I recently downloaded the Evernote application as mentioned in a recent post. When first reading about Evernote I was extremely excited to test it out to provide my full review in hopes of it resolving some simple work flow issues I had yet been able to solve, such as using sticky notes for reminders or taking screenshots and storing them in a folder. Well, after using this application for a couple weeks here is my review.

Let me first start mentioning that Evernote is in Beta and is constantly being updated to fix bugs submitted by users. Alright, moving on! I was aiming to use Evernote for two main reasons:

1. Grab some selected text and easily archive it to one location for later reference.

2. Store selected screenshots within one location for later reference.

Both of these reasons I believe to be helpful when wondering around the web and an idea catches my eye for a potential blog post or just something I would like to simply share with others. With that said, I’m going to focus on these two features and my experiences.

Paste To Evernote:

The process to paste to Evernote is fairly simple. For example, say you’re reading a post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog and it peaks your interest and you would like to write about it on your personal blog. Specifically one paragraph caught your eye. First highlight that text as demonstrated in the picture below. Then Copy it by hitting “Command and C”.

At this point you can use the icon in your menu bar as seen below and select “Paste to Evernote”.

You’ll notice the title of the article is listed in my “notebook” with the date created. The preview pane below will display the text you highlighted and it also includes the full source URL so that you can go back and refer to the entire article if needed.

This can be extremely helpful for bloggers when digging for content. Quickly paste quotes and articles to Evernote to refer to later when blogging.

Clip Screenshot into Evernote:

Say you’re reading the same article and instead of a piece of text you want to save a picture. Maybe you’re redesigning your blog and like the layout of tuaw.com and want to refer to it for inspiration. Rather than using the normal apple key commands to create a screenshot saved to your desktop, just click your Evernote icon in your menu bar and select “Clip screenshot into Evernote like I did below.

A window will appear with a few options. You can choose to capture the whole screen or just a portion of it. Lets capture a portion for the sake of the demo. You’ll see a selection box that you must use to select the portion of your screen that you wish to capture. Once completed hit OK.

Now when you go back to your Evernote application you’ll see a new note has been created. Now in the preview pane you’ll see the image of your selection. Come back a day or two later and check out the image through your Evernote notebook.

I’ve been using this a lot for saving blog post ideas and quickly taking screengrabs that I may find useful later. There are more ways in which you can use Evernote and its search functionality for finding items is extremely powerful. As you build your notebook you may want to refer to an older note. Using the search bar in the top of the application is extremely effective sorting through your text and visual notes.

How are you currently taking notes and saving them? Have you used Evernote? If so, how do you like it? If not, do you think you’ll give it a try?

If you're new here at toonice4TV, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for tuning in!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Apple, How-To, Technology, Workflow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.