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I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing
- WA 13y agoA bit OT, but the article talks about organizing your bookmarks as Webclips, so I thought I'll ask the HN crowd: I have close to 1,000 bookmarks and I'm really too lazy to sort them, but there might be some useful stuff in it. Thing is, I don't know without clicking on them. Does anyone know of a program that crawls all the bookmarks and tries to automatically tag them? I could simply wget everything, but I'm more interested in some sort of tagging, classifying, indexing based on the headline and keywords, although not all bookmarks are articles.
- pramodliv1 13y agoYou can feed the wget output to https://previous.delicious.com/url/ https://previous.delicious.com/url/ which returns details about users bookmarking their url including tags. You'll have to scrape the details though. Their public API https://github.com/avos/delicious-api https://github.com/avos/delicious-api doesn't include this feature.
- tekalon 13y agoI have Evernote set up enough so when I bookmark/webclip a site, it is usually good at moving the site to the right notebook/tag.
- lucaspiller 13y agoAre there any good self hosted alternatives?
- pestaa 13y agoI use Dokuwiki, but any wiki would do. I love the fact it keeps static files on the server's drive which unison syncs both way to my hard drive -- I can edit on the web and see the changes in my vim, or edit in vim and see the formatted result on the web.
- troymc 13y agoSome alternatives, self-hosted and otherwise, are listed at http://alternativeto.net/software/evernote/ http://alternativeto.net/software/evernote/
- pigeons 13y agoProbably more important an issue than the resource hogginess and slowness of evernote, which has already been mentioned here, it seems self-hosted alternatives (I see someone mentioned WebDav) are very important. We used to have the luxury to think any notes we took were not interesting to third parties and couldn't be used against us or our contacts and our service providers might not be backdoor-ed. But we can't deny the facts any more. I suppose maybe the reason there isn't already a popular open source, maybe AGPL project for an evernote-like system (yes I know there is a OSS jambi/java client to use with evernotes proprietary servers) is because the tools already exist and the glue tying them all together with a friendly UI isn't as fun a challenge?
- girvo 13y agoOwnCloud had (don't know f they work with 5 yet) extensions that builds off DAV and let's you host your own stuff, as well as expose APIs for client apps. I'm hoping it takes off a bit more for that reason!
- MrZongle2 13y agoWhen I worked exclusively on Windows, ConnectedText (http://www.connectedtext.com http://www.connectedtext.com) was my favorite personal wiki app; it supports Python scripting, LaTeX, code highlighting, and inter-page linking. Unfortunately, I don't do a lot of Windows development anymore and wish I could find a decent cross-platform alternative. RedNotebook (http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/ http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/) is similar, but not as powerful as ConnectedText. For what it's worth, I also am a paying Evernote user. Love it, though I only use the web interface.
- flarg 13y agoI'm happy with ZIM Desktop Wiki (http://zim-wiki.org/ http://zim-wiki.org/) and you can sync it's text files via Dropbox - bit of a raw solution I guess because there's no Android client - but text files are easy to parse in lots of interesting ways (e.g. I grep tasks marked as @phone and Dropbox them to my cellphone)
- adamnemecek 13y agoEvernote would be maybe 500% more useful for me if it had code highlighting and markdown support.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y agoAlthough I'm not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, org-mode for Emacs is pretty awesome. http://orgmode.org/ http://orgmode.org/
- migrantgeek 13y agoDash may be a better fit for this type of work. http://kapeli.com/dash http://kapeli.com/dash
- Pxtl 13y agoActually, all that stuff is why I don't like Evernote. It's so featureful, it means that its mobile clients are quite heavyweight and thus quite slow to boot. When I open my notes, I want them 5 seconds ago, looking right at the last notes I entered anywhere. I can wait for games and Netflix and whatnot to boot, but Notes need to be the snappiest freaking things on Earth. Evernote is not. I have to wait for it to open and then go find my notes. I probably should be using a different notes system. I use Evernote as a replacement for paper sticky-notes, whereas Evernote seems to be a replacement for a locker full of course notebooks.
- drhayes9 13y agoThose are exactly my complaints about Evernote. I'm on OSX most of the time, and I use nvAlt: http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ It's blazing fast, moving at the speed of thought. You can also set it up to sync notes as plain text on to Dropbox. I still use Evernote for its great web clipper and for saving PDFs (though I suppose I could save them in Dropbox instead and search them using Spotlight).
