In this age of technology, there isn’t any excuse for being disorganized. There isn’t any excuse for forgetting things. We have TONS of ways to use technology to act as replacements for our own brains.
One such solution is Evernote. I LOVE Evernote, and if you’re not using it already, you should be.
In short, Evernote is a note-taking application. You can store any information you want in the thing and organize it by tags or different notebooks. Each note can be either text, an image, a file, audio, etc. All of it is searchable, too. Even text which shows up in a photograph is searchable via Evernote’s OCR technology. In a meeting and got some notes on a whiteboard? Snap a photo on your phone and store it in Evernote. Evernote offers applications in pretty much all platforms, including Windows, OS X (pictured above), Iphone, Ipad, Android, Blackberry, Palm and Windows Mobile.
You never have to worry about sync because you sync everything to your Evernote account online. This takes place automatically on an interval you control, or manually when you hit the Sync button. This means that I can type a note on my Iphone and it’ll automatically show up back in my office. Or I can type a quick note on my Windows-powered netbook and have it all end up back home.
Here are a few ways that I use Evernote routinely:
- Doing any planning for my business? I do it in Evernote.
- At a conference? Take notes on any computer and it all ends up back home automatically.
- Get a receipt via email? I’ll print the email directly into Evernote and store it, tagged for easy search.
- See some useful information on a website I want to reference later? Clip it and file it into Evernote. Infinitely more useful than bookmarking the URL.
Here’s the good part – Evernote is completely FREE. You can install the application to any device and use your free Evernote account up to 40MB of sync bandwidth per month. This isn’t 40MB of storage, but 40MB of back-and-forth bandwidth for syncing. It may not sound like much, but in my personal experience, I hardly ever even make a dent in my monthly allotment. However, for super-heavy users, you can buy a premium account for more bandwidth.
Evernote is simply one of the most useful free apps out there. Once you get into the habit of using it, you’ll wonder how you got along without it.
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This looks like an excellent piece of software. It’s very useful. I just wish there was a desktop client version for Linux :/
*cough* There are benefits to using commercial OSs.
Seriously.
Honestly, most of the good software out there doesn’t work on Linux.
Hehe, I definitely agree with you. Unfortunately right now I can’t afford a commercial OS, so I’ll just have to stick with Linux exclusively for now. Right now I’m looking at Tomboy Notes. I’ve never really used it before, but since it’s also a notebook type of program, maybe it’s worth checking out.
Awesome post, David. I had heard of Evernote before, but I didn’t know it was free. I’ll definitely have to check it out.
Although I do agree with Aaron, it’d be awesome if there was a Linux version. Although currently I use Windows 7 as my main OS, I dual-boot Windows XP and Linux on my laptop and am planning on buying a Mac somewhere down the road, so a Linux version would make the circle complete. Or a web-based version of Evernote, even.
Actually, scratch that – didn’t realize the Evernote website functioned as a client. Pretty awesome.
This is very nice article, and I really not hear about evernote, I use my usb to do similar work. But this auto online backup is nice feature.
Did you read the Terms of Service? You have to agree not to upload copyrighted material, so no website clips; and Evernote is allowed to use your content in any way they wish without compensating you.
I didn’t sign up.