Evernote – Page 5

March 30, 2011

Evernote Web App Gets a Makeover–Adds Social Sharing

Normally I try to avoid doing Evernote posts every week, but this latest update is too big to pass up! It marks an end to Evernote’s stoic insistence that its service is strictly for capturing information, not sharing it — and if that wasn’t huge enough, the overhaul to the web app makes Evernote a pleasure to use on machines and OS’s without a desktop version. Excited yet? If you’re an Evernote fan, you know you are! See below for details.

UPDATE: The recent pre-release version of Evernote Desktop for Windows (4.3.0.4293) has added social sharing features, including Twitter, which is not yet included in the web app. Word and character counts have also been added, along with a few other niceties and bug fixes.

The first thing you will notice when you log into the web app is that the new interface refreshingly familiar, adopting a three-panel approach that is very much like the desktop version. Notebook stacks are also included, as well as snippet view — which provides a preview of the note’s content to speed up browsing — and the ability to CTRL/CMD + click multiple notes and drag them to notebooks, tags, or trash. The easy to use updated interface also includes a handy toggle to control auto-save — a handy feature when writing in shared notebooks.

While the update is impressive, it’s not perfect yet. For example, some of the more advanced functionality, like filtering, printing, attaching files, viewing note history, and creating saved searches, is still only available in the older version of the web app. If you want or need any of these features, you will need to switch back to the archaic mode for the time being.

I love the work that Evernote put into the new version of the web app, but am absolutely thrilled by their decision to include some social sharing capability! Until now, I honestly thought that the only way to share notes I collected would be using tools like Springpad and Shelfster, but Evernote’s inclusion of Facebook sharing, with plans to add Twitter in the near future, gives users the added freedom they need in today’s social web. It would be nice to see them open up sharing to the same extent that Springpad has, but baby-steps, yes? Sharing to Facebook, (soon) Twitter, via email, or by adding a link into your social platform of choice will have to be enough for now. You can also revoke shares at your discretion, which is handy. The Evernote blog promises that the new sharing features will find their way into their other apps in future updates.

So how excited are you about Evernote’s foray into the modern web — and its revitalized web app too, of course?

March 24, 2011

Evernote Pre-release Enables Notebook Sharing from Desktop [Windows]

Evernote Pre-release Enables Notebook Sharing from Desktop [Windows] | 40Tech

One of my biggest beefs with Evernote has always been the lack of an efficient way to share notes and notebooks. In fact, the lack of convenient sharing features was one of the reasons I considered a move to Springpad. Notebook sharing was a step in the right direction, and has been available in the web app for a while now, and even appeared in the Mac beta back in December. Unfortunately, Evernote’s excellent Windows desktop version has been sadly lacking — a source of niggling frustration for many users. It appears that that is about to change!

If you want to the ability to access and update shared Evernote notebooks right from your Windows desktop app, all you have to do is click on the tools button, select options, and then check the little empty check-box under the General tab that says “Update to pre-release version when available.” Once that’s done, just click ok and then head over to the Help menu button and select “Check for updates.” Follow the prompts and upgrade Evernote.

Once you are upgraded (current pre-release version is 4.3.0.4167), you will see that your Notebooks area with have two buttons: Account and Shared. Selecting the Shared tab will show you your shared notebooks, but you will probably not find any information in them. To fix that, simply click on the notebook and the properties window will pop up. Once there, adjust your sync time-frame, make sure that “Sync notes now” is selected, and click OK to update your local Evernote database with the shared notes! Do this for each shared notebook that you want to be able to access locally.

Share Notebooks from Evernote Desktop for Windows | 40Tech

If you want to start sharing notebooks — or modify permissions, or stop sharing — click the Manage Sharing button. The Notebook Sharing page inside the desktop application is easy to look at, and easy to navigate.

Evernote note sharing is nearly complete! The only things left to do would be to add this new Notebook Sharing functionality to the Evernote mobile and tablet apps — and hopefully, one day, offer up a way to share individual notes by more than just email.

How excited are you by Evernote for Windows’ new Notebook Sharing feature? Will you update to the pre-release?

