Evernote. Why it will make it & 20 Awesome Ways to Use It.

A guest post from Zee, the Creative Director at London based digital agency, WeDoCreative

Evernote, make no quibbles about it, has changed the way I store my information &, if it hasn’t already, should be the way it stores yours.

Firstly, what is it? Evernote is a tool which stores notes, documents & images and gives you the ability to be able to access & search them from wherever you are. Still unclear? Here’s a video of Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin giving you a 1 minute run down of his service.

Before we go into why it’s special, here’s a little background, Evernote was initially just a desktop application, a mighty fine one at, but just a desktop application all the same. On June 24th 2008, Evernote went into open beta & open its (virtual) doors to the world as a spanking new online service with desktop versions of the tool for Mac’s & PC’s and mobile versions for windows mobile and now, the iPhone.

So why is it such a special tool you ask…why do I, as well as the majority of other Evernote users have so much passion & faith in the product. Well firstly, the company have been in the information business for a while now, they’ve built a solid reputation & it’s clear they aren’t going to dissapear without a fight. Secondly, they have a loyal user base which has only grown since they’re expansion onto the web. Thirdly, innovation - they have really mastered it & hopefully won’t be losing their touch any time soon.

Lets forget however about the three reasons above and take evernote on face value. Why is it such a great tool? Here are four of the best features it offers:

1. It runs on Mac’s, PC’s, Online & on your iPhone. So no matter where you are, you’ve got access to your information.

2. Evernote can read text in your images So if you’ve got a photo like one I took of a receipt, it will scan it & make it searchable. In this particular example I searched for receipt obiously.

Although not perfect, it works better than i ever expect it to & is much more efficient than going through a drawer of receipts let me tell you.

3. Fantastic number of ways to get your information into it but the basics: you can email to it, take a photo & send it to it, you can take a screenshot or just simply copy & paste text into it. If you have a graphics tablet, you can take handwritten notes and of course…if you’re primarily browser based - you can use their firefox extension or bookmarklet which lets you grab any web page, image or text and create a note out of it.

4. Sync baby. Whether you’ve got one compute or 1000. Evernote will stay in sync across them all. It’s good like that :].

For more information & a detailed visual run through of Evernote & how to use it - have a watch of this video. It’s lengthy, but if you have the time then go ahead & watch it, if not - don’t worry, you’ve got the basics & the application is pretty intuitive.

Let’s move onto the final part of this post…

Ways to use Evernote.

• Bookmarking: Probably the most obvious use of evernote. Come across a link - use the firefox extension, bookmarklet or drag & drop on the mac to save the link and text/images on it. Tag them & you’ve got your own bookmarks available offline & online.
• Random Picture Archive. Now, i’m not saying use it as your primary photo album (although you probably could). It’s perfect for those random photos taken here, there & everywhere - like maybe a photograph of a top someone’s wearing that you fancy getting hold of a random shop name that’s made you laugh or maybe just a the smile of a loved one sat in front of you…Using the iphone’s app - this is a piece of cake.
• Collate ALL your emails: If you’ve got 5 different accounts, Evernote is a fantastic way to be able to search all of them from one place. Just find out your evernote email address & auto-forward them on!
• PDF Store: We all know how prevalant pdf’s have become - just drag & drop or even email your pdf’s into Evernote & voila you’ve got them available whenever you need them.
• Serial & Pins. Use Evernote to store serial numbers, login details, pins & codes whether for software or to get into your house!
• Receipts. Wherever you are (again particularly useful if you have iphone) take a photo of any/every receipt and have it all stored & searchable on your evernote.
• Code Snippet Library: Coder? Use evernote as a store for all those snippets of code that you need to revisit.
• Takeaway & Delivery menus! Yep, scan or even just photograph your menus & never lose them again. Just think, you can search for whatever you’re in the mood for! :]
• Instant Message Store: Ever need a record of a previous instant message conversation - copy & paste it into evernote & it’s there whenver you need it.
• Inspiration: I use Evernote more for this than anything. I’m an inspiration fanatic - particular with design (logos & websites in particular). When online & I come across a site, logo or maybe just part of a site I like - you can just use Evernotes to capture that area or page. Should you want to capture the entire webpage (which you would normally have to scroll down for), I recommend using a firefox screenshot tool like screengrab! which lets you quickly save the entire page as an image and you can then insert that image file from your desktop into evernote. Works a charm and particularly fast on the mac.
  Of course, if you find inspiration on the road - take a photo of it or use your iphone to and you’ve got it there to come back to when you need it.
• Recipes: Find an recipe you like in a book, online or wherever - capture it using the many options available to you. The next time someone asks you the recipe for the wonderful dish you just made, or maybe you’re stuck for options while at a friends place - guess who has the perfect recipe to hand? :]
• Paper notes: Find you’d much rather stick to handwritten notes? Then just keep them to hand at the end of the day - take a photograph of them on your iphone or scan them in & you’ve got a back of each of them…again, easily searchable, for whever you need them.
• Tablet PC Notes: If you’re on a tablet pc, the benefits should be evident - and whatever you do drop onenote. Although great for it’s time, it’s time to move on.
• Jott + Evernote: If you’re a jott user, take a look at this great post by Brad Isaac of achieve-IT on lifehacker. All about how to combine the two.
• Reqall + Evernote: Easily one of my top three favorite iphone apps. Reqall will allow you to record what’s on your mind in audio, the email you the file & converted to text message so you’ve got in your email account. Next thing to do is set up an autoforward which will then forward on all Reqalls emails, so you’ve got a store of these in your Evernote. Awesome.
• Train & Bus Schedules: Take a photo or add a pdf of the schedule to your evernote and it’s there whenever the time calls.
• Business Cards: Take a photo of every business card you come across & within minutes you’ve got names, emails, addresses, phone number all searchable!
• Quotes Store: Copy & paste quotes, one liners, jokes whatever! There for whenever the surprise speech is sprung upon you.
• Research: Whether it’s for a product you are planning on buying, a service you might be using or an event you’re putting together…there are other tools out there, but Evernote works wonderfully.
• Never lose that whiteboard again: Take pics of your whiteboard, add it to evernote and it’s there forever. All the text is searchable & you can go ahead & clean your board and start afresh with a new one knowing you haven’t lost anything.

Evernote’s elegance & usefulness comes from it’s ability to handle numnerous types of data, across a variety of operating systems & of course online. It’s secure, fast, efficient has an actual revenue model (so should definitely be here for a long long time) and it can hold a scope of different file types (with hopefully more to come).

With all the beauty of this innovative tool there are still things I’d like to see included:

1. Copy & Paste text from text in the images. Or the ability to literally see a txt version of the image if you see what i mean.

2. More media types - no not people - I mean audio, video, word docs, zip files etc..

3. Even better & faster OCR.

4. Ability to edit notes on the iphone - unfortunately you can’t currently edit previous notes on the iphone.

5. Sharing a notebook amongst peers/friends not publicly.

6. Know how many other people bookmarked the same link - possibly even be able to search for links similar to delicious - except without knowing who bookmarked what.

6. Tree like structure to folders or notebooks - so you have one notebook within another…although if you’re tag man person, you’ll be very comfortable.

For some honest thought from people on Evernote - have a read: here, here & here.

What do you love about Evernote? What you like to see improved & what are you using it for…? And if you’re not using it - why not & what else are you using?

About the author: Zee is Creative Director at London based digital agency, WeDoCreative, Editor at Lifehacking & Productivity Blog: ProProductivity.com and an active Friendfeeder & Twitterer

Update: Robert Scoble interview with Evernote Phil Libin below: