Coming straight from the horse's mouth (or website in this case), "Evernote makes modern life more manageable by letting you easily collect and find everything that matters. From work notes and to-do lists to recipe collections and travel plans, add everything to Evernote to help you get organized without the effort."
In summary (and without sounding like an advertisement), it allows you to keep checklists, notes, bookmarks, photos, ebooks, documents, etc. in one account and allows access to them on your computer, tablet and phone via cloud based storage.
Elephants are known to have an exceptional memory and what an appropriate logo it is for a tool like Evernote.
Upon creating my account, two things immediately struck me. First is its likeness to app Google Keep and sharing capabilities with previously introduced tool Diigo.
Being a big fan of Android and Google services, I find myself using Google Keep very often to make notes and to-do lists. It was actually only today that I noticed I was able to access the notes I created on my phone on my PC. After using and installing Evernote on my phone however, I see how superior it is to Keep. The app has been around for much longer, and as a result, is simply more robust and feature-rich. Keep lacks the Notebook feature of Evernote (essentially the concept of folders), bookmarking and the e-book feature. The only thing I found to be missing in Evernote is Keep's integration with Google Drive, which is something I use relatively frequently. This is not much of a issue however as it is just as accessible on Evernote's site. A more in-depth comparison between the two can be found in this article from the blog Mashable. Unless you are an iOS user, Google Keep is a good alternative tool and its integration with Google Drive is likely something you are only going to get with Keep.
This app gets the seal of approval from me and will integrate it in my ever-growing PLE. I am thinking it will even replace Diigo as it does everything Diigo can and then some. Instead of using several different tools, I can just use one to accomplish many of my learning related tasks or just everyday tasks. I am thinking of using Evernote for more academic purposes while continuing to use Keep more for my everyday life and backing things up to Google Drive. Its lack of integration with the entire Google ecosystem is the only thing stopping me from dropping Google Keep entirely.
The key feature of Evernote, in my opinion, is the ability to manage and embed articles. While my program has very little to do with that kind of work, I can definitely see its usefulness for others.
While I will not likely be using this for topics like cost accounting, taxation or auditing, the introduction of Evernote could not have come at a better time as we were given a group project in this very class to research digital related topics. The topic I chose was Digital Security. Compiling articles, web clippings and handwritten notes will be easier than ever to share with my partner and will be an important tool to ensure the success of the project.
Valid and online bookmark collectors such as Evernote will help contribute to building knowledge on the topic by offering a more streamlined process in collecting them. I can access it anywhere I want, given I have an internet capable device on me. Instead of sending the links to myself via e-mail (the old-fashioned way), I can go above and beyond and annotate and add commentary to the sites or articles I find useful, much like Diigo.
This week's Feedly contribution comes from the popular bodybuilding.com forum section "The Misc". In one user's thread is a neat infographic telling people the health benefits milk provides are not as important as North American media tends to portray. While he has already said the title of his thread is a joke (Got milk? THROW IT AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), he posted it to create discussion amongst whether drinking milk really is beneficial. Describing it to you would just be a waste of time on my (and your) end, so I'll just provide you with the thread and very well done infographic. Until someone proves that drinking milk is detrimental to your health, I'll keep on drinking. I love my dairy products.
Source: (http://cdn.iwastesomuchtime.com/March-24-2013-19-20-10-GotMilk.gif)
10% lactose tolerant Asian master race crew, checking out.
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteDo you have any suggestions for how Evernote could improve? Is there a feature they could add or change?
Hi Evan,
ReplyDeleteI think Evernote is a great tool. The only thing I can say they can improve upon is how to annotate and embed sites into your note. It is, in my opinion, not very intuitive.