Thanks to 40Tech reader Daniel Gold for the tip!

March 17, 2011

Reader Workflow in Action: GTD for Freelancers & Managing Multiple Projects

We like useful tech here at 40Tech, and spend a fair amount of time talking about productivity related apps. We’ve written more than a few posts talking about ways we’ve used tech to make our busy lives a little more sane, and a little while back, we asked people to show us their own workflows. We wanted to see how our readers integrate tech into their daily lives to keep them productive. We received some comments on the post, some notes on Twitter and Facebook, and even had a few email conversations with folks, and have decided to feature a couple of the more involved methods.

Today’s feature, by freelance graphics and web designer Chase Mann, involves a GTD process that includes Evernote, Outlook, Microsoft’s OneNote, and a few other choice bits of technology:

Getting Things Done (GTD) with Evernote, Outlook and OneNote

I’m a freelance graphics & web designer that uses a tablet pc. In short, these are the tools that I’ve found work best for me:

Moleskin notebook & pen, Smartphone with Evernote app.
Dropbox to automatically sync all client files and research folders.
Outlook for Contacts, Calendar & Tasks. (connected with Gmail).
OneNote as my written-note capture and Working space (on my tablet-pc) with a GTD Notebook for current Projects.
Evernote as my magic, portable filing cabinet & reference library.

Reference Material:

I use Outlook Journal for time tracking from this article by Jim Boyce.
I setup Outlook & OneNote for GTD from this article by Michael Wheatfill.
I setup Evernote for GTD from this 40Tech article by Bobby Travis.

I then tweaked all these programs and setups to better fit my workflow needs.

The GTD Workflow

I begin my GTD workflow by keeping my Moleskin notebook and Android phone as my immediate capture devices, which I then process into my Evernote Inbox notebook. Because I have design software on both my desktop and my tablet pc, and I’m constantly making changes to client files and gathering research resources, I use Dropbox to have the most updated client files and research folders automatically synced between all of my devices.

My projects tend to be mostly digital so I rely heavily on email communications (and some telephone conversations), but I tell all my clients that I prefer email so we both have documented project conversations. Outlook has quickly become my main communications & scheduling hub. Once I am referred a potential client, I setup a meeting to discuss project needs via whatever medium they prefer. I always take notes during the conversation and then email a copy to the client as my first follow-up step. If the client chooses me for the project, then I make new notebooks in both Evernote and OneNote specifically for that client and that project.

As I have time to sort through my inboxes, I’m able to organize and set tasks up as Projects. All Projects get their own notebook created in OneNote. I also attach that notebook to all possible related contacts in Outlook.

Why the heck would I use Outlook? I love the integration of Outlook and OneNote (2010 versions). I like being able to take an email about a client meeting and actually turn it into a task AND an appointment on my Calendar. I love being able to set reminders on tasks and calendar items too. It’s my tickler system. Easy.

As I process emails, they either get turned into scheduled tasks, flagged with a reminder tickler, sent to Evernote as reference, or sent to OneNote for current working projects. A major benefit of sending an email from Outlook to OneNote is that any attachments on the email show up as attached files in OneNote. How cool is that?!

Using Evernote

From the beginning, I had decided that Evernote would be my magical, brain-dump, inbox, filing cabinet. My very own research and records department that I can conveniently carry around in my pocket and access via a variety of mobile options. I setup Evernote using Bobby’s article with some tweaks to better suit my workflow.

Since Evernote came out with sub-notebooks, I find it easier to use those on my Android phone. I created a “Clients” notebook with sub-notebooks for each client by name. “Inbox” is my default notebook and “References” notebook, because I like moving items out of the Inbox notebook as part of my review process. I also created a “Coffee” notebook because I’m heavily involved in the coffee industry.

For all of my own personal projects, I create “@Project-name” tags to easily find them and I created a “!clients” tag for quickly marking items for later processing into the actual client’s sub-notebook. Since I really don’t use Evernote for my GTD (I prefer Outlook and OneNote for that), the only other tags I used were Bobby’s suggestion of Reference Materials, with a “folder” tag for each letter of the alphabet … which I further break down into actual tags. So A, would also have Apple, Art, Amphibians, etcetera … whatever tags make the most sense to me when I capture the item.