- cpeterso 13y agoWARNING! You should not store your nvAlt notes on Dropbox if you plan to access them from multiple computers. Dropbox's file versioning can confuse nvAlt, causing data loss. If you want to use nvAlt from multiple computers, I recommend nvAlt's SimpleNote sync. Issue #129: Notes being deleted from Dropbox while using NVAlt: https://github.com/ttscoff/nv/issues/129 https://github.com/ttscoff/nv/issues/129
- mortov 13y agoAm I the only one that read the article article as having a distinct Astroturfing feel about it ?
- nakedrobot2 13y agoEvernote is one of those products that has rabid, fierce, loyal fans. It is one of those things. Also, Evernote is definitely not the kind of company that really needs astroturfers. I think this is just an enthusiastic article.
- alanhenry 13y agoThis. Knowing the person who wrote it, he was just surprised when he started shifting his use of the tool and wanted to share his experiences. Many of our readers love Evernote. At the same time, others avoid it for precisely the reasons he laid out at the beginning of the piece. He wanted to highlight features that may make them reconsider if they've thought about it but dismissed it.
- Patient0 13y agoThat was my thinking too. Who sits down and writes a lengthy blog post about a piece of software that they like to use? How boring! It's like someone sitting down to write a blog post about why they like Pepsi instead of Coke.
- girvo 13y agoWelcome to lifehacker.com
- onedev 13y agosudo vim /etc/hosts Enter the following: lifehacker.com 127.0.0.1 www.lifehacker.com 127.0.0.1 save and quit
- taopao 13y agoIt's Gawker's eHow, basically. http://lifehacker.com/wear-your-bathrobe-all-morning-long-to-avoid-spills-and-1461020293 http://lifehacker.com/wear-your-bathrobe-all-morning-long-to...
- kuldar 13y agoI love the idea of Evernote but their implementation is absolutely horrible. The slow and cluttered UI has frustrated me to no end. Please, someone, make a good alternative for Evernote.
- aquark 13y agoI agree ... I've used Evernote on and off for years for occasional notes. And I still have to hunt for the 'new note' button everytime I want to click it.
- cylinder 13y agoI agree, I don't even load the app on my Macbook. Spotlight will automatically and instantly search Evernote, so that's my interface (Cmd+Space).
- shavenwarthog2 13y agoI agree, for some reason Evernote always rubbed me the wrong way. An alternative I really like is Springpad. You can write notes or Todos, put in notebooks with tags, or take a picture. It recognizes what a "movie" is and gives you extra information. Multiple people can collaborate on a notebook. Plugins are for Firefox and Chrome; I mostly use the Android client. I found it easy and fun to worth with! https://springpad.com/blog/ https://springpad.com/blog/
- girvo 13y agoGood to see Evernote has caught up to the single application made by Microsoft that I completely adore: OneNote. It's in a similar boat: if you take advantage of all its features, you can basically live inside the application. This was a few years ago now, and I've moved to Mac, Linux and iOS, so alas, I use iClouds Reminders and Notes app for everything now.
- vidyesh 13y agoIsn't the web interface any good? I use OneNote desktop ( not metro App ) and not sure why I should switch to Evernote ( everybody recommends ).
- the_watcher 13y agoOneNote was my savior during my year of law school. I'm painfully disorganized while taking notes, OneNote saved me huge amounts of time by keeping everything all together. It basically won't let you be too disorganized without actively trying.
- vidyesh 13y agoIt basically won't let you be too disorganized without actively trying. Hahaha. True. It has (almost) replaced all the random .txt all over my drive.
- pistle 13y agoTried out the OCR yet?
- owenversteeg 13y agoI can't vouch for previous versions, but OneNote 2013's OCR is absolutely fantastic. It blows anything else I've tried out of the water.
- girvo 13y agoEven the previous versions were fantastic, glad to haer its even better with the new version!
