Evernote Preview — First Impressions
Posted on March 1, 2008
13 Comments
Just a couple weeks ago I “discovered” the Evernote betas. Shortly afterwards I received my invitation. Now I’ll share a bit.
There are lots of ways to keep track of digital notes and information as any search for “organizer” or “notebook” will show. The challenge always seems to be availability. If my data is on my desktop, I’ll no doubt want it when I’m away. If my data is in a web application, I’m hosed without an Internet connection.
The folks at Evernote hope to cure these challenges with their current closed beta. I’ve been trying it out for a week now with some rather mixed feelings.
Keep in mind that up to this point I’ve always been a casual Evernote user of previous versions. In other words, I’m familiar with it and how things work, but I’m far from an expert user.
First the Conclusion
This is a long article, so I’ll start with my conclusion, then go into a bit more detail below.
I believe I can safely say the new Evernote has a good handle on being able to get to notes from just about anywhere. At a minimum, you need a reasonably decent browser and Internet connection and you’ll then always have your notes nearby. That aspect is pretty dang cool.
I’m really struggling, however, with the “to-do” functionality and only being able to use the task checkboxes from the windows client. Ultimately, that may be a deal-breaker for me.
This week I have experienced the native Windows client, the web interface, the mobile web interface and the Windows Mobile application (links for all). What follows are some initial impressions on each.
Windows Client
Compared to the current version, I find the beta Windows app not only easier on the eyes but more pleasant to use as well. Everything looks and feels more streamlined and I suspect users new to Evernote might “get it” a bit quicker than before.
For you Mac folk, the Mac client is in the “Coming Soon…” category.
And just like the previous versions, I still struggle with formatting my notes. Want to add a checkbox for a to-do item? You must remember the ctrl-alt-c key combination. Honestly, I’d love a simpler way to add checkboxes - or perhaps just the option to remap that shortcut to something I’m more likely to remember. I live for building checkbox project and to-do lists.
Basic text formatting is similar — no little editor toolbar when working on a note. Just have to remember good ol’ ctrl-i for italics and ctrl-b for bold, etc. Want to do a bullet list? That would be ctrl-shift-b.
To be fair, I had this “challenge” with the earlier EN versions as well. I was hoping the new version would at least offer a toolbar, but no such luck. (yes, I’ve sent in feedback). There are a ton of keyboard shortcuts that do all that I need — I just struggle to remember ‘em all and often have to look in the help file.
Arguably, that’s all just learning-curve.
The only major difference (aside from look and feel) that I’ve noticed is the ability to synchronize with the online service (which is how we get our notes to the mobile and various web applications mentioned below).
Speaking of synchronizing, it seems quite fast with my dozen or so (small) notes that I’m playing with.
Whining about formatting aside, I do like it quite a bit. At first glance, this could possibly even replace OneNote and the goofy way I use it for GTD.
Web Client
Sync from the client to the web and *poof*! You’ve got all your notes easily accessible from a browser — do be aware, however, that only Firefox 2 is [currently] supported for the beta. Hopefully more browser support is coming, but it does work nicely with FF.
Thought I had problems with formatting before? Near as I can tell, there is no formatting when creating or editing notes from the web.
Want to do a checklist? Nope. Want to check off a checklist item created from the Windows client? Nope.
To be clear, formatting done from the Windows version is still there. I just can’t seem to augment it (sent feedback on this as well).
Negatives aside, you can still create new notes and edit existing notes. Can also add/modify tags and other “core” activities from the web too.
The image to the left shows the “note view” of one of my existing notes. From the “Note Operations” menu, I can choose to edit it, delete it and manage tags. I can also move the note to a different notebook or email it (the email option works nicely too).
Have both Windows and Linux PC’s? This could be a “sort of” answer to my quest for a Linux alternative to Evernote / OneNote…
Mobile Application
The Windows Mobile version of the app is limited — yet perhaps does all that it needs to do.
As you can see in the screen shot, you can do three things:
- Create
- Upload
- Search
You can create notes easily enough, but once you’ve uploaded them they are no longer on the device. Something to be aware of. I adapted, but it was a bit jarring the first time I went looking for a note to add more…
Actually, I should clarify that a bit. When a note is first created, it is automatically marked to be uploaded on the next sync. You can change that. But I still haven’t figured out how to edit a note that hasn’t been uploaded yet. Once I hit “done” on the Create screen, I don’t see that note again until I’ve synced it to the web…
My earlier challenges with formatting text notes also applies here. I don’t see a way to do any formatting or creating of to-do check boxes from the mobile interface (another feature request I’ve made).
