I’m always on the lookout for new tools that help me be productive, and my latest favorite is Evernote.
Think of it as a virtual scrapbook. At least, that’s how I’m using it. Anytime I see anything online or out in the world, I can clip it to Evernote, and it’s instantly indexed and saved to one of the notebooks I’ve created. There are other services that are similar, but I haven’t seen anything that has the whole package.
I’ve found myself taking pictures on my phone and sending them directly to Evernote to follow up later. The other day while in my car I saw a URL on the back of a truck that I didn’t want to forget, so I took a photo of it. The next time I thought about it, I launched my desktop application, and there it was. Evernote even has some underlying magic that allows you to search against words in photos. I have no idea how it works, but it’s slick.
The key part of why I love Evernote is that it has a web-based mobile and desktop client, and they all stay in sync whenever you run them. I love that! Wherever I am and whatever screen I’m on, I can pull them up. I’m not tied to getting at my notebooks on only one computer. I can do it from anywhere.
What am I clipping? Right now I’ve got two main notebooks. One is called “Office Zen,” where I find myself putting pictures of other people’s home offices or cool things I want to add to my office. The other is called “Creative Juices,” and it’s anything that catches my eye and inspires me. Everything from advertisements to photos. I go to it whenever I need a mental kick start.
Finally, you as the user can control whether you want your notebooks to be public. I’m looking forward to the day when I can share notebooks with individual users, because I could see this being great for brainstorming and sharing within a company or with clients. Lots of possibilities.
Evernote just opened the doors to the public, so if you sign up for an account and begin using it, let me know what you think of it and what you are doing with it!
This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 8:26 am and is filed under Cool Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.6 Responses to “Cool Tool: Evernote”
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June 27th, 2008 at 8:44 am
[…] just put a new post up on my Entrepreneur Magazine blog about Evernote and how I’ve found using it for the past month. It is a product that I find myself using more […]
June 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
This sounds like a tool I’ll definitely include in my work and business tools arsenal right alongside my Glyphius software which helps me to get the most out of my business content creation.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Thanks for the input CC. I am wondering how to use it. Where is the distinction to del.icio.us and bookmarks? I just can’t get my head around that yet.
June 30th, 2008 at 3:59 am
How this is different then a standard social bookmarking site is that I can just clip a photo, or some text rather then only linking to the page.
You can also take a photo on your cell phone and send it directly to be filed. I do this when I see a bill board, URL or just something that inspires me. I can take a bunch of them and send them directly in and then organize and tag them later.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Evernote sounds like a great tool. I am going to try it.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:55 pm
[…] the last few months I’ve been hearing about Evernote. CC Chapman has a great write up here and Rachael Murphy’s has one here. But I was really trying to keep away - I didn’t want […]