I take notes. A lot of notes. I take notes when I read, when I’m in meetings, when I’m listening to lectures, when I’m figuring out what I need to do any given day. In fact, if I ever tell you that I’m going to do something, but you don’t see me make myself a note about it, don’t believe me.
Notes are the key to remembering, for me. Or, more precisely: the act of taking notes is the key to remembering. Something about the act of taking notes helps make an idea, or an issue, or a plan more real to me.
I used to take these notes longhand, in various notebooks, some devoted to particular projects, some to more general notetaking. Several years back, though, I began shifting my notetaking to the computer, so that those notes would be more easily searchable and repurposeable.
Originally, I used Word for this purpose, but after one MS Office upgrade too many, requiring that all of my documents be converted (and thus become unreadable to the older version of the software), I decided that I wanted something more lightweight. The purpose of these notes, after all, was the text that went into them, and not their formatting; plain vanilla “.txt” files were likely to remain highly flexible into the future.
But those .txt files started proliferating on my machine, and so did the folders I used to organize them. And while Mac OS X’s search capabilities via Spotlight aren’t all that bad now, that wasn’t always the case. So when I stumbled across Steven Johnson’s post about how he used DEVONthink, I was sold.
DEVONthink is an extraordinarily powerful information management system — a bit too powerful, quite honestly, for what I needed it to do. So back in May, when Shawn Miller guest-posted here on ProfHacker about how he uses Evernote, I was persuaded to give it a try.
One might begin to think I’m too easily swayed, but honestly, I test out a lot of software that doesn’t stick with me long. I’ve been using Evernote for just shy of two months now, though, and I’m fairly sure I’ll be using it for a while. A few reasons why:
1. Automatic. I have Evernote installed on my office desktop, my home desktop, my laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone. And each of those instances automatically connects to the Evernote server to keep my notes synchronized across all my devices. I’ve had one incident in which I accidentally overwrote a more recent version of a note by editing an old version before my iPhone had finished downloading the most recent updates to my notebooks, but now I’m more cautious to be sure everything has synchronized before I start typing in an existing note.
2. Web accessible. My notes are also of course directly accessible from the Evernote server, should I not have one of those five devices with me.
3. Lightweight. The Evernote application itself has a very small footprint, using the teeniest amount of memory and disk space. It’s also quite nice in terms of response time. And as most of my notes are just plain text, the database doesn’t take up much in the way of space.
4. Flexible. Of course, I don’t have to confine my notes to text with Evernote: I can easily capture entire web pages with the Chrome (or other browser) extension, I can import images and PDFs, and any number of other things I haven’t even tried yet. And, as Shawn pointed out, images are OCRable, so that the text within them becomes searchable just like the rest of my notes.
5. Free. As I was just experimenting with Evernote over the last two months, I haven’t committed to the paid version as yet. But the free version is thus far everything I need. I’ve never come anywhere near using all of the monthly data allowance of the free version, and the little ad in the corner of the application is inoffensive. At some point, I’ll probably upgrade to the paid version, partially for a bit more flexibility in the kinds of files I can attach to notes, and partially to support the team developing a really great project.
I do perhaps wish that my text files were really stored as text files (Evernote saves them in its own proprietary XML-based format, as well as in HTML format), but for what I’m doing, just being able to find and copy the notes is enough. And overall I’ve had a great experience with Evernote so far, which is allowing my notetaking habit to become more productive and more organized than before.
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19 Responses to A Brief Word from an Evernote Convert
heatherwhitney - July 6, 2010 at 11:19 am
I’m an Evernote convert too. There’s one major feature I wish it had: push syncronization for the program when used on the iPod touch. There’s lots of times I am needing to access a note when I’m not in range of a wireless network (such as when I need to see my grocery list while in the produce aisle). If I made an update to Evernote from my laptop and hadn’t actualy opened the program on my iPod touch soon after while having wireless access, the update won’t be there. Very sad!
mjaltman - July 6, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I started fiddling with Evernote when I started studying for my comp. exams. I love it! I outline books in it, keep notes for ideas that come up as I’m reading, and I can add the URL to the book in the university library catalog so that I can quickly find it.I also love using it to write blogs in and then copy them into wordpress.com. I do think the we clipper could be a litter more efficient but I don’t use it that much.
rontoledo - July 6, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Hello Kathleen. This is Ron from Evernote. Glad to hear Evernote is working out so well for you. Thanks so much for the thoughtful write up. One new feature we have that I thought you would be interested in (given your #1 section) is Note History- which gives you a a running history of every note in your Premium account. You can read more about it here. http://blog.evernote.com/2010/04/14/new-premium-features-note-history-and-50mb-notes/Thanks again. -ron
daveapostles - July 6, 2010 at 4:37 pm
What’s the point of proprietary xml? Let’s have open standards and OpenSource. Is this xml approved by the OSI? Will it be leveraged past the OSI like M$, allegedly, did?
csdanforth - July 6, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Is there a function to share notes? Right now, I’d mostly really like to see some examples of Evernote in academic action, but I’m pretty sure I’d love love love to share a notebook or two among various team members too. Sometimes a project lives best in note form without the formality of sharing a Google doc.
kfitz - July 7, 2010 at 2:53 am
@csdanforth: If you scroll down near the end of Shawn Miller’s guest post on Evernote, you’ll find his discussion of shared notebooks. I haven’t experimented with them, but it looks like a great collaboration aid.@daveapostles: I do agree with you about the proprietary format. The good news is of course that everything is also in the open HTML format, but I’d rather have something a bit more plain vanilla as well.@rontoledo: Thanks for popping by! Note History definitely provides me yet another reason for upgrading to a Premium account. I’ll look forward to poking into it.
