If you are a long-time follower, you likely know my love of lists. I kept four or five notepads on my desk to keep track of various notes and “to do’s.” I also had a notepad in the dining room, living room and bedroom to capture those fleeting ideas and tasks. What was once an efficient system has recently become utter chaos. Every new project, client, blog, week apparently demanded a new notepad. I have more paper than I know what to do with but it is never in the right place at the right time.
It’s time for a change. It’s time to embrace the digital notebook. I need all of my notes accessible at any time and from any place.
What is Evernote?
Evernote is a product I have heard great things about from several bloggers and online business owners. I need help with not only my business and blogging worlds, but also with organizing my personal life.
From their website:
Our goal at Evernote is to help the world remember everything, communicate effectively and get things done. From saving thoughts and ideas to preserving experiences to working efficiently with others, Evernote’s collection of apps make it easy to stay organized and productive.
Sounds good to me!
What Devices Can I Use?
- Android
- BlackBerry
- BlackBerry Playbook
- iOS
- Mac
- Windows
- Windows Phone 7
What is Possible with Evernote?
Your notes are automatically synced between your devices. What I save on my desktop is accessible on my smartphone and vice versa.
You can create typed, audio or handwritten notes. You can also email or tweet notes into your Evernote account.
Send your notes to others by email, Facebook, Twitter or URL. This can come in handy for sharing shopping lists with family members, content ideas for multi-author blogs or To Do Lists with clients. (The recipient will only be able to view the note. No outside editing is allowed on the free plan.)
Skitch allows you to take a picture, add annotations, and draw on it and save it for later. We are doing several home renovations right now. This will come in handy when I see upcycling or design ideas on the go.
In addition to Skitch, saved images with text become searchable. Snap a picture of a business card or a wine label and you can later search for text within the image without any additional work.
Web Clipper is a browser extension or bookmarklet that allows you to clip things on the web and save them for later. It’s great for blog post research, online window shopping and more. It automatically captures highlighted text in addition to the URL.
In the Evernote Trunk you will also find dozens of other applications, notebooks and hardware to get even more out of your experience. A few of the products you can integrate:
- Salesforce (Memonic)
- Shoeboxed
- Zapier (Basecamp, PayPal, Aweber and more)
- Seesmic
- ShopAdvisor
- EchoSign
- Dropbox
Cost:
Evernote is free up to 60MB per month. If you need increased space, team capabilities or offline access, you can upgrade to the Premium version for only $5 per month or $45 per year.
Most apps in the Trunk are free, though you may find a few that are paid services, subscription-based or have upgraded versions available.
How Will I Make It A Habit?
A bit of trickery will likely be involved to make the digital notebook a habit.
- “Pin” Evernote in Chrome. This will make it a constant tab in my browser – always open and always easily accessible.
- I’m also going to try out a few fun apps. There is one available called Say Mmm that creates shopping lists from recipes. I do love to cook.
Have you used Evernote? Please share in the comments how you use it to organize your online or personal life.
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Angie Nelson
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Hey Angie,
This is the second blog I’ve visited today that has been talking about Evernote. I just got done reading an article about Skitch which sounded great and would be extremely useful in a lot of different applications. I know what you mean about having notes all around the house. I think I have stuff written down in 5 different notebooks and I can’t ever find what I’m looking for when I need it. I love that you can synch Evernote with all your devices.
It’s a popular tool, Derek. I hope you give it a try.
Angie,
Evernote is in my blogging and online arsenal. I have been enjoying using it on my iPhone and my computer for a while now. I love how it shares automatically and I can categorize my notes. Actually, they are sometimes my thoughts that I need to reference at a later date.
There have been times I needed a topic to write about so I head to my Evernote account and look at what interested me in the past. I can then grab a topic and write about it.
~Allie
Thanks, Allie. So far, I’m really enjoying it.
This is the third or fourth time this week i have heard about Evernote. I am dying to give it a trying for my auto detailing business. I have several guys out in the field daily and phone isn’t always an option and texting, well it is what it is. I am going to give a try and I will come back and let you know how it goes.
Thanks for the info.
Hey, found you on SITS sharefest. I have been wondering what exactly evernote does, thanks for breaking it down. I will go check it out.
I downloaded this on my iPhone and iPad, but haven’t used it yet. I’m going to make an effort to check it out.
I have a coworker who uses Evernote A LOT … I decided to start small with trying it out. Over time I have taken a few notes, put in things I heard that I wanted to remember, and even made a grocery list. I think starting small worked for me (although normally I try to jump in with both feet and do as much as possible right from the beginning). I used Evernote the other day to write a few sentences for a blog I felt inspiration to write and did not want to forget. I am working on projects with several schools right now and I am making myself use Evernote to keep track of all I am doing and need to do with those projects. I take the paper notebook to meets and then later go back through the notes I took and organize them as I type them into Evernote. I like your idea of having it easily accessible … I am much more likely to use it that way! (Stopping by from SITS and glad I did)
Thanks for sharing your Evernote tips, Melissa. So far, it’s going pretty good!
i’ve tried, but i just can’t let go of the paper. i’m pathetic!
It’s hard, Susan! Keep at it. You’ll get there.
Stopping by from SITS to say thank you for explaining this program to me. I had seen it on my computer but was not using it because I did not understand how it works. Now I know how.
Hmmm…I think I may need to try out Evernote. I struggle so much with organization – and remembering to do everything I need to do – at home, at work, for my kids, other activites…thanks for sharing!
Stopping by from SITS.
Great post. I’m a sucker for blogs that include videos or presentations, makes them more appealing and, provided the content is good, more interesting. Good job.