Evernote is giving its Windows desktop application a huge face-lift on Thursday. The new version of the writing and archiving tool has more in common with its Mac counterpart, borrowing features like thumbnail previews and a three-pane view that lets users quickly hop through notes they have saved in one of their Evernote notebooks.
The change may be jarring for some longtime Evernote users who have only used the Windows version, but for people like me, who use clients on both platforms--on a daily basis, the unification is welcome.
Old versus new versions of Evernote compared. Note that the new version has a thumbnail view. (Click to see full size.)
(Credit: CNET)There are some peculiarities though. At first glance the already anemic text editor is missing a few buttons that were found on the old one. Options such as indenting, or adding a bulleted list are still there, but now they're nestled into a right-click contextual menu instead of being buttons as they were before (and still are on the Mac and Web versions). In their place are the simple, but screen real estate-sucking, buttons for printing, e-mailing and deleting any note you're working on. Though unlike on the Mac, this group of options cannot be minimized. On a big, wide-screen monitor this isn't a big deal, but on smaller screens it means you have less room to view your work.
What makes up for that, is spell check--a long-overdue inclusion. Whatever you're writing gets the spell check treatment as you type, just as it does in versions of the program on other platforms. This may seem like a really minor addition, but if you're using Evernote as a primary text editor, this is important.
Evernote's Ink feature lets users draw out notes.
(Credit: CNET)Also quite cool, is a more easily accessible canvas mode made exclusively for Windows users with tablet PCs, which lets them more easily create hand-drawn notes. Users who don't have tablets could previously also access the feature by holding Ctrl+9 when in any note, although now it's its own type of note. Worth noting is that these notes cannot be seen on the current version of the Mac software, something that will be added in a future update.
All in all, this is a good update with some big changes that may take some getting used to for folks who haven't used the Mac version. Because of the many changes in this version, the Evernote 3.5 update is being released in beta, instead of an automatic update within the software. Windows users of the current version can download it from Evernote's site.
Correction: This article originally misstated the newness of the ink writing feature as well as the software's capability to index handwritten notes. Users who don't have tablets could previously also access the feature by holding Ctrl+9 when in any note, although now it's its own type of note.
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Evernote)
A brand-new BlackBerry app joined the Evernote family on Monday. The multiplatform, multimedia note-taking service has already been uploading voice, text, images, and files from the desktop (Mac|Windows), Web, Windows Mobile phones, and the iPhone. The addition of BlackBerry rounds out Evernote's presence on major smartphone operating systems, though it's likely that if the Palm Pre takes off, the company will continue development for Palm's WebOS.
Like Evernote on other mobile platforms, Evernote for BlackBerry (download) lets you upload a text note, voice clip, picture, or file to your cloud-based Evernote account. The signature green interface is clean, and quick and easy to navigate on the BlackBerry Bold, my test device. Simply scroll with the track ball to move through the four notetaking icons on the start screen, or pop down to the bottom to search a note by its tag. Pressing the Menu key reveals options to view recently-created notes, notes pending uploading, and an option to activate GPS.
The application's performance depends heavily on how strong your data connection is. On a weak data or Wi-Fi network, loading your history of notes could test your patience, but on a fast connection, the notes you took on the desktop or Web are easy enough to browse or search by tag. We should note that the method for playing back voice notes requires you to download or open the captured voice file on the BlackBerry's media player--too bad there's no direct method to bring the player's functionality into Evernote itself. However, the app also includes some keyboard-skirting shortcuts that let you populate the descriptions area of an upload with previously-used tags.
Evernote for BlackBerry is a "freemium" product; the core capturing and search features are free, but subscriptions for storing multimedia notes online beyond the first 40MB per month sell for $5 per month (or $45 per year.) The application is compatible with the Bold, Storm, and Curve 8900 series phones, and should also work on future phones running operating systems 4.6 and higher. As of today, Evernote for BlackBerry is exclusively available through the BlackBerry App World application.
The note-taking and photo-cataloging tool Evernote is getting a cool little feature next week: integration with Twitter. You'll be able to send messages to the @MyEN Twitter account, and they'll be posted to your Evernote notebook as well.
The integration feature isn't live yet, but should be early next week. I'll Twitter when it is (follow @Rafe). I got a preview of it today and it looks useful.
Here's the setup. If you're an Evernote user, you request to follow the Twitter user @MyEN, a protected account. The Evernote service approves you, and sends you a Web link with instructions for linking your Twitter and Evernote accounts. Once you've got the link set up, you can Twitter quick notes into your default Evernote notebook by sending a private (or "direct", or "D") note to @MyEN. Or you can copy your public Twitters into your notebook by tacking "@MyEN" on to them. If you send a Twitpic link to @MyEN the photo gets copied to your Evernote account as well.
