This Week at Mobile Tech Manor #46: Collecting My Thoughts With Evernote

Mobile Tech Manor Large 2We are preparing to head into a big holiday weekend here in the U. S. and before I do that it’s time to share my past week at Mobile Tech Manor with you. I kept my nose to the computer screen pretty much all week and revisited a program that makes keeping all those bits of wisdom I run across right where I need them. Come on in and share my week for a bit.

Too Many Phones

Regular visitors to Mobile Tech Manor know I have too many phones. It’s strictly a result of the work I do here but it’s a constant challenge deciding what phone I will use on a given day. It’s also a bit of a hassle when I change from one phone to another although that hassle is not as bad since hooking up with Google Voice. Those of you who are waiting for GV to let you in should be getting your invite soon according to Google who are ramping up to go live. I’m sure it will be beta forever like everything Google, but at least they’ll let everyone in soon.

This past week I used the Palm Pre most of the time once again. It’s not unusual for me to use mostly the new phone in the Manor for a while to get familiar with it. I am largely impressed with the Pre and the good job that Palm has done with the initial software bundling. The way the Pre handles multi-tasking is the best I have seen on any phone and it has been a solid performer for me. I’ll be glad when more apps get written for the Pre although I must admit that it’s not failing to do anything I need with the current offering. It never fails to impress anyone who picks it up, especially those “regular people” who are not involved in the tech world. They immediately grasp how it works and how fluidly the whole interface is manipulated.

I attend a fair number of teleconferences each week. Some of these are internal GigaOM staff meetings but most are press briefings that major companies put together to talk about upcoming products. I have settled on using the Pre along with the Plantronics Pulsar 590E stereo Bluetooth headset. The Pre handles stereo Bluetooth very well and I can use the 590E for listening to music and still make calls when needed. The headset is so light and comfortable that I find them perfect for these teleconferences that can easily last over an hour. The headset of the 590E has a great microphone and no one can tell I am on a Bluetooth headset on these calls. The Pre/ Pulsar combo has become a constant fixture of my workday it works so well.

I still use the iPhone 3G for reading e-books every day. The Pre lacks a good reader so I am forced to look somewhere else for that task. I read a lot of books so this is a big deal to me. The iPhone is a great reader although I admit it feels pretty strange to only be using it for reading e-books. An iPod Touch would work for this but I already have the iPhone. Apple issued a heat warning for both the iPhone 3G and the spiffy new iPhone 3GS. Some owners of the new iPhone are reporting that the phone runs very, very hot, to the point of discoloring the white back of the phone. This is pretty scary given all the past stories about phones bursting into flames. Apple’s warning about the two iPhone models says that they should only be operated up to 95 degrees. We’ve been over 100 degrees here in Houston for days so I keep expecting my iPhone 3G to spontaneously combust but so far it hasn’t.

Netbooks Still Around

I have been using the HP Mini 1000 a lot this week and still find it a wonder. There is simply no way that HP could have made it any smaller yet kept the keyboard and screen big enough to make it as productive as it is to use.  The new 5101 model from HP looks pretty nice and I hope to soon get my hands on one to try out. It seems like it’s a bit bigger than the 1000 though so we’ll have to see if the extra bulk is worth it.

I am still running Windows 7 on the Mini 1000 and am enjoying how well it works on the netbook. It is going to be interesting to see how many netbook models start shipping with Windows 7 once it’s released. It will be even more interesting to see how Windows 7 affects netbook pricing. No matter what some say about why people buy netbooks I am convinced it’s largely due to price.

Evernote- the Best Productivity App on the Planet

I was a long-time OneNote user, it was the most-used program on every computer I used due to my past work as a consultant. There is no better program for taking notes in ink on a Tablet PC and I must have inked tens of thousands of pages in OneNote. My work is different now and I find myself in more of an information collection mode than a note-taking mode. This change brought me back to Evernote for collecting information and it has evolved so far in recent years that it is simply an amazing tool.

One of the big strengths of Evernote is that it is cloud based which means my notes live up in the cloud. This is important as it means they are available no matter what device I am using in a given moment, they are just there. More importantly for me it also means that I can capture bits of information for future reference no matter what I am doing or what I am using at the time. The many ways to get information grabbed and saved is simply game-changing for my work.

Evernote web interface

Evernote web interface

Evernote has special versions for just about every device I use. There are versions for Windows, Macs, the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Palm Pre. These versions make it easy to collect information and access it no matter what I am using. I also use the web-based interface a lot which is device independent and works seamlessly in my web browser.  All of these versions make finding the particular nugget of information I need as simple as a search. Evernote instantly returns all notes that contain my search term no matter how they were collected or (more importantly) what kind of note they might be.

Getting information into Evernote is very powerful in its flexibility. I can type notes, write them in ink on a Tablet, clip info from the web, take photos of things, copy/ paste things and even snap photos from the Mac iSight web cam. The whole Evernote premise is that the user should be able to capture information, in any form, and get it into a note in the cloud-based notebook as simply as possible. I can’t stress how powerful this is for those who need to collect information from any source. You see something you need to grab, you use whatever method is at hand and the information is saved.

Evernote Pre version

Evernote Pre version

What makes this so powerful is that Evernote handles all the different types of information with the notion that you must be able to search for things and easily find them later. All images, whether pasted from other programs, photos snapped with a phone camera or images emailed into Evernote, are searchable if they contain any text. One of the most powerful uses of Evernote in my work is to snap a photo of a sign, a computer screen, a piece of paper, anything that contains text. Once the image is uploaded into my notebook in the sky (which happens instantly and automatically) the Evernote gremlins scan the image looking for text. Any text is then recognized and indexed for searching just like any text notes.

Think about the power of that for a moment. I have many times taken a photo of a document page and Evernote has then been able to let me search for any term on that page. Is that beginning to sink in? This means that I am able to save just about any information I come across simply by snapping a photo of it with my phone. I can then find any term in the object I photographed later with a simple search. This is revolutionary for my work. Sure it’s not perfect, phone cameras aren’t the best in the world but I find I am able to get a decent enough photo of an object with a little care.

If it seems I am gushing about Evernote it’s because I am. A large part of my work is research and that means finding the information I need and then making sure it is accessible to me later when I need it. Evernote makes this a seamless part of my work and this is simply liberating. The amazing part is that Evernote is free until you start creating many notes per month and even then it’s pretty cheap. It staggers me to think how these folks make such a powerful solution at such a low price as they do.

Errata on the Web

This week I found this amazing video of a marriage proposal that you must see to believe. I suspect the groom-to-be works in the Disney World park in the video but even so it’s simply amazing. I hope this guy realizes that he’s now set the bar so high for everything else in the upcoming marriage. The look on the fiance’s face is priceless.

http://www.youtube.com/v/IpojZ0COU3Y&rel=0&color1=0x666666&color2=0xd3d3d3&feature=player_embedded&fs=1

E-Book of the Week

This week I have been engrossed in From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz. The story is typical Koontz with constant surprises and a vague sense of unease at what might happen next as it unfolds. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Wrap-up

That’s it for another week at Mobile Tech Manor. I enjoyed sharing it with you as I always do and can’t wait until next week.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post