Tools Series: Evernote

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This week I started thinking about the tools that I use and how I use them. Evernote has played such an integral role in both my work and personal life I decided to review this one first.

Evernote is billed as a tool to help users remember everything. It is more than its name suggests. It captures notes, pictures, files, and more. This is not an article designed to sell Evernote, just display how one consultant leverages it to be more efficient and productive.

Code Library

Reading through blogs, websites, and writing queries for clients generates a lot of code. Much of the code is reusable. Evernote gives me a central location to store this code and make it available on any device at any time. The code can be tagged with keywords and then the it all becomes indexed and then searchable. Code does not have to simply be in a text format. I can attach the original code file or document to the note.

Reference

I will be the first to admit that I do not know everything. I discover and learn new things all of the time. Evernote allows me to collect that information in a central location and have it accessible in the modality of my choice. I can clip sections of articles and keep that information as well as a link back to the original reference so I can always go back to the source.

Bookmarking

I have been a huge fan of bookmarking and began working with Delicious when it started in 2003. I was drawn to the ease of use and the tagging concept. Delicious has been in flux for some time and Evernote was a very natural transition with similar tagging and searching functions that drew me to Delicious. I now use Evernote as my central repository for bookmarks.

Searching

I have discussed the storage of information but the power of this information is not in its storage but its recall and availability Evernote indexes the content that I store on it and make is accessible via a powerful search engine. It is not just text and PDFs that become searchable but images as well. Evernote leverages Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to make text in images searchable.

Collaboration

John Donne quipped that “No man is an island...”. This is especially true working as a member of a team. Evernote allows users to create notebooks that can be shared with other users. This has been huge when keeping running server change logs and multiple consultants working on different tasks. It has also allowed my wife to keep track of all of my travel itineraries without having to ask me where I am all of the time.

Evernote has been a great tool that I leverage on a daily basis. Without it I would be like the absent minded Professor Brainard.

Tagged Evernote Featured Technology Tools

Evernote Gets $10 Million in New Funding

I use Evernote to religiously store information and act as a central repository for all of my notes. I was excited to hear that Evernote raised $10 million in 'B' round funding. The lead investor in this round of funding was Morgenthaler Ventures. To get the full details check out the Evernote blog to read more...
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