Out of Office Series: Note App: Evernote
So to continue along with my out of office series, I am reviewing Evernote. I downloaded this app to my phone and tablet, than downloaded it to my computer as a Chrome extension. Gave this a real try out.
Needs/Expectations:
Phone and tablet sync: This app quickly syncs across all platforms. The notes update as soon as you save. It clips websites easily on my computer and then easily display on my phone and tablet.
Homepage widget: The homepage widget for the phone and tablet are highly customizable, from size to options available. You can have the homepage widget display just a single action to the extensive taskbar (which you can then change the actions), to display notebooks (from specific notebooks to all).
Ability to make notes, take pictures and record audio: This app records audio, easily makes photo notes, and makes quick notes. The audio note feature can be quick launched from the home widget, and can be easily used to record meetings. The photo note feature is quickly launched from the home widget, and is enhanced if you include Skitch. Which allows you to make notes on the pictures, draw on them, add arrows, highlight, and type. This truly makes the photo note powerful. The quick note feature is great, it can be moved to any of your notebooks.
Speech to text: The text to speech option for this app, leaves a little to be desired, from my tests you have to speak slowly, or else it won’t keep up. I also tried to use this while I was congested, and it couldn’t recognize my words.
Ability to organize notes: You can’t change the color of the notebooks, but you can place notes under specific notebooks. You can tag notebooks and notes with tag words, which makes them searchable. This makes the notes organized well organized, but at the same time highly searchable.
Other features I would like:
Video notes: You can not make a true video note, but you can add a video to a note, and then do a handwriting note or type out additional notes.
Ability to set note color: not a feature with this program, but with the keywords function, it is easily searchable.
Sync calendar with notes: This is an easy feature to use, you can set a note for a future meeting or a presentation. It will sync to your calendar and add it. If you do not put in a title, it automatically pulls your last calendar task as the title.
Location marking ability: it is easy to tag a note to a location. Which is nice if you are writing a note on where you are, or are location mapping with pictures.
Handwriting notes: This app has a great handwriting function. You can add sketches to notes and have notes typed in as well.
Along with the above features that I needed and those I wanted, Evernote has some other features worth noting.
Highlighter: this seems so basic, but is overlooked on some apps. You can highlight words or entire sections or notes. You can not highlight text from clipped websites.
Share: This feature allows you to easily share your notebooks, which is powerful for group projects. Each party can edit the project, and it updates for all to see.
Chat: this is a part of the share feature, but I felt it deserved it’s own section. This feature allows you to chat among all who are sharing a notebook. That is very powerful, so you can discuss updates, discuss changes, and share input.
Document camera: This is great, it essentially is a handheld scanner for documents. It makes the document searchable, along with being able to be kicked over to skitch, so you can highlight, add arrows, or draw notations.
Evernote is a powerhouse note taking app, with the notebook feature and the ability to tab notes and notebooks, this leaves your notes easily organized. I love all the different features, it let’s me make notes of whatever strikes me. The Chrome extension really adds another dimension, with quick website clips. It is also useful to review your notes from a computer.
I do love this app, it meets my needs, but I find myself just wanting a bit more sometimes.
I will be comparing this app against Google Keep soon, let’s see how they stack up.
Download Evernote: Google Play
Download Evernote: iTunes store