bbaylis - July 7, 2010 at 8:48 am
Since a taumatic brain episode in which a blood vessel burst in a brain tumor, much of my memory for details is kaput. I developed a mild case of aphasia which is a communications disorder in which I lose words. I can’t find the right word, or the right name when I want them. I have described aphasia as trying to solve jig solve puzzles with pieces missing. I have described words as being more like cats than dogs. Dogs come to you when you call them; cats come to you when they want to come. Aphasia doesn’t affect a person’s thought processes, just their communications. Since the episode with the blood vessel, all the stroke like sypmtoms that followed, the removal of a benign tumor, I had to retire from active academic administration. With the onset of epilepsy nine months later, I have had to accept the fact that this retirement most likely is permanent. However, I didn’t want to sit at home doing nothing. So I am sitting at home reading and writing, reflecting on forty years in the academy and looking ahead to what’s in store for it. Not only did I lose words, I lost files, both paper and computer. I needed some way to keep track of notes and files. I have used Evernote for about a month and I have been extremely pleased with it. I can keep track of notes on the current reading I am doing. I am even trying to transfer the notes that I have in four different notebooks to Evernote so I don’t lose them. I love the ability to store hyperlinks and links to my computer files, that way I can’t misplace those items. In the note section itself, I have had to train myself to include the label of any paper file and the location of where it was filesd. I am an enthusiastic user of Evernote. The one thing that I found lacking with Evernote was a diary and todo list component. I agree with Kathleen about the too many Office upgrades. I have Office 2007 on my latptop. I succombed to the temptation to try teh 2010 Beta Version. I didn’t see enough improvements to warrant the expense of the full new version. When I tried to revert to old 2007 version, I found that 2010 documents could not be read diretly on the 2007 version and vice versa. Even 2007, I was disappointed in lack of a diary, journaling capablility that I remember from my 2003 version. I finally found an inexpensive (Free) add-on in the pedastrian version of DeBrief. I am using DeBrief to keep a daily diary and to keep an agenda todo list for the upcoming days. I have found for my purposes that I have not had to switch to the premium version. I highly recomember both programs. I don’t know what I would do without them.
drnels - July 7, 2010 at 1:12 pm
I get that Evernote can make PDFs searchable, but can you copy-and-paste text from a PDF? I highlight when I take notes, so my PDFs have lots of highlights. Does Evernote allow me to copy-and-paste those highlights into a document when I want to quote the PDF?
agrudjr - July 7, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Any concerns about Evernote’s privacy policies?http://www.evernote.com/about/privacyhttp://www.evernote.com/about/tos“When you post information to the Evernote sites, you are granting Evernote permission to use and take other actions with respect to such information (as described in the Terms of Service), in order to provide Evernote’s services.”
performance_expert2 - July 7, 2010 at 4:06 pm
#9. Wow!Richard Stallman advises “no” to cloud computing and to keep your work on your own local machine. Evernote functionality sounds great, the tos / privacy is red herring. (?)
billso - July 7, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Regarding #9, privacy is an interesting issue, especially if FERPA compliance or personal privacy is important to you. Evernote does offer encrypted notes on some platforms.For example, I would not upload a list of web sites, usernames and passwords to Evernote, Google Docs or a cloud based service. There are better ways to manage that kind of data. Software such as 1password uses an encrypted database to store sensitive data.On the other hand, I do know at least one person who has uploaded a scan of her passport to Evernote, in case she loses her ID while travelling.
drjeff - July 7, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Why is everyone going so ballistic about their using XML?Granted, I’m in IT, but XML is about as close as we have to an open way of storing anything.Almost any spreadsheet, for example (including OpenOffice Calc) can import XML in a fairly sensible way, and there are dozens of (free) programs to re-format XML in case it doesn’t work exactly the way you want.If you’re using words in the usual way, and referring to the amount of effort that would likely be required to extract content, XML is at least as “open” as HTML.I highly recommend you find something else to be paranoid about.Not that I’m not paranoid (in IT, remember?) — I’d NEVER knowingly have a scan of my passport in the cloud, unless I used a GOOD encryption (maybe AES with 7zip, which is free).
billso - July 7, 2010 at 7:01 pm
drjeff, that’s a good point about encryption. AES, 7zip, TrueCrypt, Knox… there’s lots of good free or cheap apps available.
kfitz - July 8, 2010 at 2:44 am
@drjeff: I don’t think anyone here is “paranoid” about XML. In fact, if the files were straightforward XML, I’d be thrilled; open standards is all I’m after. Instead, Evernote’s files are stored in a proprietary XML derivative, .enex, which I’ve thus far only found interpretable by Evernote. *That* I have an issue with.@ agrudjr: I take your point about privacy and the Evernote policies, but I also take them at their word: they need to have at least enough access to your data to display/synchronize/etc it the way the service works. Dropbox’s TOS is much the same. The phrase “in order to provide Evernote services” is not incidental.
lfriedla - July 16, 2010 at 10:04 am
Does anyone use Evernote (or Simplenote) in combination with Devonthink or Tinderbox?
twinsensun - July 21, 2010 at 4:51 am
@14 kfitz and someone else who complained about proprietary xml – Have you looked at .enex files in a text editor? They are just fine, if you need to parse them or convert them to another format, you can. All of the data is there in plain-text xml.