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Category Archives: Evernote

Notebook Software: Evernote, Part 2 of ?, Notebooks and organizing notebooks.

(This post is a continuation of a previous post http://www.techgeekandmore.com/2011/07/15/notebook-software-evernote-part-1-of/)

The reason to store something is that you might have a use for it later, and the reason to organize anything is so that we can use it later. Storage and organization are the two important features notebook software should focus on. To put it another way; What information am I looking to store and use later on? And, how can I best structure that information for quick and effective retrieval?

And while I don’t think you can think about one without the other I want to focus on the tools Evernote (Evernote.com (http://www NULL.evernote NULL.com)) gives you to organizing your information.

Evernote employs two methods of organization, the first being Notebooks. Notebooks are where your going to be storing your notes. I like to create my Notebooks around subject matter. This may mean different things to different people, and no two people are going to organize their notes in the same manner. For an example, a sales person might create a notebook for each of their clients, or they might organize by document type, or by project. A student my choose to organize his/her notes by subject, or by day entered in.

You might want to organize each of those Notebooks with a sub-Notebook, or a notebook within a notebook. In that case you can create what is called a Stacked Notebook. For an example: The student that has a notebook for each subject, might open up a Notebook in side their Science notebook for an upcoming project. Or for the sales person while each of their clients might get a different notebook, he might have a products stacked notebook with an individual notebook for all the products that he sells.

The choice is yours. Once the Notebook is created you can then add and create your notes to the appropriate notebook.

I use a few different notebook programs (OneNote, NoteCase, and Evernote), and to be honest I think that Evernote falls short on the stacked notebook feature. For one reason you can’t turn an existing notebook into a stacked notebook, you have to create a stacked notebook and add your existing notebooks to it. Second you aren’t allowed to create stacked notebook inside a stacked notebook. OneNote and NoteCase do a much better job with this feature, but that is for another post.

The second is with Tags and that is for next week.

Notebook Software: Evernote, Part 1 of ?

Sometimes I want to scream “Hey Microsoft, I don’t always have access to my PC.” Also I want to scream “Hey Google, I don’t always have access to the Internet.” I did this once in an old folks home and was asked to leave. This always seems to be my problem, (the PC and internet thing, not screaming in old folks homes) there are times where I don’t have access to my laptop, or it’s too much hassle to get it out, and for whatever reason I don’t always have access to the Internet. Mind you it is rarely at the same time.  I’ll usually have one or the other.

That is why I really like applications such as Evernote (evernote.com) (I’m using it to write this article now). It’s a solid Notebook software (just like Microsoft OneNote) that keeps a copy of your notes on your PC and a copy in the cloud that can be accessed via a web app. Along with that I have several PCs, each can access the same web account, and synchronize the notes with each other. You can also access your notes on your Smart-phone, however I’m not as thrilled with using my Smart-phone (I use a Blackberry) with Evernote. I have to access the notes on the web, there is not local storage of files. This is a good feature to have in a pinch, but be warned the bigger the notebook the more bandwidth you’ll spend getting your notes.

Feature wise it’s pretty comparable with Microsoft OneNote and to Evernote’s credit they are continuously adding features to it. If you aren’t familiar with notebook software, the quick answer to “What is Notebook software?” is “Word processing software on Steroids”. All of the ones I’ve used all have basic Word processing capabilities, like formatting, plus some extras. For example creating Tables, and numbered and bulleted lists. Then you can use the Clip features, to capture Web pages, screen shots, and e-mails. In addition you can upload PDF files into Evernote. The captured items are then easily organized with in the software in different Notebooks that you create.

Oh yeah did I mention it’s free. You are limited to 60MB of data. If you need more and can afford $5 a month (or save $15 and pay $45 for the year) you can store up to Upload 1GB a month in notes. I found that the first month was the closest I came to reaching the 60MB of data, but I was uploading several PDF files at the time which took up a lot of Bandwidth.

Part 2 (LINK) 

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