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Evernote Web, Totally Redesigned

By Matthew Guay on March 29, 2011 in Quick Tips

Evernote, one of the best cross-platform note taking apps, has just unveiled their newly redesigned webapp. While there are Evernote apps for Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, and more, the webapp is the easiest way to edit your notes from any computer. Until now, the Evernote webapp has been the service’s weakest link. It was rather difficult to use, and the design quality was much lower than their desktop and mobile apps.

The newly redesigned Evernote webapp

Not anymore. Evernote unveiled a new design for their webapp today that makes it almost as powerful as the desktop app. It looks like the desktop app, shows thumbnails of your notes in the middle and lets you read them in the right column. Edit notes with one click, without having to go to a new window. Best of all, edits auto-save as you type, so you’ll never lose the data you’ve entered. And, you can share notes right from the webapp with others with a link or Facebook integration. It just might be the most full-featured online notes app.

Now, of all things, I’ve personally have been switching to more plain-text note apps like SimpleNote, mainly because the Evernote Windows app is still rather pokey, even after tweaking it to speed it up a bit. Hopefully they’ll now focus on improving the desktop apps again, too! For now, though, the Evernote webapp is almost nice enough to use on its own, sans desktop apps. With the Chrome Web Clipper for Evernote, it’s a great way to remember everything you come across online.

Get more info about Evernote Web

Sign into your account and try out the new version

Want to learn more about Evernote? This is the book you need: Evernote Essentials

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Speed up Evernote on Windows

By Matthew Guay on January 14, 2011 in Featured, Techinch

Have you ever fired up Evernote for Windows to find something you’ve jotted down only to find that it’s running glacially and takes forever just to open a note? Even with the new and improved Evernote 4, sometimes it still is one of the slowest apps on my PC. So much so, in fact, that I’d nearly switched to using Evernote web instead of the desktop interface.

Today, thanks to an Evernote forum thread, I found a couple tricks that can help speed up Evernote. Follow along, and we’ll see if you can get Evernote feeling snappy again.

Activate Detective Mode

Ok, it’s not quite that dramatic, but Evernote does have some hidden developer tools that can help improve Evernote for Windows’ performance. First, if you have Evernote running, exit it from your system tray.

Now, open the Run command by pressing your Windows key and R at the same time (Win+R). Enter the following in the box, the press Enter or click Ok:

Evernote.exe /DebugMenu

When Evernote opens, you’ll notice a new [Debug] menu on your toolbar. This includes two options that really seemed to speed up Evernote on my computer: Optimize Database and Recreate Note Images. Optimizing your database is likely to help Evernote’s performance the most, though if you have some notes that have odd thumbnails (or no thumbnails), then you might try recreating the note images as well.

Both of these options will take several minutes to run, during which time you’ll see the status updated in a progress bar. If you’d like to give both options a shot, just run one, then the other.

Once it’s finished, you can continue to use Evernote as normal, or restart it to get rid of the [Debug] menu. Evernote still isn’t the fastest app, but it’s much improved after optimizing my database. I’ve got tons of notes in Evernote, and love the Evernote apps on iOS, so would really hate to quit using it. I really hope Evernote works to optimize Evernote for Windows and make it run faster, but in the mean time, this at least provided a bit of help for me. Hopefully you’ll find this helpful too … let us know in the comments!

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Evernote Site Memory on Techinch

By Matthew Guay on September 13, 2010 in Techinch

Have you ever read an article online that you’d like to make sure you remember? Several months ago I wrote about how the Evernote Chrome addon with Site Memory had entirely changed how I use Evernote. In fact, now I use Evernote as the primary way I bookmark sites, since I can tag the bookmarks, include clips from the page, and easily find all my favorite pages in one site. The only problem is, the Chrome web clipper only works in Chrome, so if you’re browsing the ‘net on friend’s computer or at a library you might not be able to use it.

Last week, Evernote made it easier again to clip content from the internet with the new Evernote Site Memory button. This is a new button that web publishers can add to their pages to let readers easily clip their content. Techinch was one of the first sites to integrate the new Evernote button, so now you can easily save any article you read here to your Evernote notebook.

Here’s how it works. Say you read our article on student discounts on Office 2010, and wanted to make sure to not lose the info. So, scroll to the bottom of the article, and click the Remember button with the elephant icon.

This will open the Evernote web clipper in a smaller popup window. If you’re not already signed into Evernote, enter your username and password, and click Sign in. Alternately, if you’ve never used Evernote before, click Sign up now and create a new account.

Now, you can edit the title of the note, add tags, select the notebook you wish to store this note in, and add a text note of your own.

When adding tags to web clips, you’ll be able to quickly select from tags you’ve already used as you start typing.

Once you’re finished adding the info you want, click Clip. Evernote will then prepare the note, which may take a few moments, depending on the size of the page you clipped.