Clicking Upload shows a list of whatever notes have been recently created along with all the images (as thumbnails) and sound files found on my device. It’s a pretty slick way to ship pictures from the camera phone straight into Evernote.
An interesting wrinkle here is it will run a little scheduler and (optionally) automatically sync all notes, images and audio files to your online account I don’t know if this is a feature I need but I sure think it’s pretty cool!
The final activity here is Search. It is simply a shortcut to the mobile version of the web site. Which leads us to…
Mobile Web Client
The mobile web client is how we access our notes from a phone or other mobile device. It’s a good way to see stuff and jot quick notes, but you can’t edit, format or tick the to-do checkboxes.
You can do all that stuff once you sync it down to the windows client. All you can really do from mobile web is search, email a note and delete a note.
A bit limiting, but still, your notes are all easily accessed — and, of course, that much vaunted Evernote search works fine.
I’d anticipate using the mobile web site to refer to notes and search for notes, but it’s not really setup to be your “main” note tracker. (unless you don’t mind not being able to edit the notes!).
Tags: beta, Evernote, GTD, mobile, onenote, windows-mobile
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13 Responses to “Evernote Preview — First Impressions”
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Chris,
Thanks for being part of our closed beta. I appreciate the time you took to try everything and write about it and I’m glad you found our stuff useful.
We’re adding features rapidly during our beta period and a few things you mentioned (specifically to-do handling and formating on the web) will be coming in the next few weeks. Browser support has already been expanded to include FF2 and IE7, with more browsers winding their way through QA.
I’d love to hear back from you once you’ve had a chance to try out the new stuff. There’s a lot of bright shiny objects in there.
Phil Libin
CEO, Evernote
Hi Phil — Glad you liked it! I’m excited to hear about some of the changes coming up.
I’ve finally subscribed to your blog so I can better keep track of what’s new. Glad I did as I didn’t even know about the IMAP thing (in your most recent post) until I did some reading. That is SLICK! How do I find out more on that one?
I found a bit more info on IMAP in a EN blog post that has (apparently) been deleted. I won’t put the link here, but if folks are curious, they can google it up and view the google cached copy…
Some great stuff in there, I hope that the deletion was accidental!
Hey Chris,
Thanks for this write-up of you first impressions of the new EverNote! I’m trying to find a good note organizer and used EverNote over a year ago for a while. I’m playing with Microsoft OneNote now, but the mobile features of EverNote have me intrigued. Can you send me an invite to join the closed beta?
Thanks - Tom
@Tom: Alas, but I don’t believe I can do invites (at least, not that I’ve found so far.)
@Chris - Bummer. I got the impression from the Evernote website that current beta users (like yourself) could invite others (like me):
“Evernote accounts are currently only available by invitation. To register you must be sent an invite by a current user.” - Excerpt from http://preview.evernote.com/Registration.action
I guess I’ll just have to be patient and await the official release…
I’ve read that too. Darned if I’ve found where I can do it though!
Taking another look now
[...cue the elevator music...]
Nope, still don’t see anything along those lines. :-\
Can I translate this article into Chinese and publish in my blog ?
– an EverNote user in China
@xbeta - sure, as long as you honor my license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Thanks!
Chris,
I’m not sure why that blog post about was gone. It’s back now at http://blog.evernote.com/ . Invitations for friends will be in place soon and will appear on the top link bar.
Have you tried clipping things into Evernote? It’s one of the coolest features. The web clipper is at http://www.evernote.com/download/beta/#webclipper and you can just drag it into your browser toolbar without having to install any software. Once it’s in your toolbar, just select a section of a web page that you want to clip and click the button. If you download the Windows or Mac versions (Mac version coming in a couple of weeks), you get even more full-featured clippers that let you clip from the web, email and pretty much any other app.
Hey Phil, thanks for stopping back. I’ll keep an eye out for the invites — sounds like they won’t be too hard to give away!
I’ve been playing with both that web clipper and the universal clipper quite a bit today
@Chris - Thanks for taking another look for a way to send me an invite. Guess I’ll just have to be patient until the friend invite link to show up (as mentioned by Phil above)
@Phil - Any way to get an invite a little early??