This note came to Evernote via Twitter.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)I don't see myself adding @MyEN to public Tweets just so I can keep a record of them in Evernote, since it might confuse followers. But the capability to privately Twitter myself a note could be useful.
There are, of course, several ways to get notes into Evernote: There are apps for the PC, Mac, iPhone, Windows Mobile phone, and there's a Web service and an e-mail interface. Some users also employ Jott to feed notes in. But for quick notes from the field, on an iPhone for example, using a Twitter client to send yourself a note might actually be faster than Evernote's own iPhone app, which takes a bit too much clicking and tapping when you're in a hurry.
Evernote, a tool Rafe Needleman and I both use regularly to take notes and archive scanned documents, put out a new and useful feature early Wednesday. Now, when attaching a file to a note it will be available everywhere else once it's been synced. If a change is made to that file, those changes get updated in all other locations shortly thereafter, mimicking the behavior of creating and syncing text notes on the service.
While not being an official hard drive in the cloud, this step brings Evernote a little closer. You still have to attach your files to a note to get it into Evernote's servers, which is a far cry from a direct file uploader (which is still possible by sending files to your special Evernote e-mail address). Files are also capped to just 25MB per note, limiting you from attaching large video files.
To help sell the new feature, which is available to both free and paying premium members, Evernote is currently restricting the types of files free users are able to sync to images (including .INK), audio files, and PDFs. Premium users get support for "any" file type, which includes things like Microsoft Office documents and video files which fall under the 25MB cap.
On a side note, if you haven't tried this service out, you really should. Over Thanksgiving break I used it to archive several boxes of childhood photographs and knickknacks using this scanning method, and it was actually a lot of fun. Everything I scanned can be viewed from the service's iPhone app, or on the Web through its Web viewer where it can be published for others to see.
Users of the desktop applications for Windows and Mac will need to upgrade to make use of the new attachment feature.
Users of Evernote's desktop applications will need to update to get the new file attachment feature.
(Credit: CNET Networks)How do you take and keep notes to yourself? With a desktop calendar, or even with Post-Its?
The freemium note-taking service Evernote not only takes multimedia notes--audio, photo, and text--but also syncs them to your Mac, PC, iPhone, Windows Mobile phone, and to the Web. That puts your videos, photos, scribbles, dictations, and other notes to yourself within reach wherever you have Internet or one of free Evernote's apps.
Watch this Fist Look video to see how Evernote works on them all.
On Monday, Evernote, a good triple-platform note-taking service for Windows, Mac, the Web, and (multiple) mobile platforms (see all), updated its application for Windows Mobile phones (download).
Speed is the main story here, with text, photos, and audio notes uploading faster than before. Of course, depending on your carrier and the phone's capabilities, this still may not be as rapid as it is on the highest-end Windows phones.
The Evernote for Windows Mobile 3.0.0.172 also improves the interface, a spare but attractive app consisting of four actions to take various notes or upload a file from the phone's folder, in addition to two soft-key buttons.
One key lets you view and search notes created on the desktop, Web site, or your phone. Thumbnail images and the ability to search notes directly from Evernote are two additions--previous versions rebounded you to the Web to view search results. From Evernote's menu, you can click to view recent notes, settings, and, now, your saved search results.
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CNET)
Evernote never worked as well on Windows Mobile phones as it did on the desktop, Web, and iPhone, but this effort is the publisher's new personal best for the platform. Much more can be accomplished without leaving the application, but there's still room for growth.
For example, playing back a voice note requires you to download the audio first. That's a more time-consuming and space-sapping event than viewing an image or text note, especially if you created the recording from your phone in the first place and have simply used Evernote as a holding pen. I'd love to see Evernote host an instant-playback feature that can optionally just play the file without saving it.
Evernote's applications and basic 40MB bandwidth-per-month membership are free. A premium membership offering 500MB per month rings in at $5 per month or $45 for the year.
YouNote and Evernote have won me over by making the iPhone and iPod Touch a powerful note-taking tool for anyone who frequently jots down thoughts and returns to them later. There's no absolute winner in this match, since each application takes a different note-taking approach, but by the review's end, we're guessing you'll have crowned one over the other.
Evernote for iPhone creates audio, text, and photo notes.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Evernote for iPhone
Evernote has been a real hit with CNET editors since its March beta, and with good reason. The service lets you add, access, and synchronize notes from just about everywhere--your Windows or Mac desktop, Web browser, Outlook calendar, Windows Mobile phone, and now your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Evernote ushers your text, doodles, voice notes, and photos into your account, which is stored on Evernote's servers. In addition to accessing all your synchronized notes from the iPhone, you'll be able to write new notes. You won't be able to doodle from the attractive iPhone application, but you can compose text, audio, and photo notes from scratch, and can also annotate the pictures in your Camera Roll.
In addition to storing photos, Evernote's service includes optical character recognition to extract words from images. Evernote's OCR is fairly accurate, but we've heard that premium account holders get their text translated faster than those with free accounts.