- hengheng 13y agoI think Evernote is most important as a showcase of how much we have transcended file systems. Mobile devices have abandoned them, and through cross-platform apps like Evernote, this notion finds its way back to the desktop. Back in the day, we'd just make folders on hard disk for "thought projects", adding text files, bookmark files (!), photos, possibly word documents. For ordering, there are file name conventions, and the Mac OS finder still supports colored files. I think Evernote shows what any modern File Manager should do for it to be useful. Instead they are being stripped down until everybody thinks they are useless. Their benefit is easily overlooked -- files are yours, easy to sync, easy to back up, restore, pass on and copy, with no walled garden anywhere. There are so many different use cases for file managers, yet most modern ones don't go beyond basic folder maintenance and retreiving downloaded files from an unmaintained folder.
- girvo 13y agoHey, I've been trying to think about this problem myself. If you've got some thoughts about this id love to hear them, so I can possibly look at integrating them into elementary OS, perhaps? My email is in my profile if you've got time at all :)
- alexholehouse 13y agoEvernote + Dropbox means that I am basically device/OS/location agnostic for all my information needs, which given that I switch between 3-4 machines (all with different OSs) regularly is absolutely crucial. That said, some PAINFULLY obvious things which would be hugely benficial for adoption; - LaTex support built in - Markdown (either in every note, or allowing you to add 'markdown' boxes, if just for writing code) And a stretch goal; - Better PDF/attachment integration. In a perfect world there would be a Dropbox extension which creates an "Evernote" folder in your Dropbox and any attachments are automatically stored in a notebook-hierarchy file-system within that folder. This would autoupdate to reflect what's going on in Evernote.
- the_watcher 13y agoI'm working on integrating Evernote into my everyday life, and finally just purchased the level of Dropbox I need for backup. I have 5 devices that I use semi-regularly to all the time and it is fantastic to be able to shift between all 5 devices seamlessly.
- MatthewPhillips 13y agoYou could just use regular WebDAV[1] (boring I know) and not have to worry about syncing gigabytes of redundant data onto every device you own.
- coldtea 13y agoYes -- he would only have to worry about setting up and maintaining a WebDAV server. Plus, he would have to do without integration with tons of his favorites apps in desktop and mobile (like Dropbox has).
- MatthewPhillips 13y agoYou can save to your WebDAV using the standard file picker. Surely an app that exports to Dropbox also gives you a "Save As" dialog.
- cylinder 13y agoSo how much did Evernote pay for this ad? Can HN auto-filter links with "Here's Why" and "21 reasons why..." headlines?
- streptomycin 13y agoYou could write a short Greasemonkey script to ensure that you never have to see them.
- jseliger 13y agoThis article is actually quite similar to Steven Berlin Johnson's 2005 piece on how to get the most out of Devonthink Pro (DTP): http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002... . DTP is OS X (and iOS, I think, though I don't use that) only, however. Nonetheless, I've been using DTP the way Johnson describes for years and have found it very useful. DTP appears a little more "research-y" than Evernote. I suspect one challenge with any of these mind-mapping programs is that by the time you develop enough expertise and experience with one, you become reluctant to go through the same process with another, given the long time investment.
- kvee 13y agoYesterday Evernote deleted a note I'd made. Just totally gone, randomly. Eventually found it with Macroplant iExplorer. Anyone else been having problems like this? Or know why it happens?
- farginay 13y agoI'd like to like Evernote but the latency when you actually want to start typing text in it on the iPhone is ridiculous compared to just a simple note tool.
- isomorphic 13y agoI'm one of the people this article is targeting: I received a free year of Evernote through a software bundle purchase. From time to time I go in to Evernote, fiddle with it, then leave. I can't see what the fuss is about. I feel vaguely disappointed that I'm burning through my "free" year with zero utility. On the other hand, I use the heck out of Apple's Notes.app with iCloud syncing. However, I'd never pay (directly) for that.
- lazerwalker 13y agoI used to use Evernote obsessively. In college, all of my hand-written notes would get scanned in right after class using a document-feeder scanner. It's hard to put into words how mind-blowingly cool it was to scan a piece of handwritten paper and be able to pull it up by searching for its OCR'd text contents a minute later from my iPad. Over time, I got frustrated with how slow, bloated, and un-native-feeling their client apps were on every single platform I used. I switched to storing everything as Markdown documents in Dropbox (with a few other web services for some of the more niche uses I had for Evernote), and I've been much much happier ever since.
