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In the last 5 years I've accumulated some 8 000 notes in Evernote, which I would love to move to a safer platform/format in light of recent evidence of data los
by djhn 11y ago
In the last 5 years I've accumulated some 8 000 notes in Evernote, which I would love to move to a safer platform/format in light of recent evidence of data loss and speculation concerning Evernote's longevity. What are the alternatives to organizing this second brain/memory?
50% are < 1000 words long texts written by me, transcribed from an audio/video/paper source or saved/clipped/copypasted from elsewhere
20% complete webpages or complete articles deemed important enough to save a copy for later
10% graphics, annotated images and PDFs
10% oneliners and quotes
10% todo-lists, task lists, shopping lists, etc.
Every new piece of information I have been exposed to and deemed important enough to return to later has gone into my Evernote inbox, from where it would be weekly sorted into an appropriate notebook by subject, life area, etc. Most important ones are tagged for regular review. Everything else gets some regular dedicated random browsing time, and is often discovered in research when preparing presentations, writing or thinking about any particular topic. There are 80+ notebooks in 10 sections.
Organizing this corpus efficiently and engaging with it with an appropriate interface would effectively be a multiplier for the ability to utilize knowledge and experience. Interacting with such data accumulated over decades through a combined voice assistant / mind map / dashboard / big screen (Microsoft Surface style) is a futuristic idea of knowledge work - the only question is whether there is a large enough consumer user base for such an infovore/generalist/researcher approach to information.
- vskarine 11y agoIn my opinion OneNote is by far better than anything else out there.
- dctoedt 11y agoSee the "OneNote Bulk" Evernote-to-OneNote migration utility mentioned at http://www.thetechchat.com/2014/09/05/how-to-convert-notes-from-evernote-to-onenote/ http://www.thetechchat.com/2014/09/05/how-to-convert-notes-f... EDIT 1: PayPal and LinkedIn indicate that the migration app's developer is in China. [1] That initially gave me pause about using the app --- who knows where my information might end up? --- but then I'm guessing that Chinese hackers seeking to steal confidential information aren't likely to be so open about being in China, nor to charge $30 for the app. (Of course, that too could all be part of the evil hackers' cover story, right?) EDIT 2: I just used the app to migrate 6,500-plus notes from Evernote to OneNote as a test. It seemed to work flawlessly. (My suggestion is to use Evernote's export facility on each EN notebook in turn to create a separate export file; then set up OneNote sections corresponding to each EN Notebook; then use the OneNote Bulk app to import each EN notebook's export file into the corresponding ON section.) I'm still pondering whether to make a permanent switch. [1] https://cn.linkedin.com/pub/james-linton/50/82/9a https://cn.linkedin.com/pub/james-linton/50/82/9a
- dctoedt 11y agoCorrection: It's "OneNote Batch" not Bulk.
- markive 11y agoFirstly, make sure you regularly Export from your Evernote all Notes and back that up to somewhere cheap like Amazon S3 / Glacier
- victorhooi 11y agoHmm, I wonder if something based around Github's Gist service would be nice...
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoWhile I think OneNote is a superior product to Evernote, its organization abilities leaves much to be desired. For instance once you get more than like 10-15 (depending on resolution) pages within a second you now have to scroll and its a tiny list. More than, say, 2 sections on mobile means horizontal scrolling. It's all awkward and cumbersome. But I have yet to find another product that is better than Evernote and OneNote or even just a single, other product better than Evernote. if you find one let me know. I love my OneNote but the organization drives me nuts (I love the tagging abilities in Evernote).
- porker 11y agoAh whereas I find organisation in Evernote not to work. The tagging feature (on Windows at least) is buggy, and I often end up with half-word tags; they can also be 'lost' before the note syncs. I have notebooks full of disorganised information which I can't find -- this is what I view as Evernote's biggest weakness.
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoFair enough; when I used Evernote I subscribed to the "tag everything" way of organizing stuff which worked fairly okay but yeah the interface even on Mac OS X is very buggy. I couldn't consistently create nested tags and tag nesting is a UI only feature; there is no actual hierarchy that can be searched for which is immensely disappointing.
- chipx86 11y agoSo this is not at all the cheapest option, but if you have a Synology NAS (which are just absolutely fantastic, imho), you can use Note Station. It's very much like Evernote in terms of design and capabilities (though still young), and it has a very straight-forward importer for Evernote notes. I use it as a backup for Evernote. Note Station has mobile apps and web clipper extensions for the browser as well. Since this resides on your Synology, it's not stored in a cloud service. Depending on your viewpoint, this can be a pro or a con. It also doesn't have a native app, and I have no idea how it does with 8,000 notes. I do know they're continuing to update it, and I truly hope they add features like Markdown support. I personally use Evernote still (and using Alternote for the actual note taking part), but could see myself switching if Evernote ends up losing my notes or something.
- apostrophedave 11y agoNote Station isnt half bad at all, and has a very similar layout (almost exactly like evernote!) so its easily to pick up. has a web clipper. its a bit slow at times though but so is the web version of evernote as well. not that they ever will, but if synology ever made a desktop note station app id be sold.