I’ve been a casual user of Evernote for several months but its only recently that I’m beginning to become more of a power user. Originally I began using it for capturing ideas that I had while in the car (using their voice memo tool) or tapping out a thought I had for a blog post while trying to fall asleep (using the Blackberry application).
In contrast, at work, my normal routine for taking notes was to write everything down on a notepad while in a meeting and then transcribe that into a word document or use the notes tool in Outlook. One of the issues I constantly ran into was trying to find notes without spending 5 or 10 minutes remembering which folder the word document was in. (The Outlook notes feature in Office 2007 is a whole other story. Notes in Outlook 2007 constantly crashes on me – does anyone else have this problem?) I also didn’t like having to log into to my office remotely to find a note I needed at night or while traveling.
Hence my shift to Evernote for both personal and business notes. Using the desktop version of notes on my work PC, my home Mac and Blackberry app, I can now take and/or access my notes wherever I am, and, can search the content of any note. I like not having to worry about where I’m storing anything. I also like knowing if I want to find everything I’ve taken down about Twitter or personal blog post ideas, it’s easily findable using the search tool in Evernote or the tags feature.
I’ve covered just a few of the features that I use in this application. There are lots more features that I use (web clipping including the ability to search the content, capture notes using Twitter, etc) and probably some that I haven’t discovered yet. If you are looking for an easy way to keep track of information and want quick access to your stream of consciousness, give Evernote a try.
Dave Criswell 