Evernote's major selling point is its presence on all your devices, but it holds its own as a standalone iPhone application. Tags are the only way to search for notes, which is bum luck for those lukewarm taggers. Filters that sort notes by day or type would be a welcome addition.
A free Evernote account grants 40MB of storage per month for all devices, including the iPhone. The premium package--$45 a year--raises the cap to 500MB per month and makes your character-recognition a priority. For a flexible note-taking service you can access from one or more places, Evernote excels.
YouNote's iPhone interface lists entries alphabetically, chronologically, and chromatically.
(Credit: CNET Networks)YouNote for iPhone
Although Evernote is a decent stand-alone note-keeper, YouNote surpasses it by integrating more device features. Like Evernote, YouNote welcomes text, photo, and audio notes, plus doodles and captured Web pages. Unlike Evernote, YouNote won't annotate pictures from your Camera Roll; however, it does harness the iPhone's GPS to geotag notes in a Google map.
In addition to tagging notes, you'll be able to associate them with a phone contact and assign a color scheme for organizational purposes. What's more, you can actually bundle multiple notes and media types into a single metanote. For instance, you could couple a photo note with an audio note for a later reminder about a complicated parking job.
Like Evernote, YouNote's search bar can quickly identify notes by tags, but the application also organizes notes alphabetically, by date, and by color. While most of the application is intuitive, the note-bundling feature isn't explicit, and you'll have to keep scrolling down on the notation screen to find the fields for assigning tags and color. It would be neat if the Google maps showed your precise location instead of the general neighborhood, and if you didn't have to leave YouNote to view the map.
Though Evernote and YouNote share a theme, their differing approaches make Evernote the logical pick for those who bounce between computers and devices, and YouNote the clear choice for those whose iPhone or iPod Touch will be their only digital notepad.
Functional, useful, and always on, the note-taking application Evernote goes beyond mere cool program architecture and is also interesting. It's a true three-platform play: it works very well, and somewhat differently, on desktop computers, mobile phones, and over the Web. You can download it for Windows, Mac, and your mobile phone.
One of the cooler features is that when Evernote runs on your camera phone, it will automatically upload your snapshots to the Evernote server, creating a useful archive of them. The killer feature is that it also does OCR on your images so you can find them later by searching for text in them. Use this tool to snap pictures of products you see in stores and want to remember, to grab whiteboards in meetings, and to take pictures of people with name tags at conferences. It's one of those utilities that might just change your life.
Everything you do on your phone and on your computer is synchronized to your Evernote account on the Web. Since it synchronizes as soon as you log on, and regularly thereafter, reinstalling the software or losing data because of a crash are nonfatal problems.
Do note that the Web-based text editor isn't keystroke compatible with the PC-based editor, which makes switching between the two experiences confusing. Evernote is also still in beta. The free version offers 40MB per month for uploading and unpredictable OCR performance, while $45 a year gets you a 500MB a month allowance, priority OCR, better security features, and support.
Today, Evernote 3.0 (download), the note-taking application I raved about in March, opens to the public for Windows and Mac users. I highly recommend this product. It's functional and useful, and beyond that its architecture is also interesting. It's a true three-platform play: it works very well, and somewhat differently, on desktop computers, mobile phones, and over the Web.
On a PC, Evernote is a good note-taking application. The current version also fixes some issues I had with earlier betas, and I'm seriously considering finally dumping OneNote, the note-taking application I use now, for this new product.
If you have the Evernote application running on your camera phone, it will automatically upload your snapshots to the Evernote server, creating a useful archive of them. But the killer feature is that it also does OCR (optical character recognition) on your images so you can find them later by searching for text in them. Use this tool to snap pictures of products you see in stores and want to remember, to grab whiteboards in meetings, and to take pictures of people with name tags at conferences. I haven't yet lived with this product but I've tried it enough to know that it works, and it's one of those utilities that might just change your life.
Evernote makes short work of blending notes from your PC and browser, and pictures snapped with your mobile. (Web version shown.)
Finally, everything you do on your phone and on your computer gets synchronized to your Evernote account on the Web, so you can always get to your info. And if you want to run the desktop application on a second computer (or if you ever need to re-install it on your current machine), as soon as you log in it automatically grabs all your data, since everything you do on the platform is always synced. Update: I should have caught this earlier: The Web-based text editor isn't keystroke compatible with the PC-based editor. It makes switching between the two experiences confusing.
There's a free version of Evernote with a 40MB a month upload allowance and unpredictable OCR performance. For $45 a year you get a 500MB a month allowance, priority OCR, better security features, and support.
I like the way Evernote blends local software with Web-based utility, and how it keeps all your devices in sync. The price for the premium service is reasonable. I continue to recommend this product.
See also:
Apple launches Web 2.0 infrastructure: MobileMe
Live Mesh consumer app is a work in progress
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