I’ve been meaning to write about Evernote Web for quite some time now. Being a fan of the original Evernote application and having used it for managing all sorts of personal notes for the past few years, I’m really excited to see that Evernote Web has finally arrived: it now takes only seconds to get started with using one of the most useful online services on the web.
What is Evernote?
Evernote is an information organizer. Coming from the world of standalone applications, it started as a Windows app, but is now available on a number of platforms. The most useful thing about the current Evernote service is that it’s an online repository – so all your information is available instantly on any of the devices – including Apple iPhone.
I’ve waited for a service like this for quite some time. Surely, there’s been quite a few around which allowed you to grab text and images from websites and store it online (I’ve used Google Notebook for a while, for instance), but Evernote brings a very powerful search. One of the most unique features is the image recognition, which means you can scan your to-do notes, business cards or any printed material and Evernote will recognize all the text and help you later find it using the keywords. It all happens automatically, and the quality of image recognition is really impressive.
What I use Evernote for
I like the web clipping functionality – it’s a button on the bookmarks toolbar of my Firefox browser which helps me instantly grab information from whatever page I’m currently on. You select the text (can be images or tables, anything really), then click the Clip to Evernote button and voila – the information piece is in your online Evernote repository.
I really like the way it saves me time with my scribbled notes – previously I had to allocate time to re-type them. It’s much quicker now – I simply make photos of whatever I need to capture and store it online. I haven’t even started using the image recognition feature properly yet – even having my scanned/photographed notes centrally available online is already a productivity boost.
Are you using it yet? Let me know how you find it. This isn’t a paid review (isn’t even a review, really), but a sincere recommendation – check Evernote out if you haven’t done so. There’s only a few apps I truly like, and this one does seem to be one of them.
Let me know, and good luck with staying productive and organized!