Outside Look

I thought it would nice to review some web tools after the buzz around them has died down, and after a period of use that proves their value. The first in this category is Evernote. Evernote is a multi-client, multi-access, multimedia notes application.

Why Evernote is so valuable to me:

• Ubiquitous Access - providing iPhone, Mac, Windows and Windows Mobile applications, a bookmarklet, FireFox extension, and Outlook add on, in addition to the web application, it is easy to add and access information through Evernote from anywhere.
• Multimedia - many types of information can be stored from links, clips of pages, full web pages, pictures, PDFs, just about any sort of data you might find on the web or your machine, you can pop it in Evernote along with tags and comments, and recently location information for notes posted through the iPhone application.
• Search - of course search is available in many applications, Evernote is pretty great at search, and one of the reasons is the OCR like capability to extract text from photos of things like whiteboards. This really rocks in terms of usability

This all adds up to an application that is so readily available, and easy to put things in to, and so easy to get information out of, its hard not to use it. I’ve been using Evernote to capture a variety of things including web pages and clips of pages for project research (faster and richer than Google Notebook), snapshots of whiteboard sessions, wine labels and tasting notes, key facts from meetings, restaurant notes, and the exact locations of photos for later tagging.

The ubiquity and ease of use drive the overall value. I have yet to find a tool that offers these two attributes in such abundance. It is a great example of the tool working with you rather than against you.

Every tool has a few weaknesses, but I haven’t found many. The version of the current Windows application is a little difficult to navigate between and within notes - especially longer ones such as full web pages, but a little practice and it gets easier. The syncing of iPhone notes doesn’t seem to always go through, occasionally leaving some notes on the iPhone but not yet available elsewhere. This is to be expected since a good connection isn’t always available, and the iPhone doesn’t let the app run in the background for automatic syncing. Launching the Evernote app in the presence of a good signal automatically starts the syncing.

As with many of the newer apps coming out, Evernote operates on a freemium model - the basic free account allows 40MB of uploads per month, with a paid account at $5/month or $45/year allowing 500MB of uploads per month (note these are uploads, not total storage). I’ve found that 40MB has been more than enough for the first few months of use - but as I use it more, I get closer and closer to the limit - and as I do, I become more and more willing/interested in upgrading to the paid account.

And this is the other beauty of Evernote - it works so well it draws you in, and leads you to the paid version naturally, organically, willingly. This is why I think Evernote will be a long term success. Hopefully they will also offer some sort of private or corporate implementation as well - this could be a great thing for many medium and even large businesses to “employee-source” all sorts of knowledge within an organization and/or relevant to an organization quickly and easily.