You’ll then see a small preview of the note in the window. You can now just close the window and go back to browsing, or you can choose to view the note in Evernote online. Your note will automatically be synced to any devices you use Evernote on, so you could alternately check your favorite Evernote app.

Here’s the note in Evernote web. Note that it included all the content from the article, including images and links, so you can now find the info you needed quicker than ever. You can also click Go to source to look the page back up.

Now, let’s say you came across our review of Evernote Essentials, and wanted to save it as well. Just click the Remember button as before. This time, you’ll notice a button on the bottom of the web clipper that says Clips from Techinch.com.

Click this to see all the notes you’ve clipped from Techinch. Now you can easily go to the other pages you’ve clipped, or open the notes about them in Evernote.

You’ll see the same Site Memory in the Chrome Web clipper, so this will keep all of your notes and clips available whether you’re at home or in an internet café on the other side of the globe, using your laptop, a public computer, or your smartphone!

If you’re running your own website and would like to integrate Evernote into your articles, check out the Evernote button builder as well as their detailed instructions for integrating the button with WordPress and Tumblr sites. If you run into a problem adding it to your site, leave a comment below and I’ll try to help you get it working! Or, if you’ve already added it to your site, leave the link below so we can check it out!

And don’t forget … whenever you want to remember an article you read on Techinch, click the Remember button at the bottom. Feel free to tweet or Like the article on Facebook, too!

Happy Clipping!

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Evernote Essentials | Review

By Matthew Guay on July 22, 2010 in Books, Techinch

Like it or not, humans are forgetful. Admit it … even the best of us have forgotten lots of important information over the years. Ask me; I managed to forget to make hotel reservations three days in a row this week, even though people reminded me each day! I’ve often envied cameras and phones; they run out of storage space, and we simply stick in a new, larger SD card. Evernote claims it can help you Remember Everything, but somehow it seems like the most obvious solutions don’t seem that obvious at first. It seems like a good idea; just jot down all your thoughts, and then find them again anytime, anywhere. But for me, Evernote didn’t click until recently. If you’ve been feeling in the dark about Evernote, perhaps using it haphazardly but not regularly, you might need something to help it make more sense. Or, even if you’ve been using it for a while, you might be wondering how you can get more usefulness out of it.

Enter Evernote Essentials. This hot-off-the-press eBook (assuming, as I do, that in 2010 Tumblr and PDFs count as a press) helps you quickly discover all of Evernote’s features and start using them to make you more productive and forget less. Evernote may not be the most confusing application ever; in fact, it may be one of the simplest. But author Brett Kelly, a new member of the Evernote team, ties it all together and helps you see how Evernote brings your thoughts from your browser, desktop, and mobile device all together. This is not a weighty, 500 page book that takes you through every nook and cranny of a program, but instead is a light-reading book that can help you get the most out of Evernote. Let’s look at what Evernote Essentials contains, and why you just might want to read it.

Screenshots, captions, witty comments … Evernote Essentials has it all!

Evernote Essentials starts with a quick overview of the Evernote service in general, and helps new users get up to speed on some terminology. Then it dives into a look at the features and settings in all of Evernote’s major platforms: the desktop, web, and mobile versions, Evernote via email, and more. Next you’ll learn how to effectively organize and find anything you store in Evernote. Tagging is often difficult for new users to understand, and can be messy and confusing for advanced users who’ve used Evernote a long time, so you may want to pay extra attention to the section on tagging to help you stay organized.

Examples of great Evernote usage ideas ranging from cooking to programming follow. Bloggers, you’re not neglected; there’s a whole section on how Evernote can help you keep up with your ideas and post drafts. Secret Service agent looking for a way to remember everything? You’re covered too.

The sections I found most useful were the ones about using Evernote via email and about the advanced search options in Evernote. Did you know you could search for all notes containing images with text that Evernote recognized? Or that you could find all notes created in the past week by just entering created:week-1 in Evernote’s search box? Guess what; you can! I’ve used Evernote for over a year, but this one section taught me a lot that I’d overlooked in Evernote. Anything that can make you more productive and organized is valuable, and this one book helped me get a lot more out of the free Evernote service. The best thing is, you’ll likely have fun reading the book too, and be more excited about getting your notes organized in Evernote.

Getting Evernote Essentials

Evernote Essentials is available as a DRM-free PDF for $25, and the author promises to regularly update the book with new information and make the latest version available free of charge to customers. In fact, you won’t even have to worry about having the latest copy; when the book is updated, you’ll be automatically emailed with the newest version. The PDF is fully searchable, so you can easily find anything you’re looking for in the book anytime. In fact, since all Evernote users can store PDFs in Evernote, I’d suggest you save the book in Evernote for a quick reference guide! To top it off, the author promises a full refund within 30 days if you don’t feel the book met your expectations. Not bad, eh? Check it out at the link below:

Get More Info and Purchase Evernote Essentials Today!

Let us know how this book helped you use Evernote more effectively to remember and find your info easier than ever.

