I started using Evernote in 2010, so I may have been a little late to the party. Evernote was released as a beta in 2008, and by July 2011 it reached 11 million users. They have since successfully raised boatloads of funding, and now Evernote is better than ever and includes two paid versions as well as the free version, which is pretty awesome.
What is Evernote?
Evernote is a cross platform app that allows individuals to save information in notes, add tags, and archive things for later use. Not only is it equipped to allow all the organization one could hope for, but it is user-friendly in the sense that it accommodates a variety of organizational styles.
Not into tagging? No problem. You can always search by date or content keywords. Don’t like to organize? Also not an issue. Evernote has the ability to incorporate and save photos, videos, audio, and text quickly and with minimal interaction, if desired.
There is also a “web clipper” extension for Chrome that has the potential to be very useful for many individuals who want to save information directly from their browser to Evernote for later reference. You can save sections of pages, specific selections, or whole pages and Evernote will save all of the URL and date information automatically. There is even an option to simply bookmark a page if you’re in a hurry to move on.
What else has Evernote done recently?
Evernote has executed a number of partnerships with companies such as Moleskine, Post-it Notes, and Samsung. These partnerships primarily benefited users by offering the premium version of Evernote to customers for anywhere from 1-3 months to one full year. Moleskine and Evernote also produced a “digital friendly notebook” that was specially designed to more adept for smartphone syncing.
Most recently Evernote announced that they would be changing their privacy policy to allow employees to view user data in particular situations. Unfortunately, the backlash over this announcement convinced Evernote to rethink their decision, and it was announced shortly after that the privacy policy change would not be going into effect for 2017.
How do I get Evernote on my phone or computer?
Evernote is available for Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, macOS, Android, iOS, Windows Phone WebOS, Maemo, and Google Wave platforms currently but there are also portable versions available for flash drives. Users can download the Evernote app directly to their phones from their app store. Evernote syncs information between the phone, and browser extension so that a user’s data is readily available to them when it is needed.
