Review: EverNote

Level: Beginner

[Editors Note: I first wrote this article on Evernote over a year a go and this is STILL one of the few applications I use daily.  If I don't put something important in Evernote, I kick myself for not taking that extra second to do so.  

So what is new with Evernote, check out http://blog.evernote.com/  But a feature that was just recently release is Offline Cacheing of Notes on the iPhone/iTouch.  This was one of the problems with using Evernote on the iTouch is that it had to be connected.  But now you can pick and choose which notebooks you want to sync up Offline.   I am very excited about this. 
Original article follows.]

Rating:  5 out 5 

EverNote is one of the COOLEST application I have seen in a long time. WOW.

To demonstrate some of the features, I created a public notebook and embed the widget below. For the full EverNote page click here.

Collecting notes is easy and can be done in a variety of ways.

1)  Using a Windows/Mac client:   You can manually create notes, you can use the iSight camera, you can drag drop, you can clip to get the info into your notebook.  In the example above, I created a note manually ("EverNote is So COOL!!!!!"), used the screen capture ("Screenshot of Header of Alpen Schatz"), used the iSight camera ("Some light reading...").

2) iPhone/iTouch client:  Added notes via the iPhone/iTouch is very easy.

2) Email content: The picture of Mary Dawn and I taken from my cheap camera phone, was SMS directly to my EverNote account.

3) Web Updates:  Notes can be edited and created directly on Evernote website.

Syncing all your notes to one source is very powerful.  I use multiple computers (macs, pc, iTouch) thru out the day.  The ability to go to one place to access my notes, is amazing. 

What good is taking notes, if you can't find them after the fact.  With full text indexing, tagging, and text recognition, it is a snap to find the note you are looking for.  The text recognition in pictures was a feature, I could not hardly believe my eyes.  

In the above widget, I searched for "Friend" or "Php".  It found these words in a Image!  It does this by syncing to their server with the recognition software, and then giving the search index back to the client.

Cost:

All of this can be yours for FREE, if you stay within the allocated 40 MB bandwidth per month.  If you upgrade to a premium account for only $5 a month, you get 500 MB bandwidth per month. 

Summary:

Overall, I was very impressed with the whole package.  Time will tell how much I will use it, but I look forward to giving it some real world examples.