Evernote is one of my favorite and most used apps. If you aren’t familiar with it, Evernote is in the business of helping you be organized. It is free but there are paid versions that are beneficial to heavy users or for people working as a group. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Evernote, the best way for me to explain how it is useful is to frame an example of how you could use it if you were planning a Memorial Weekend party at the lake.
I am an iOS user and have the Evernote app on my iPhone and iPad (Evernote also has Android versions available in Google Play). I also have the Evernote application on my Macbook Air and if you are a Windows user, there is an application for you too. You don’t need any of these as you can access your Evernote account from any computer using a web browser. Evernote also has extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari so they pretty much have you covered regardless of the devices or computers you choose to use. I advise to use them all to make the most of its features.
Okay, once you have signed up for a free account and downloaded all the apps and extensions you want to use, you are ready. With Evernote, you create notebooks and notes. You could start by creating a new notebook named ‘Memorial Weekend Party’ and then start creating notes. If it was a rainy day and while drinking coffee you were paging through an issue of Food and Wine Magazine and saw a recipe that looked interesting, snap a photo of the article with Evernote to create a photo note of the article. If you had been reading the article on the Food and Wine web-site on your laptop you could use a browser extension to quickly save the article to your notebook. The same goes for smart phones. On the iPhone, you can use the vertical arrow at the bottom of the screen to quickly send an article viewed on Safari to one of your notebooks. Evernote also gives you a unique email address that allows you to send or forward emails to it and add to notebooks. No matter what form of Evernote you are using, as long as you are signed into your account, all your notes and notebooks sync.
One really cool feature of Evernote is that it geotags your notes. If you had created a photo note of something that inspired you but later forgot what it was but could remember the general area you were in at the time, you can go to ‘Places’ and can see a map view of the various locations where you have added notes. For shoppers, it is a great tool. If you were walking past a storefront and something caught your eye that looked interesting but you didn’t have time to go into the store, use Evernote to create a quick photo note and it’ll remember where you took the photo. A side note. Your phone Geotags photos ofcourse so you don’t need Evernote to do this but it makes it a lot easier and organized.
Now that you’ve created notes for your ‘Memorial Weekend Party’ notebook about food, drinks, decorations, topics of conversation (helpful to be even more interesting than you normally are…), games, etc. you can view them all in a list view or tile view. The notes will show the date they were created and where they were created and any tags you used (I don’t use tags any more as Evernote’s search feature is powerful).
This is just a quick look at the features available and there is much more you can do with Evernote. I use it for all my travel planning and also use it for real estate. I have notebooks for many lakes and am also often clipping real estate articles that have helpful information for me. It’s great for Land and Resource Management information. What’s the sideyard setback for a dwelling in Douglas County on a lot that existed prior to August 9, 1966? A quick search in my Evernote for ‘setback’ will quickly find the note with the answer. Six feet or 3 feet to the eaves.
If you are thinking of buying a home Evernote could be very useful in your search. You could clip real estate listings that interest you and add them to a notebook. What might be helpful is that when you clip a listing of a lake home, for example, you could add text notes about features that appeal to you or questions you might have.
