EverNote: Capture Every Note and More with Ease Efficiently Store and Retrieve All Sorts of Information Scott Koegler
EverNote is an ambitious attempt to categorize the uncategorizable. The best part about the program is that with a few exceptions, it actually works, especially when compared to the competition. The problem with most organizers is that they are either too global or too restrictive, and they impose either too much structure or not enough.
While the initial release of EverNote isn't perfect, we found the ability to decide what to put in and what to leave out provides a nice control point when compared to the likes of Google Desktop Search, which looks absolutely everywhere during a search, and Outlook, which only looks in specified folders of your e-mail archive.
The Basics
Think of EverNote as a never-ending roll of note paper with digital enhancements. You can transfer information to the interface in a variety of ways, including drag and drop, copy and paste, or by simply typing in the content. You can also write on the "paper" with a mouse, although a digital pad like a Wacom will give better results. You can additionally drag images and audio files into EverNote, and then associate text descriptions with them.
EverNote faithfully stores your entries on its digital scroll and does some automatic organization for you, which is really the client's strongest point. The first organizational point is EverNote's Time Band timeline. Each entry you add is automatically stamped with the date and time of when you initially added it.
As you view the Time Band scroll vertically, you move chronologically through the entries, but in addition to simply seeing the date displayed at the top of each entry, a timeline is displayed along the right side of the page. Entries are marked by blips along a line with the width of the peaks indicating the number and size of entries made at the time.
This feature can be very helpful — I know there are plenty of times I can remember the approximate day I worked on something, and the Time Band makes jumping to the entries of that day quick and simple.
Speaking of quick, I found the scrolling to be just as fast as I wanted it to be. Next to the Time Band is an accelerator bar, and pointing farther from the middle of the bar makes the list scroll faster, so no matter how far back in history (or forward), I could quickly get there by a combination of clicking on the date in the time band and then scrolling through the notes to the area I wanted to see.
