Evernote Opens to All: Fantastic Promise, Disappointing Execution
The highly anticipated "memory augmentation" service Evernote opens to the public Tuesday and you'll probably want to check this service out just to see what it tries to do. We may change our minds after more lengthy testing, but so far this combination of a bookmarking, note taking and photo cataloging service with apps for the desktop, web and mobile - not to mention the Optical Character Recognition powered search - adds up to a whole lot of potential ... and frustration.
It's worth a try, and your workflow might work better with Evernote than ours has so far. It's probably not going to change your life as much as it says it will, though. Fact is it just doesn't work that well.
Features
The basic premise of Evernote is that you can throw all kinds of files at it and then search for particular words in those files later. Full or partial screenshots are easy to add as are photos emailed from your phone and text entered directly into the application. The company says you can take photos of signs on the street and labels on bottles of wine, then search for text in those images to recall them later. There's all kinds of other features like annotation, sharing, a widget etc.
Storage space is limited and Evernote is now announcing a premium account at $5 per month for 500MB per month of uploading, free users get 40MB each month. That 40MB will go fast if you're uploading full screenshots.
There are a number of services similar to Evernote, but few are as lightweight, inexpensive and multi-platform as it is. Last100 writer Dan Langendorf is excited about Evernote and says it compares well in terms of features to more heavyweight competing services like Yojimbo, Soho Notes and DevonThink. Another marginally related service is Iterasi (disclosure: a consulting client of mine) though that service and Evernote are not as similar as I suspected.
Evernote has a whole lot of promise that's well articulated in the company's demo video. Check it out and then read on to learn about the problems we had in trying to use the service.
The Problems
The OCR search in Evernote is far enough from perfect that it's a real disappointment. False positives are annoying, but missing what should be readable text means that Evernote fails to recall documents that it promised to find. We saw a high percentage of false positives and too many cases of failure to capture text even on screen captures of web pages. The webcam capture wasn't good for much as small images are too fuzzy, but we're told by other users that a good point and shoot camera can get business cards into the system recognizably.
We ran into other little problems like an inability to login to the mobile web interface, the desktop app freezing up and a Mac desktop interface that was not as intuitive as we would have liked.
Recommendations
If Evernote's OCR could improve then we'd love to see additional features like:
- the ability to capture the current contents of a particular application instead of just the screen or a portion of it.
- search from the desktop application.
- adding items by RSS feed.
We'll keep trying Evernote for non-essential uses, but we were really looking forward to it and are disappointed with the performance issues it faces right now.
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You should try Shifd... it's a great note taking App: www.shifd.com - very clean, simple and easy to use.
I agree, Evernote doesn't live up to the hype. I've tried integrating it into my life, but I find it more frustrating than helpful. It is good for jotting things down occaisonally, but it certainly hasn't upped my productivity significantly. Perhaps it's because I don't know how to use it, but then that kind of defeats the purpose. I don't think a good productivity app should take a lot of learning to use.
I've used only one or two screenshots but am using Evernote a whole lot for random notes and bits of info. I love it and find it more useful than DevonThink Pro.
Of particular importance and usefulness for me is that notes sync seamlessly between my two Macs and I can use the web interface if I'm somewhere else.
I love it. I now have 5 notebooks and 54 notes, with a whole bunch of tags. The smart folders allowed me to find a note I created earlier this week but where I couldn't recall any of the important info (URLs etc).
It's a definite hit with me.
To be honest, i'm really impressed by the service. Ofcourse things can be improved, but so far i like Evernote a lot!
evernote also OWNS all your private notes
read their terms of service carefully
I've actually tried out a whole bunch of note taking applications and I'm actually satisfied with Springnote (http://www.springnote.com/). Springnote is totally free and also provides 2 gb of file storage... and it feels like a REAL notebook.
Although Evernote may have text recognition on images, I really don't see the practicality in searching for text within images. Isn't that why we have tags?
The usefulness of text recognition within images is good when you've got a lot of scanned documents (like minutes of meetings etc).
I've started to use EN quite a lot recently, and have found that it works well for me. I've dumped a load of project notes in there, and although you do get some false positives, 95% of the time I can find the document, note or scan that I was looking for.
I've been happy with Evernote so far with the understanding it was in beta. Maybe my workflow was so disjointed that any small improvement would be significant, but I like the integration of the Mac client with the web and especially the mobile.
It was actually the Windows Mobile client that sealed the deal for me. Evernote had\s the first quick note-taking client that I could actually use effectively on my T-Mobile Dash.
I also then integrated Jott with Evernote to allow for one central place for collecting all my notes.
All your points in the review are accurate, but they can improve on all of them. I've just yet to see a better integrated solution.
I uninstalled it after a couple of minutes but see a good amount of potential. The idea is brilliant but the execution is lacking. I like the logo, though!
I was looking forward to using this onces I got my iphone. I often write out notes when I'm at resturants and lose them. I'd be interested in finding other ways to implement it into my life. But hopefully they worked through the issues you mentioned.
I like the logo as well.
I think Evernote is one of my "must have" applications. And I think you're missing the point if your big complaint is poor OCR execution.
If you haven't yet tried it, what Evernote allows you to do is to clip and save interesting bits and pieces of the net as you surf. Whole pages...no problem. Paragraphs...no problem. Photos...no problem.
Plus, their software allows you to file these saved "nuggets" in folders you create. And you can add tags, too.
Did I mention you can send photos from your cell phone directly to the program?
Or send scans? Or clip photos from emails you receive?
Give it a try. It's fantastic.