to those snips via search or notebook on any of my platforms (PC laptop, Mac Mini, iPad, iPhone, or random computers with web access).  It all synchronizes securely via the Evernote cloud.  Some basic Evernote functions are:

• Notes - that might sound obvious, but I find notes are even useful for initial composition because they are available everywhere I work.  I add pictures, hyperlinks, formatting, audio, PDFs, and more to make notes even more useful.
• Audio - I often record audio from within Evernote.  For example, I record conversations with our financial consultant for future reference.  
• Pictures - Evernote is not designed for massive numbers of pictures, but it shines with the addition of pictures to notes, either individually or several at a time.  I usually add a picture to my daily journal entries in Evernote.
• PDF documents - I have a small sheet feed scanner about the size of a brick.  It will directly scan paper documents into Evernotes all day long.  All I have to do is title the note and add any tags.  Evernote automagically scans PDFs (and pictures with legible writing) and adds those words to the search database. For example, if you are searching for a PDF document containing "fenestration", it will go through all your notes, find and display the note for you.  
• Web clips - I use this a lot.  When I find a web page with information I might want to refer to later, I use the web page clipper extension in Chrome and clip to Evernote.  Clipping is better than bookmarking: 1) it provides searchable notes, 2) bookmarks are hard to locate again once you have more than a few hundred, and 3) web pages change, and the information you want could disappear.
• Other files - If you have the paid version of Evernote, you can store MS Word documents, Keynote files, etc.  This is useful if you are working in multiple locations.  
• There's more - Evernote has other tricks, too, but this is enough for synopsis.  And, it keeps getting better.

There is a LOT more that I could write, but let me end with this: Evernote has changed the way I work and think.  It is one of the few apps that appear on my iOS dock and PC taskbar.  But don't take my word for it....just try Evernote for a few weeks.  It's free, although there is a paid version which has some additional tools.

Do you use Evernote already?  Please share with me and other readers what you have found most useful about the program/app.

Evernote: Multi accessible notes, records and more

I have become a fan of Evernote in just a few days. I need multi-platform and multi-site access to notes, documents and other records, and this classy little PC/Mac program / iApp works like a champ.

Google Documents is my preferred multi-site documents and spreadsheets solution, and I use it several times a day on average. It works well for simple or even medium-complex word processing documents and spreadsheets. I access it from the office, I access it at home and I can view it from my iPhone in the coffee shop. It works on the PC and the Mac, and it works on my iPad. I even share some documents with colleagues and friends.

What Google Documents does not do well is simple notes, audio, pictures, PDFs and other records, and this is the need that Evernote fills. Like Google Documents, Evernote is free, at least up to 40 mb of uploads per month. A souped-up version is available for $5 per month, and I can see myself shelling out before long.

As an example of what I am doing with Evernote, my wife and I are planning a couple of out-of-Alaska trips in September. As I gather information items for the trip, I am saving them as PDF files and dragging them into an Evernote "notebook" labeled travel. Or I could easily make a web clip and bypass the PDF stage, but I like PDF for printouts.

I have another notebook for my office notes, and I just started another for some health related materials. Other notebooks will follow, I know.

Here's the part I like about Evernote: I can see my notes and records on: 1) my main home workstation, 2) my iPad, 3) my iPhone, 4) our Mac Mini that we use with the large LED monitor on our "entertainment center", 5) on my office computer at the office and 6) any web browser.

I have shared my travel folder with my wife so she can see it in her iPhone, or on her laptop or a web browser.

Now, I don't have to look through piles of travel related emails to find the confirmation information; it's all in one place. If I need to show something to an agent, I can just pop open the iPad and display it....whether or not I am connected to the cloud. So long as I have synchronized documents between devices, I have the data where I need it.

I already have many work-related notes already in my Evernote notebook, and I have been using this for less than two weeks. I keep a running note of what I want to talk to my boss about so that when we have some time, I can pop it open, no matter where I am.

Recently I started a note in my office notebook about budget items for mid-year consideration. I also have a couple of PDF'ed handwritten notes from staff meetings so that I can refer to them later. Today, I snapped an iPhone picture of something in the building that needs repair and saved it to Evernote to remind me to get it taken care of. I know at least one user that takes meeting notes on his iPad, and saves them to Evernote. I'm going to try that, too.

Here's a video that tells more about it. The Evernote website has a great video library showing other uses.