Evernote is a... um... well, it's for... it... um... Ok, I give up. I've been looking at this thing for the best part of a fortnight and I'm still none the wiser. I've been sitting here waiting for the rest of the CPD23 community to give me some ideas, but you're all being very quiet or very gnomic on the matter. Hmm...
Here's what the CPD23 post on Evernote has to say for itself:
"The problem: You want to be able to make comments on webpages and archive them along with your own notes so that everything is all in the one place and easy to access. The problem-solvers: Evernote allows you to take notes on webpages and archive them for later consultation. Your notes can have file attachments and be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated etc."
Let's take that bit by bit. "You want to be able to make comments on webpages and archive them along with your own notes so that everything is all in the one place and easy to access." Fair enough. Yup, I might want to do that. I might see a webpage and make a few notes on it. Tis true. So I open an email, or my browser's notepad, or my sidebar notepad, or Windows notepad, and I copy the URL and I make my note. Or, if I'm concerned that the page will be different tomorrow, I save a copy of the page, or take a screengrab, and stick that as an attachment to the email, or as a link in the notepad. Things could scarcely be simpler. Evernote seems to be a way of doing this, only in a more complicated manner. With Evernote, "Your notes can have file attachments and be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated etc." So just like you can in an email, or with files in Windows if you were sufficiently organized. I'm struggling to see the point.
"Evernote is not just for making notes but can be used for archiving pictures from your computer or webpages or photographs taken during conferences to save you having to take notes all the time. All you have to do is to click New Note again and click and drag a photograph from the web or your computer etc. and drop it into your new note (or you can copy and paste if you prefer)." A bit like when I click 'Compose' in my email client? I'm still missing something.
"Evernote for Windows or Mac will automatically synchronize your notes with Evernote on the Web every few minutes... (This means that changes you make to your Evernote account on different appliances i.e. computers, phones or mobile devices will all synchronise to keep your account up to date)." Ok, so there's webspace involved (just like if I were to use a web-client for my email). I'm beginning to see the faintest sliver of a function.
"You can also save web content, which involves installing the Web Clipper (a quick and easy process which adds the Evernote button to your Internet browser). All you need to do it to highlight the information you want to save and click on the Evernote button." This function is unsupported by my browser of choice, but seems to be little more than a copy/paste shortcut.
From the Evernote website, we learn "Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too." It does, and it does it quite effectively: better than the OCR program I have on my computer. But it does it at a rather leisurely pace unless you pay them money. I put three pictures in last week, and only one has been translated. So maybe in a month the function will be of use, but as it is I could copy out the information quicker.
It is the searchability, and this OCR function, that really makes Evernote worthy of even the slightest attention. But my browser notepad and my home email client are eminently searchable (though Outlook and Windows are admittedly less so (to the point of declaring war)). The webspace aspect is clearly of use, but there are plenty of bits of free webspace knocking about the internet without having to download a client. I dare say there are also considerably speedier and perhaps equally effective OCR systems available too.
So I remain very unconvinced about the need to have yet another process cluttering my taskbar and wasting valuable memory. It seems to me that Evernote is something of a white elephant.
Here's what the CPD23 post on Evernote has to say for itself:
"The problem: You want to be able to make comments on webpages and archive them along with your own notes so that everything is all in the one place and easy to access. The problem-solvers: Evernote allows you to take notes on webpages and archive them for later consultation. Your notes can have file attachments and be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated etc."
Let's take that bit by bit. "You want to be able to make comments on webpages and archive them along with your own notes so that everything is all in the one place and easy to access." Fair enough. Yup, I might want to do that. I might see a webpage and make a few notes on it. Tis true. So I open an email, or my browser's notepad, or my sidebar notepad, or Windows notepad, and I copy the URL and I make my note. Or, if I'm concerned that the page will be different tomorrow, I save a copy of the page, or take a screengrab, and stick that as an attachment to the email, or as a link in the notepad. Things could scarcely be simpler. Evernote seems to be a way of doing this, only in a more complicated manner. With Evernote, "Your notes can have file attachments and be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated etc." So just like you can in an email, or with files in Windows if you were sufficiently organized. I'm struggling to see the point.
"Evernote is not just for making notes but can be used for archiving pictures from your computer or webpages or photographs taken during conferences to save you having to take notes all the time. All you have to do is to click New Note again and click and drag a photograph from the web or your computer etc. and drop it into your new note (or you can copy and paste if you prefer)." A bit like when I click 'Compose' in my email client? I'm still missing something.
"Evernote for Windows or Mac will automatically synchronize your notes with Evernote on the Web every few minutes... (This means that changes you make to your Evernote account on different appliances i.e. computers, phones or mobile devices will all synchronise to keep your account up to date)." Ok, so there's webspace involved (just like if I were to use a web-client for my email). I'm beginning to see the faintest sliver of a function.
"You can also save web content, which involves installing the Web Clipper (a quick and easy process which adds the Evernote button to your Internet browser). All you need to do it to highlight the information you want to save and click on the Evernote button." This function is unsupported by my browser of choice, but seems to be little more than a copy/paste shortcut.
From the Evernote website, we learn "Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too." It does, and it does it quite effectively: better than the OCR program I have on my computer. But it does it at a rather leisurely pace unless you pay them money. I put three pictures in last week, and only one has been translated. So maybe in a month the function will be of use, but as it is I could copy out the information quicker.
It is the searchability, and this OCR function, that really makes Evernote worthy of even the slightest attention. But my browser notepad and my home email client are eminently searchable (though Outlook and Windows are admittedly less so (to the point of declaring war)). The webspace aspect is clearly of use, but there are plenty of bits of free webspace knocking about the internet without having to download a client. I dare say there are also considerably speedier and perhaps equally effective OCR systems available too.
So I remain very unconvinced about the need to have yet another process cluttering my taskbar and wasting valuable memory. It seems to me that Evernote is something of a white elephant.
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