Evernote is a new website/tool that I have been testing in Beta for over a month. Just the other day, however, they moved into public beta which means anyone can now request an account and test it out! Keep in mind that it is a beta so they’re constantly improving it but I would say it is definitely already reached the point where it is useful and usable. I’ll explain what it is and how it works below the jump.
Evernote allows you to capture information, sync it across your phone/computer/internet, and then easily search for it in the future. Their tagline “remember everything” is exactly what they aim to do. With evernote, you can either snap a photo of something you see with your cell phone, or just highlight part of a website you’re reading. You could also even scan something like a receipt onto your computer. Evernote then takes all this, indexes it including images (it can pick up the letters on someone wearing a t-shirt in a photo for example), and then makes it easily searchable by keywords.
Here’s a quick tour of the program:
As an example of how you could use the program, lets say I’m reading an interesting news story with some statistics in it. I simply “clip” it into evernote (takes about 1 second, plus another 2-3 seconds to add additional tags to it) and forget about it. Months later, I realize I really need that statistic. However, what I’m really looking for is the bar graph image in the article. All I need to do is type the one of the words in the bar graph into evernote and it’ll automatically pop up the resulting image/article.
Another use would be to put all receipts into evernote so that you have a record forever (or come tax day) if you need to track business expenses. I also have personally found it useful for compiling research for school papers or projects, as well as a personal mini-database of stories relevant to me.
Check it out, it’s free and I’ve found it fairly useful. I think the cell phone capabilities of the program will be more useful in the future as the possibilities there are huge. Next time you see something when out that you want to remember just snap a photo on your cell and it’ll be indexed until next time you need it.
Overall, Evernote is a good tool with room for improvement, it won’t be useful to everyone but to those whose goals coincide with that of the program it will be a great fit.
I just downloaded the desktop beta and found it very easy to use. My friend added it on his iPhone and is impressed with it as well. It has very high ratings from iPhone users already. Thanks for posting.