Web Apps - Evernote

I'm a huge technology buff, especially web and desktop applications. I'm particularly interested in different web applications and the value that they bring to me, either personally or professionally.


I wanted to do a highlight of one of many web apps I use almost daily - Evernote. Evernote has often been called "your second brain". It is an extremely powerful note taking application that saves all your notes, organizes them in folders and allows you to tag notes for quick ways of slicing and dicing notes.

I have a moleskine notebook that I use for when I'm on a bus or feeling particularly inspired to write but more often than note, I'm in front of the computer. Whenever I think that an article is particularly interesting or something that I might want to refer to later, I clip it to Evernote using the handy bookmarklet that they provide.

What kind of things can you clip and save to notebooks or tag? Here are some of the things that I store in my Evernote notebook in no particular order:

• Recipes that you want to try later
• Books that you want to read or purchase
• Receipts (I haven't done it myself but you can snap pictures of your receipts and Evernote will read the text on the receipt when you upload the image - pretty nifty way of tracking your expenses)
• Articles that you may want to refer to later
• Sheet music for songs you'd like to play
• Ideas (anything about speeches, humor, stories)
• Everything related to the job search, including resumes, cover letters and job postings (sometimes the job postings get taken down and if you have several interviews, you'll want to refer back to your job posting to figure out how to prepare for the interview)
• Diary - (almost) daily entries of my thoughts and feelings
• Skills that I'd like to refer back to later
• Gift ideas for friends (sometimes friends refer to things they need or want and it's hard remembering what it is a few months later)
• Dreams

What are some other things that you can clip or save to notebooks?

• Research - if you're writing papers, you can organize different articles you find on the internet (or by taking pictures of magazine articles or textbook pages) into notebooks. If you also take down where you found the article, you'll never have any trouble with giving credit to the right people.
• You can save your floor dimensions in a note. This really only works if you have a smart phone with web browsing but the next time you go shopping for furniture, you never have to worry about whether you have enough space for it in your room; just refer to the note and double check the dimensions.
• Although I haven't tried out this functionality, you can also share notes with other Evernote users or even share whole notebooks. Perhaps you and your friends like to share different recipes with each other (did you see the shared notebook I have for the recipes that I'd like to try?)
  

You can see that the uses for Evernote are limited only by your imagination (and sometimes by a lack of a smartphone heh)

There have also been many articles about how to use Evernote as a way of getting things done. 

Personally, I don't use it as a way of getting things done. I use my e-mail inbox for that, but that's another post. Evernote does help me organize many of the things I do need to do though.


Basically, if you're looking for an easy, secure way of taking down notes, sharing notes with others, always be a search away from that interesting article you read and generally keep track of anything and everything you want, Evernote is definitely a good way to go.

Do you use a note taking application? If so, which ones and how do you use them in your life?