Review: Evernote

As I said before, I’m a data nut full of random useless information (at least some call it useless).  While I used to remember everything, in my old age, I have found that I need a tool for archiving the various data sets that I capture otherwise my brain will turn to mud.  That is where Evernote comes into play.  Evernote is awesome!  Plain and simple.  It is what Microsoft OneNote should have been (does Microsoft realize what they have with OneNote?).  If I need to capture data, say at a pub, I just bust out my iPhone and take the note and save.  Or take a picture of that crazy brew I had in Toronto, tag, upload, done.  But that isn’t all, the key differentiator with Evernote is this:  it is Cross-Platform! You can run Evernote on Mac OS X, Windows, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre (why?), and Windows Mobile devices.  Outside of a Linux app, that pretty much covers everything that I can think of.  Now to dig deeper….

Features

Premium vs Free
Evernote has two versions:  Free and Premium.

The free version allows for:
Limited notetaking: images, audio, ink, PDF
40MB sync in the cloud
Ads within app (minimal)
Standard security (not quite sure what that even means)

For a measly $45 a year you get:
Notetaking:  any filetype
500 MB sync in the cloud (25MB max file size)
No ads
SSL encrypted sync
Ability to share notes for collaboration

Platforms

Below are all the platforms supported by Evernote:

Web Clipper*
Mac OS X*
Windows*
iPhone & iPod*
Android
Blackberry
Palm PRE + PIXI
Windows Mobile
*I used all of these platforms!

Data Organization
I was short on Evernote after my first go around with it for one reason:  tagging.  I am used to being able to tag anything, anywhere in OneNote.  Evernote handles tagging differently and it took some time to get used to this change.  While I wish I could tag within a note, I am now fine with this different method of tagging.  What I do like about Evernote’s method is the actual organization of tags via parent – child collections; it just neatens up everything.

Moving on to where data is actually stored, Notebooks.  Anyone familiar with David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” should see the immediate value of this tool.

<GTD Soapbox>
As you can see from my notebook image, I know what buckets have notes and that I have two notes that require action on my part.  You can also see that I have 20 items in my Unfiled bucket that require action (categorization).  I used this bucket as a catch-all for all notes that I clip, dump, or email into Evernote.  From there they goto the actionable To Do, Waiting For, and Someday/Maybe, or other reference buckets (every other bucket outside of those three are for reference).  Can you feel your life getting simpler as you read this…

</GTD Soapbox>

Another cool thing to note about the image above is the $$$ bucket.  That bucket is a local notebook and is not sync’d up to the cloud.  This is an option when creating a new notebook in Evernote.

Sync

As I said earlier, the premium edition allows for 500 MB of syncing into the cloud (free version gets 40 MB).  I have used the hell out of Evernote this month and still have yet to crack 250 MB, so 500 MB is quite a bit of capacity in terms of syncing data.  In my opinion, this feature is really what separates Evernote from every other tool that I have used.  The ability for me to capture a note on my Mac at home, tag it, dump it in a notebook and then have that note show up almost immediately (time depends on your sync config) on my iPhone or Windows 7 box at work is an automatic must have going forward for me.  This makes it so my personal workflow is not broken based on the OS I am running.  Technically I could also have this on my Linux box via the Evernote web portal.

Mobile

I never really thought about using my phone for note taking.  It didn’t seem too practical to me at first, but I do it all the time now.  I see something I want to read, or a beer I enjoyed, or a product to research; all I do it take a picture of it with the snapshot function on the Evernote iPhone app and sync.  Pretty easy if you ask me!

Conclusion
To sum all this up, as you couldn’t tell from this review, I am a big fan of Evernote!  The application has helped me become paperless at home along with improving my overall personal workflow.