I do most of my project research via the internet and send pages, selections and images to Evernote with the !clients tag into my Inbox notebook for later sorting. Next I sort through my research materials and send selected items over to the project’s notebook in OneNote and create a mood-board page so I can mix and match items organically and scribble notes wherever I feel like it.

OneNote

OneNote is my working desktop so I try to keep it tidy by not using it as a reference tool, even though I could. The reason I prefer OneNote over Evernote for projects is because with a tablet PC I have the freedom to scribble hand-written notes anywhere I like in OneNote — then I can right click them and convert them into typed text. I also keep a section called “Scribbles” in each Client’s section group so that I can scribble notes and ideas as they hit me, then I convert them into tasks or reference material during my daily review of projects. I try my best to stay organized as I go so I have less processing to do during reviews.

One extra thing I did with OneNote was to setup a Clients Notebook where I created a section-group for each client with a Projects section that has pages and sub-pages for each active project I have with that client. I have an All Projects section in my GTD Notebook that lists all my currently active projects which has a wiki-style link to the Client’s section-group, and the specific Projects section for that client (and vice versa). This way I’m able to move around quickly within OneNote. I have To Do lists in each Client section-group and have those wiki-linked to a main To Do list in my GTD Notebook. I also set up an Archives section in each of the Client’s section-groups where I send the individual projects when they are totally complete. This way I only have current working projects in the active Projects section of both my GTD Notebook and my Clients Notebook.

Another reason I prefer to keep Evernote for reference and OneNote as my Projects organizer is so I can use the power of tags in each program respectively. I like being able to list all my tags across all notebooks in OneNote and know that they are project-related.

When I’m looking for a reference item, I know to just search by tags in Evernote and copy/paste only the necessary bits I need (instead of entire articles or web pages) over into OneNote.

Reviewing

I do a daily review each morning so I can make new daily lists, and I do a Sunday morning weekly review. I do mine in the mornings so that I’ve not got a lot on my mind when I’m trying to go to sleep at night.

So that’s my current workflow – thought it is still developing and being refined. I’m curious if someone has done something similar, but with Google apps or other free apps?

Chase Mann is the owner of Aim It Media, a creative design and marketing company for entrepreneurs and small businesses. You can connect with him via his many comments on 40Tech, or catch him on Twitter as @AimItMedia, @MyCoffeePro, or @Creativarty

February 15, 2011

Poll Results – The #1 Freemium App Is . . .

first place

We recently asked our readers to vote for the freemium app that is most worth paying for, and the results are in. 12 different apps received votes, with Evernote coming out on top. Dropbox and Lastpass were the other two apps that received double digits in votes. Here are the full results:

December 15, 2010

Evernote 4 — and Now 4.1 — is a Giant Leap Forward in Note Taking Goodness

Evernote 4 and 4.1 update

Last week, Evernote 4.1 for Windows was released for general consumption. 4.1 takes the giant leap forward that was Evernote 4 and makes it even better, adding more notebooks, notebook stacks, an improved note info panel, and more. If you’re not yet familiar with Evernote 4, it takes all the good of Evernote 3.5 — which took getting used to for some — and makes significant improvements to the user interface and overall functionality of our beloved notes tool. Some of the highlights include a more economical (and prettier) layout that suits Windows 7, a significant boost in load time and decrease in memory usage, better editing features, and more Windows 7 integrations like jump lists and geo-location.

I’m also happy to report that new windows once again automatically open when you start a new notes, which was a feature I, personally, missed (though the entire client still opens behind it for some reason). The new version also adds support for your local font files, makes it easier to hide things you don’t need to see, and improved clipping support.

For those looking for such things, there is still no social sharing capabilities, so don’t get too excited. All is not lost, however — you can always use Springpad for that.

For more detail on Evernote 4, look here

For more detail on the 4.1 update, look here

What are your thoughts on the newest release of Evernote for Windows?

Category: Evernote (page 5 of 9)