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Jason's Favorite Windows apps: Evernote
Recently our sister publication, TUAW, did a series of posts about each blogger's favorite iPhone and iPod Touch apps. We thought here at Download Squad that we'd take that same approach and apply it to our favourite Windows applications. This first post is my first of three in this vein that will cover Evernote, FeedDemon, and MindManager.
It seems you can't go very far online these days without someone extolling the virtues of Evernote. While this note-taking application has been around for a long time, it has recently been reborn as a cross-platform powerhouse. The original concept behind Evernote was that you had one scrolling piece of note paper that you could continue to add notes to, then easily search within them both based on content and based on a timeline of when your notes were created. While this paradigm still exists, it's no longer Evernote's claim to fame.
Evernote now has a powerful web application that serves as a central nervous system for your note taking. All of your notes that are created in the local Evernote client on your Windows (or Mac) computer are synchronized to Evernote's servers, where they can apply OCR (optical character recognition) to any images that you have included in your notes. This means that you can search for a word that is visible in a photo, and Evernote will find it.
Evernote's interface has been refined over the past few years and is very easy to navigate and use. On the Windows platform most people seem to pit Evernote against OneNote from Microsoft, and in my opinion with the advent of Evernote's server-based system and reliable synchronization, it's no contest.
A free account at Evernote is enough for most users, offering up to 40 MB of file transfer per month, but if you find you are a heavy user you may need to upgrade to a Premium account, which offers 500 MB of transfer per month, plus other features.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
barcaxavi said 11:33AM on 10-07-2008
Simply the best.I use it instead of bookmarks.Great tool for everyone I think!
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gcremeri said 2:25PM on 10-07-2008
Have you mentioned that it's portable too? Just install the app and then from within you could install the Portable version on your favorite USB pendrive.
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Mike D said 2:31PM on 10-07-2008
Now if only they had a BlackBerry client...
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Yazan said 7:24PM on 10-07-2008
While both are note taking tools, they are very different. I see evernote as a scrapbook for everyday life, and onenote as a powerful research tool and workbook.
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George said 12:08AM on 10-08-2008
Evernote WAS a great product, now it's just an ok product. Version 2.2 was terrific...templates allowed a great deal of customization. Templates are gone now. The ability to index both typewritten and handwritten text INSIDE OF IMAGES remains it's killer feature and pretty much the only reason to use version 3. Microsoft OneNote is superior.
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Jash Sayani said 4:50AM on 10-08-2008
I love Evernote but I need a portable version on my usb drive.... I always need it on the go or for note-taking on public computers.... Is it the portable version available...?
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