I am an organizational geek. And a note-taking geek. I collect thoughts, ideas, sketches, to-do’s, etc., throughout the day and try to keep them in some sort of self-organized system. This has become more and more of a problem as my notebooks become bigger, and my various media-types become increasingly difficult to sort.
A few weeks ago I listened to Leo Laporte rave about his experience with the Evernote beta. “Yeah…yeah…” I thought. I’ve seen these types of ubiquitous note-capture apps and sites come and go, and none have ever been able to fully do what a good desktop app can (like DevonThink.) It can’t be that great.
I was wrong. Evernote is as close to the note capture tool as I’ve ever seen. It can hold most any type of media, and - the killer app for me - it can read text from images for later searching. For example, here is an image I captured from a whiteboard during a meeting, e-mailed to my Evernote account, and later searched for under “Blog.” It recognized the word “Blog” written in the image, and searched my notes to bring up this image. It also worked when I searched “podcasts” and “journeys.” Unbelievable. (At a bookstore and want to remember the title of a book? Snap a shot and e-mail it to Evernote. Want to capture your whiteboard note after a meeting in searchable format? Snap a picture and e-mail it to Evernote.) It’s not perfect - I’ve hit a few glitches - but it’s pretty close to what I’ve always wanted.
Evernote is still in beta, but you can get in on it via their site. It might take a week or so for them to get back to you, but it’s worth it. Check it out.
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