Evernote for the iPhone: WOW!

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Sep 23

Okay, so I have to admit I am a bit of a late adopter here… But I am now fully on the bandwagon.  I have had people telling me for the last six months how cool Evernote is.  I had looked into it a few times, but it just wasn’t jumping out at me.

A month or so ago I installed it on my iPhone.  It just sat.  But last week I started to play with it a bit… and I wanted to share.

So here’s the deal: Whatever it is you need to remember, you can store it in evernote.  You can jot down a note, you can snap a picture, or record audio.  You can snap a picture of that whiteboard brainstorming session to keep it.

Okay, nice, but so what? I keep pictures, notes, and recordings already.  What’s cool is that all of the text and tags become indexed… EVEN THE TEXT IN YOUR PICTURES.  That’s right… it will recognize words from that whiteboard session on Compensation plans.  And, since it’s all indexed, it’s like your own little mini google.  Search later for “compensation”, and that picture of the whiteboard pops up.

But wait, it gets even better.  It knows when and where you made the note.  Want to know where you had that discussion?  It will show you on google maps.  Want to have evernote search for all “Indian food” in a 5 mile radius?  It will do that.

My first use of evernote was for paint.  It seems that whenever I paint a room, I never keep the details on the paint… so if I need to patch something I have to repaint the whole room.  Well, I just painted two rooms in a duplex I own.  If the tenants knock a hole in the wall, I can just patch it, and search for “duplex paint” to find what colors I had used.

I’ve watched many of the new apps that have come out on the iPhone, and and platforms like Facebook, and been a bit frustrated that it seems that we have taken a step backward in capabilities in some ways.  It is sad to think that some of the most popular apps out there are not really much cooler than what I played over my 2400 baud modem on a BBS in the early 90’s.

It is really great to see an app like Evernote push that, and deliver an experience and value that is way beyond anything before.  Nice job Evernote.

• Posted in Techno Rambling