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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 20, 2006, 06:55 PM »

that article you posted last week has really got me thinking about what the solution to organizing notes really is.  I thought tags and categories were the solution, but now I see that they each have distinct advantages and disadvantages.  There must be a way that is the BEST solution, but what is it?  And I think that the solution has to be more than just simply offering both options, that is, both tree heirarchies and tags.  I'm thinking that there's some way to come up with a new system that is better than both of them.  But I can't say what that is at this point.

Superboyac,

You already know this of course, but for the others who haven't looked at EverNote yet, I thought I should point out that EverNote combines tags and tree heirarchies in one panel for the best of both. Also, its SmartSearch feature finds notes by keyword literally as fast as you can type.

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 14, 2006, 01:03 PM »

OK, thanks; I think I see and that could be quite useful.  But, do you have to know in advance what your keywords are going to be?  Or can you decide at some later date that you need new/different ones and have EverNote build new categories?

No, you don't have to know in advance.  You can do it whenever.  Once the category is created, all the notes will be automatically placed there.  I think that is the benefit of fully indexed searching (I may not know what I'm talking about here!).

One more thing: once the new keyword category is created, EverNote not only tags all past notes you ever created with that keyword; it also tags any future notes with that keyword you might create.

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 13, 2006, 11:06 AM »

Well said!

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 12, 2006, 05:51 PM »

--In the tree on the left where the categories are, I'd like to be able to show some kind of title text for each note so I can see which notes are included in that category.  Right now, notes have no titles, it's just the content of the note.  Sometimes, when there are a lot of notes in the category, you're not sure where exactly that note is, or even if it's in that category, and if the notes themselves are large notes, you have to scroll around forever to find it.  (I know the search can quickly filter the notes down, but sometimes you're not even sure what to search for!)

Superboyac,

Thanks for this feedback. I hope you'll be glad to hear that we have "title view of notes" very high on our list of features that we plan to add in the coming months. In the meantime, I should also mention that there's a Shorten Notes toggle button at the top of EverNote that shortens all the notes displayed on your tape to just a few lines, which makes scrolling much faster.

--There's something weird about attaching pictures to the notes and trying to resize them.  Usually they are too big, and resizing them was really difficult.  It should be a matter os simply grabbing a corner of the picture and dragging.  Now, you have to go into fullscreen mode, and do some fairly non-intuitive dragging around the border or something.

Yes, our approach is unconventional, and we are planning to get this changed. Currently, as you've mentioned, you go to Full Screen mode for a given note (it's just one mouse click), and then drag the top border of the image you want to resize.

As others explore EverNote, I'll be happy to respond to any concerns, questions, or suggestions for improvements.

Thanks!

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 11, 2006, 05:17 PM »

Hey guys,

I work at EverNote Corp, and have been fascinated by all the great comments on this thread. It's wonderful to be able to read about the things that serious users like and dislike about note-taking programs, including specifics about individual programs that you've looked at personally.

That said, I was a little disappointed to see that EverNote didn't get more coverage and enthusiasm. I'm guessing it's because EverNote was described as having "a unique, quirky navigation style" and -- more to the point -- it only allows you to see your notes in chronological order.

While it's true (today, at least) that notes are ordered chronologically, I thought I should point out the main strengths of EverNote with the invitation that you might want to give it another look.

CAPTURE: EverNote makes it really easy to capture content from anywhere. In the top Tool Bar of web browsers like IE and Firefox, you get a Web Clipper button that with one click sends the current webpage or selected content to a new EverNote note behind the scenes. (In just a few weeks we are adding a Clipper button for Outlook as well.) What's more, you can turn on options to call up EverNote from anywhere with Ctrl+Alt+N, or to send the currently pasted content in the Clipboard to EverNote from anywhere with Ctrl+Alt+V. You can also easily drag-n-drop content or file names directly from the File Explorer to EverNote.

ORGANIZE: In addition to organizing your notes chronologically in one long scrollable tape (so you don't have to open notes one-at-a-time to see what you want), EverNote offers Auto Categories that can automatically categorize notes for you in various ways: by Date (created before or after a specified date), by Content Type (Web clip, Outlook clip, Word clip, etc.), by Content Format (plain text, HTML text, template, digital ink, rich text), by Included Elements (graphic images, photos, encryption, file links, voice notes, video, To Do state, previous versions), by Category State (uncategorized, deleted, history notes, To Do Open, To Do Closed), or -- most importantly -- by whether or not a note contains specific keywords.

Of course, you can also create as many Manual Categories as you like, and assign as many of them (like tags) to a single note as you like, just by dragging the category name(s) to the note. Furthermore, Categories act as both tags and tree structure, since you can have as many levels of subcategories as you like. You can also have duplicate category names in several locations as well as shortcut categories that contain the same notes as the original, and intersection of categories to find all notes that have been assigned one category AND another.

FIND: EverNote makes it really easy to find your notes later, in any combination of the 5 following ways:

* By Auto Category
* By Manual Category
* By Look (scrolling the tape with our special Accelerator Scrollbar)
* By Date (a single click anywhere in the Time Band)
* ...and most importantly, by Keyword SmartSearch, which filters your tape to display found notes literally as fast as you can type.

In other words, EverNote is really a quite simple but powerful program that – once you appreciate the basic idea behind it – is really an easier and more efficient product for keeping your notes.

I know this probably sounds like marketing-speak, but it's really not my intention. I just hope that you'll give EverNote another (or first!) look and post to the forum what you think. Also, you might want to see what Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal says about EverNote at http://ptech.wsj.com.../ptech-20050811.html.