Evernote is Awesome
So, after being really busy over the past year I’ve decided it’s due to time update the ol’ blog. In the business (busy-ness), I have since moved into a post requiring a vast amount more paperwork and organizational skills, to that end I required some kind of note taking system that was a tad more efficient than the exam-pad-per-month method I was employing.
Enter Evernote, the most fantastic little synchronized note taking system I’ve seen so far (special thanks to @jacogr for the recommendation)! I have recently acquired an iPad for the purpose of taking notes, which now means I am using yet another device to fulfill that purpose. Just to give you an idea on how my current note taking takes place, I have included a short description on a per device basis.
My PC – note taking on my PC consists of me launching Notepad++ and typing in whatever random text needs to be recorded. Whether I save or not depends on the importance of the note, and where I save the note depends on the direction of the wind and alignment of the planets. The end result of this method is a wide array of .txt files sprawled over my drive with no apparent pattern, in particular the pattern does not spell “efficient retrieval later”.
My Blackberry – my BB at least has a notes section, which synchronizes with my Exchange account at the office, and displays accordingly within Outlook on my Notebook. This is slightly more efficient than the PC…
My Notebook – as this is my work machine, I have Outlook installed and linked to an Exchange server, which allows for great little post-it notes throughout the machine. The great trouble with this is that each note takes the name of whatever the first line is. The next inconvenience is that Outlook archives my notes along with my emails on a bi-weekly basis. Now I know that this can be changed, but in all honesty I can’t be bothered to fiddle around on something as simple as my notes.
My iPad – the new addition to the gadget family which I am still learning. By default it comes with a note taking app installed, which while it looks really pretty, isn’t terribly functional and the only means I have bothered to find at the moment for getting this synchronized to the rest of my stuff is to send a plaintext email from it containing the note. While this is searchable via my mail, I know that in time I’m going to forget that I typed the note on here and will inevitably misplace the notes in the vortex that is my inbox.
Enter Evernote. This is a great little app that is available for all of my devices (and more) that uses a single account to synchronize everything. Any note that I type on my iPad is just about instantly readable on my notebook, PC and BB. I say “just about” as the note only syncs after saving, and is then subject to whatever Internet connection you have. As you can see from the below picture, I have the app installed on all three devices at home, all with their own intuitive interfaces native to the device, not just some generic badly displayed grid view resized for whatever device I’m on.
The downside that I’ve found so far is that notes that I have typed and viewed previously do not seem to be cached on the devices, so in order to view a note that you haven’t viewed in a while you are required to be connected. In all honesty though, this really isn’t a biggie in my world, considering that I’m pretty much always connected everywhere, and that this limitation is removed when you upgrade to the premium version for $44.99 a year (roughly R300).
Your notes can be viewed in various ways, from lists to thumbnails to previews. There are various ways to organise your notes as well, by specific notebook (you can have many), by date, by tags, by city and so on. With the free registration, you are entitled to 60MB of notes per month, according to the app this is around 30,000 notes per month. This may seem like a helluva lot of space to have available to you, but then you also need to consider that you have the ability to attach files to whatever note you are taking.
All in all, this app has become an integral part of my day within a week of using it. I would highly recommend it to anyone who regularly takes notes or has to write things down to remember them. 10 out of 10 on the usefulness scale! You can download Evernote from Evernote.com.