P.S.: Hey Mr. Brett Kelly, would you mind sharing a couple of your Cumin Waffle recipes with us? A public Evernote notebook would do! After all, reading your book made me hungry

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How I Use Evernote

By Matthew Guay on July 12, 2010 in How-To Geek, Techinch, Writing

Remembering information from day to day can be a strain on even the smartest. From your license plate number to the song you heard on the radio a moment ago, we’re constantly struggling to remember and recall information. Evernote is a very useful free tool to help your, in their words, Remember Everything. Although there are many apps and services today designed to help you store and keep up with notes, Evernote has recently won me over with its almost perfect combination of mobile, desktop, and web apps, and flawless synchronization between them all.

I was not always sold out to Evernote as my favorite notetaking application. I went back and forth from keeping notes, links, and more scattered around in Word documents, random browser bookmarks, jotted notes in random notebooks, and more. I had a slightly better system of keeping up with college notes, as I kept them in OneNote and synced them with my netbook via Live Sync. I’d given Evernote a try, but it doesn’t have as rich of formatting options as OneNote, and seemed less good at taking structured notes from college.

The one thing that kept me using Evernote from time to time was its mobile app. I have an aging Windows Mobile phone, a non-touchscreen device with a full, blackberry-style keyboard. Windows Mobile may not have the greatest number of apps avilable today, but it does have 3 very useful ones: Opera Mobile/Mini, Facebook, and Evernote. Evernote is great to jot down quick thoughts anywhere: the kitchen, the car, or the dresser where I leave my phone at night. I can sync over WiFi, and then see what I wrote from my computer or online. I can even add pictures to Evernote, which is one of the easiest ways to upload them to my computer. It’s simple, seamless, and made my phone keep me in touch with myself as much as with others

Then, I began using Evernote even more when I integrated it with my browser. Evernote has released a new Evernote addon for Chrome, and it is both beautiful and useful. I’ve been using Google Chrome as my default browser, and suddenly now Evernote was only one click away. It was dead simple to take a note about a site or app I came across, and since I could tag and annotate the note, and then view it later online or in Evernote on my computer, it was the ideal bookmarking solution. I’m now using it as my primary bookmarking system, and it’s working great. I recently reviewed the new Evernote Chrome addon at How-to Geek and showed how great it is for keeping up with websites, so check out the article for more info:

Beginner Geek: Remember Everything You See Online With Evernote for Chrome

Another recent discovery I’ve made is sometimes you don’t need rich formatting for notes. When you want to remember something, whether a webapp or a favorite quote, what’s really important is the text itself, along with links and/or images that go along with it. Most programs try to do too much, and they make the task more difficult. With Evernote, the killer app is helping your remember stuff, and it works great for that!

Other Favorite Note Apps

And you know what, there may never be the perfect, all encompassing notetaking application. Evernote is great for small, short notes, and even works quite good for longer notes. But, there are several other note apps that I use regularly. These include:

Backpack

I’m a fan of Backpack from 37signals, and use it to collaborate on shared notes with friends and colleagues and to occasionally throw together a quick webpage when I need some info online temporarily. I also keep a list of all the things I plan to write on my blogs in Backpack, which works great along with Campfire for collaboration. It’s one of the nicest webapps I’ve used, and I recommend it fully for the things I mentioned and more. However, it’s still not as simple to just store all of your thoughts in Backpack; it’s more like saving info on specific web pages.
OneNote

Office 2010 has added OneNote to the ranks of the standard Office Applications as it is included in all Office 2010 suites along with Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. OneNote gives much richer editing capacities than most other notetaking apps, and can sync your notebooks with the new Office Web apps. It’s also very useful as an OCR tool; Evernote lets you search text in pictures, but OneNote actually lets you copy the text out of pictures! Still, though, for simply keeping up with all your small (and large) notes, I find Evernote much easier to use; you don’t have to configure it, it just works.
Sticky Notes in Windows 7

Sometimes you just need to remember something for a moment, and this is where the Stick Notes app in Windows 7 (or the Notes sidebar gadget in Vista … or the countless number of sticky notes gadgets available for other platforms) comes in handy. In the true spirit of Post-it notes, you can just jot something down on your desktop and delete it when you’re finished with the task. Since it’s right there in front of you, this can often be a great way to make sure you don’t forget something. Just make sure you don’t need to remember it forever, or Evernote would be a much better option.

Conclusion

No matter what you need to keep up with, Evernote is a handy tool that can help you make sure to not forget it. The new Chrome addon has made it much more useful for me, and I now find myself using Evernote daily. Evernote’s CEO repeatedly says that Evernote becomes more valuable to users the longer they use it, and I’ve definitely found that to be true. Sound off in the comments, and let us know how you use Evernote (or another notetaking application, or a string around your finger, or whatever) to remember everything.

Because sometimes, our memories aren’t good enough!

Download and Signup for Evernote today!

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