ASSETT

Back in June, I covered an online tool called Remember the Milk. A simple and no-fuss option, this online service offered you the ability to create to-do lists, send yourself reminders, and check off tasks as they were completed.

This article covers another web-based and downloadable tool, called Evernote, that can help keep your life flowing smoothly. Evernote is set up so you can save reminders, images and photos to help keep your life in order, or to fuel your creativity. With Evernote, you can:

• Organize your thoughts and ideas into separate ‘notebooks’: Each new account comes with 1, but you can create as many as you want.

• Write notes about things you want to remember: Notes can be saved to notebooks, and can be emailed to you and anyone else.

• Import and clip images: If you don’t want to forget a certain photo or information from a webpage, take a crop-able screenshot that will  be saved in your Evernote account for later use. (This functionality works differently in the web client versus the desktop version, but both provide the same general tool.)

• Email yourself and others everything: If you want to show your entire group, or class, a copy of any of your notes, it’s a click away.

Evernote offers two services: one is free, and anyone can use it. The other is the pro option, which costs $5/month (or $45/year). This article is about the free version.

To use Evernote, you can create a free account on their website. Then, you can download the program to your desktop.  Once the program is downloaded to your desktop, you can use the clipping feature to take information from websites and put it into note form.

Some ways you can use Evernote are below.

Students:

• You can use Evernote to share ideas with partners on a project by sending them an email of your note.

• If you’re writing a paper, it can be a good way to keep track of what websites and information you are planning to use as sources.

• You can use your smart phone to take pictures of the blackboard after class; you can save this image to a notebook, and refer back to it when you’re studying for a test.

Teachers:

• Evernote can be used to send out homework reminders and links to news stories to your students, or peers.

• It can also be a place to store interesting information you’re thinking of including in lecture.

• You can create to-do lists on Evernote in order to keep track of your busy schedule.

There are two features that you are limited with if you register as a free user. The first is that you can only view documents you upload to Evernote, but you cannot edit or download them again later. If you update to a premium account, you can attach any file types, including video, to your notes and access them from any device (computer, phone, desktop application) that you use.

The second is there is only a limited amount of space you can use each month. As a free user, you have 40 MB per month to store notes, images and more. (This amounts to about 22,000 text-only notes, but is also equivalent to 11 high-resolution images.) If you choose to pay for a premium account, you get upgraded to 500 MB per month.

Evernote is a helpful tool, but it does have its drawbacks. Documents that are copied and pasted into notes may not retain their formatting. And even though the desktop application and web-version sync all your notebooks so you can access them in both locations, the web-based version is where you have to upload files.

Despite these downsides, Evernote has good functionality for most of the tools it offers, and can be a great help in organizing thoughts and getting information to others.

–Written by Kate Vander Wiede, CU ‘09, ASSETT staff

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