Use Evernote to capture almost anything

About a year ago I started using a free service called Evernote. It is an online service for capturing notes about anything, placing those notes into notebooks, and searching them later on to recall the information. I was using OneNote from Microsoft at the time and couldn't see much difference between the two applications. Today, if you take a look at Evernote you may find as I did that this application has some new features and capabilities that move it to the top of your list.

Think of Evernote as a way for you to access information you store in the application from almost anywhere. I am a PC user and have the desktop client loaded on my work computer as well as the computer I use when I travel. There is also a MAC version. I am able to use a browser from any computer to directly access the data in my account by logging into the Evernote website. There is an iPhone application, too, from which I can access my data. The fact that you can add information to Evernote from all these applications and have the data sync to the rest makes this a can't live without application for me.

I was in Atlanta over the weekend. I needed to work on a Word document so I created the document and uploaded it into Evernote via the desktop client on my laptop. Anywhere you work from the desktop client the documents are stored locally for you. If the Evernote application ever goes away, I have a copy of my document on my two computers. I can edit the document from the web browser or iPhone and the changes will find there way back to my desktop clients through the magic of synchronization.

There is a link in my Outlook email client that allows me to select an email and have it pushed into Evernote. The "Add to Evernote" button promotes me to select the notebook I want to put the email in and gives me the opportunity to add tags which help me find things later. There is a similar button to send things to Evernote from inside a browser. I don't know about you, but I find things on websites and want to save them for later reference. Now, instead of printing the browser page, I add it to Evernote (whole page or just the selected portion) and I am down. It's now in my always-with-me memory.

I find another feature to be a great time saver. Go to a meeting where people are jotting things on a white board or flip chart. Assuming a pretty legible scribe has taken the notes, I can take a photo of the materials on the board or chart and upload them to Evernote. Once the image is processed by Evernote servers I can perform a search and find the images that mention the search term. It's even highlighted. Think of the possibilities for this feature alone. Want to remember a particular wine, take a picture of the lable and upload to Evernote. At the store and see a book you want to read, take a photo of it.

The Evernote application is free. You can add text notes, PDFs, and images (JPEG and GIF). No limit to how much you can upload, but you are limited to a 50 MB per month. I purchased the premium account so I could add any type of file (Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint) etc. to the system. The cost of the premium account should not stop you from getting it. It's $5 per month or $45 per year.

I suggested to my daughter who is attending nursing school that she use Evernote premium to make the most of her time and be able to view her data from any computer that has access to the Internet. She can start a Word document at home, then when she has some time in the library at school, open the same document and continue working on it from the web, once she returns home, she can pick up where she left off.

What prompted me to write about Evernote today was a couple articles I found on the American Express Open Business webiste that talk about ways to use Evernote for small and mid-sized businesses. Follow these links and see what others are saying about this application. You will be glad that you did.

Learn more about evernote, or sign up for 14 days free.

How do you use Evernote to improve your productivity?