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Evernote Review: Online note taking software Pc and Mobile

By Michael Fletcher On July 12, 2011 · 38 Comments

I am currently busy with a barrel load of projects. As a result my brain has fired into creative overdrive with new ideas constantly bubbling up to the surface. I find myself making tons of notes daily, on scraps of paper, in the little notes editor on my phone, in text files on my work laptop, on Keynote on my home pc and on mind maps in F reemind . All in all I do a lot of note taking all over the place which is not bad. I’d rather have all of these bits of information in existence on paper and out of my head. I’m really not that bright and need to keep the clutter to a minimum. Up until now though I’ve relied on my poor addled brain to keep track of all my note taking and ideas. Enter Evernote the note taking web site and software which I have now been using for a week for this review and have been thoroughly impressed with thus far!

What is Evernote?

Evernote note taking site is basically a bit of space online where you can capture and review your notes, lists, e-mails, pages you’ve visited, pictures, audio clips movies and pretty much anything else under the sun you need to keep track of even tweets. “Bah humbug” I hear you snorting, yes I know there are tons of other note taking alternatives to Evernote that can do the same. The Devil they say is in the details though and the Evernote site and it’s associated apps is one horny bastard. Grab your pitch fork and waddle along with me now as I share my Evernote review and explain why it rocks hardest.

Evernote Premium

Evernote comes in two flavors free and premium. I have not tried Evernote Premium version during this Evernote Review but it offers the power Evernote user:

more space to store information
faster text recognition from image notes
stronger security
the ability to share notebooks for collaboration

During my Evernote review I have found the free version of Evernote extremely feature rich and you don’t really have to upgrade, though I’d like to in the near future, if I use it as much as I expect I will. Not because I have to but it’s nice to contribute when you find a really useful product like Evernote.

Evernote Collaboration

This Evernote review focuses on the free version but the strength of the Evernote Premium version seems to be in the arena of online collaboration. You can allow other Evernote users access to notebooks and review or even edit these shared notebooks. Not only can it be used to review shared Evernote notebooks. Users can actually collaborate online reviewing and editing the same document in real-time on the site or via the Evernote desktop application. During my Evernote Review I found the application ideal for the individual note taking. If you want to extend these benefits to your team you’ll need to upgrade to Evernote Premium.

Text Recognition in Images

One of the really nifty features i found in my Evernote review is that you can finally start treating all your notes the same. Whether it’s a blog post you’ve saved from your browser or it’s a picture you’ve taken of the cover of a book in a bookstore. Evernote can save it for you. Evernote can extract text from images, this means you can search for text amongst your Evernote image “notes”. Very innovative use of the now ancient OCR technology. If this isn’t impressive enough I found out during my Evernote review Evernote even recognizes handwriting in pictures.

Slick Interface

During my Evernote Review I found the website very simple for note taking and it keeps the tools you need easily at hand. It is lightning quick, really it is, everything about Evernote is slick and efficient. Once on the Evernote site you have the option to set up multiple notebooks to organize and review your thoughts as you capture them. Once you start you can add tags and edit attributes to help organize everything about your Evernote Notebooks and that’s about that. When you’re looking to simplify your life the last thing you need is big fiddly solutions with millions of options as I’ve found during my Evernote Review this is simply a note taking application that takes the hell out of notes.

Multi-Platform support makes Evernote ultra mobile

Added to all of this web goodness there’s free Evernote desktop, Evernote iphone, Evernote windows mobile and Evernote OSX software. I found these applications as one of the highlights during my Evernote Review, allowing you to work offline, review and organize your Evernote notebooks and sync your Evernote web notes on the go. This means you are not at mercy of the Evernote website or connectivity when you are mobile. This desktop software also integrates with your browser and Microsoft Outlook allowing you to right-click on a web page you’d like to review later and add it to your Evernote Notebooks or allowing you to add an e-mail or attachment to your notes with one click. Have a Symbian phone, want to use Evernote? Use the Evernote wap site and review your Evernote Notebooks there or capture new notes on the go. If for some reason none of these options are appealing to you, you also have a dedicated e-mail address, send a mail to it and it will automatically get added to your default Evernote notebook to be reviewed at your leisure.

This Evernote review was originally blogged by myself, writing as MikeZilla and that Evernote Review is now updated here