- taude 13y agoFormer Evernote user here, too. I now use alt Notational Velocity, and markdown (sometimes) with Drop box. It has the advantage of my content isn't locked in to a proprietary system (last time I worked with it, I could only export HTML versions of my notes from Evernote). Also, I can use my OS to index and provide search capabilities into my files, if I need. It's also led to a system where I take better notes on the things that I need to remember.
- capedape 13y agoUsing multiple devices like a computer, tablet, phone in Evernote and getting duplicate "conflicting change" notes is maddening. You then have to search out within the note that you appended to what you added then delete the duplicate note. This is a real pain when your note is longer than a screen and you have to search out exactly what information was changed. In a perfect world you should remember what was changed, but isn't offloading information from your brain what Evernote is for? They need to sort syncing out or at least give the option to show only what information was changed. I'm about to go back to Simplenote's seamless syncing and save the money I'm giving Evernote for something that's becoming increasingly kludgy. Accessing a note in IOS is also super slow then trying to append to a note can turn into a moment of wanting to chuck the phone out the window.
- abraininavat 13y agoThe problem with putting everything in Evernote is that it becomes stale. I think that's what has prevented me from getting into it. Some examples of items I would not put in Evernote, from the article: - Some sections of my server's log, containing all the information I need to troubleshoot my most recent problem You copied some sections of your server's log and put them in Evernote, so that you can troubleshoot a problem? How is this useful? Why not troubleshoot it by looking at the logs directly? Why do you want to store stale logs? Or, are you saying your server automatically refreshes the Evernote note? That would be more interesting and worthy of an article. - A web clipping from an article on the best VPN providers, since I'm installing a VPN on my home server Aren't you interested in whether the list of best VPN providers changed since the last time you searched? And why store something that's a google search away? How often will you need to review this stale list of VPN providers? - A web clipping on how to install OpenVPN on my home server, since I don't remember how to do it by heart Same thing. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+install+openvpn https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+install+openvpn How often do you install OpenVPN? - A web clipping on setting file permissions, since I need to give my girlfriend access to my server's files What about just learning how to set file permissions, if it's something you do very often? Or, "man chmod". No offense intended, I know people think and work differently. I just still don't get it.
- ScottWhigham 13y ago+1 here. We use Evernote for documentation but we also spend hours and hours each month maintaining it. That said, "How to install XYZ?" is valid documentation - it might be that a specific way works on your setup and that it took 25 articles/posts and three days to figure that out. The key thing is to maintain the documentation - cull the old, update what you keep.
- runjake 13y agoIt kind of looks like Lifehacker read "Learning to Love Evernote" by Bradley Chambers [1] and decided to write an article off of it without crediting it. Or maybe Lifehacker developed the same uses and techniques independently. Anyway, the Chambers ebook is great. 1. http://chambersdaily.com/learning-to-love-evernote/ http://chambersdaily.com/learning-to-love-evernote/
- ChuckMcM 13y agoWherein our author discovers that information has a 'network effect' as well. It is important to note that the 'mosaic effect' which is new learning from many bits of seemingly unrelated pieces of information is very real. And it also provides perspective. When my wife and I were trying to move past being 'so so' skiers (the kind that 'warm up' on the easy runs and then ski the 'green' runs during the day) to more advanced, we were advised that we needed to spend a week somewhere skiing. The point was that over the course of a week you can not only learn techniques but apply them, refine them, and capture that knowledge. More days of skiing all together in one event were more power than the same number of days done on individual weekends. When I started keeping a notebook about my robotics efforts, the same thing. One or two notes were pretty useless but when you start being able to refer back to the motor you tested 3 months ago and it had a similar issue as the current motor, etc you made more progress. Lots of information over time is much more valuable than just any single piece of information.
- CoffeeDregs 13y agoI really tried to adopt Evernote (again) a few months ago, but I couldn't get past the horrible HTML editor. I run Linux and the lack of a native client meant I had to use the web client. After spending 5 minutes trying to unhork a bullet list (including using WebKit Inspector), I gave up. Looks as though there are some 3rd party Linux clients now. Anyone have experience using them?
- lucianp 13y agoToo bad that there is still no client for Linux. Last time I checked, the alternatives (Everpad, NixNote, or running under Wine) were nowhere close to the Windows client. Does anybody know if they plan to release a version for Linux?