I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

http://lifehacker.com/5989980/ive-been-using-evernote-all-wrong-heres-why-its-actually-amazing

by daw___ • 13 years ago

69 84 13 years ago

Are there any good self hosted alternatives?

pestaa• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

Some alternatives, self-hosted and otherwise, are listed at http://alternativeto.net/software/evernote/

pigeons• 13 years ago

Probably 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?

girvo5• 13 years ago

OwnCloud 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• 13 years ago

When I worked exclusively on Windows, ConnectedText (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/) 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• 13 years ago

I'm happy with ZIM Desktop Wiki (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• 13 years ago

Evernote would be maybe 500% more useful for me if it had code highlighting and markdown support.

migrantgeek• 13 years ago

Dash may be a better fit for this type of work.

http://kapeli.com/dash

6cxs2hd6• 13 years ago

Although I'm not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, org-mode for Emacs is pretty awesome.

http://orgmode.org/

Pxtl2• 13 years ago

Actually, 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.

marccuban• 13 years ago

Workflowy

nathos• 13 years ago

I love Workflowy too, and I hope they are able to sustain the business. I live in fear of the day they quit or shut down :/

drhayes92• 13 years ago

Those are exactly my complaints about Evernote. I'm on OSX most of the time, and I use 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• 13 years ago

WARNING! 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

coldtea4• 13 years ago

It's so featureful, it means that its mobile clients are quite heavyweight and thus quite slow to boot.

Heavyweight does not mean much in itself. What would that mean? Evernote has a large binary? A cluttered UI?

For my use, I don't find it slow, FWIW.

When I open my notes, I want them 5 seconds ago, looking right at the last notes I entered anywhere.

So you don't want detailed notes spanning years -- you want to jot something quickly.

In that case, it's true, that's not what Evernote's for.

saraid2162• 13 years ago

> It's so featureful, it means that its mobile clients are quite heavyweight and thus quite slow to boot.
Heavyweight does not mean much in itself. What would that mean?

You're hearing zir as an engineer, rather than as a customer.

To zir, "heavyweight" means "slow to boot". Why is it slow to boot? "I don't know; just fix it."

badman_ting• 13 years ago

Heavyweight does not mean much in itself. What would that mean?

It means everything that came after that statement by way of explanation, come on.

jl6• 13 years ago

I'm a big fan of Tap Log. Semi-structured notes and logging, lightning fast. Not free. Only tried on Android.

jkmcf• 13 years ago

Tap Log looks awesome, has data features I wish EN had, but Android only AFAICT.

mortov• 13 years ago

Am I the only one that read the article article as having a distinct Astroturfing feel about it ?

nakedrobot2• 13 years ago

Evernote 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.

alanhenry3• 13 years ago

This. 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• 13 years ago

That 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.

girvo5• 13 years ago

Welcome to lifehacker.com

mason240• 13 years ago

If you got paid to write for a soda blog I'm sure you would be able to.

alanhenry3• 13 years ago

Well, if there's something to be learned from discussing hat software's features, or something we can teach others to do to streamline their activities or be more productive, there's something to be gained from talking about it, isn't there? If something works well for one of us, we try to share it so others can take the example if it applies to them.

coldtea4• 13 years ago

That 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.

Only liking Pepsi instead of Coke is an inconsequential personal choice based on taste alone, whereas other people can benefit from an article about a piece of software and learn tips, usage patterns, its capabilities and limitations etc. Heck, there are sites and magazines devoted to REVIEWING software, from office suites to games.

In essense: your thinking was bad, and you should feel bad.

kuldar• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

I 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.

cylinder2• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

I 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/

girvo5• 13 years ago

Good 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.

pistle• 13 years ago

Tried out the OCR yet?

owenversteeg• 13 years ago

I 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.

the_watcher2• 13 years ago

OneNote 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.

vidyesh2• 13 years ago

It 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.

vidyesh2• 13 years ago

Isn't the web interface any good? I use OneNote desktop ( not metro App ) and not sure why I should switch to Evernote ( everybody recommends ).

porker• 13 years ago

There's a OneNote format-compatible Mac clone out there - alas I didn't bookmark the recommendation, but I think it was http://outline.ws/mac

hengheng• 13 years ago

I 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.

girvo5• 13 years ago

Hey, 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 :)

alexholehouse2• 13 years ago

Evernote + 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_watcher2• 13 years ago

I'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.

MatthewPhillips3• 13 years ago

You 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.

bentcorner• 13 years ago

Re: Markdown support

This is my biggest gripe with Evernote. I've used Evernote and OneNote and settled on OneNote because the text formatting and editing in Evernote desktop client and mobile client needs serious work. I've created notes in the desktop that the mobile client said it couldn't open[1]. That's a showstopper. Not to mention the weird quirky text editing in the mobile client.

[1] To be fair, this was over a year ago on iOS, but I have no reason to go back at this point.

jwr• 13 years ago

This also means that all the information you collect is readily available in unencrypted form to any agency that might want to bulk-process it. You're essentially storing your information on postcards. That said, it might be a fair compromise for many of us.

Evernote has another problem: their Mac app was never "smooth enough". There was always something off about it, when compared to apps like Yojimbo. And these things really matter for apps that you use a lot.

gjuggler• 13 years ago

Re: PDF / attachment handling, you may be interested in what Paperpile (http://paperpile.com) does with PDFs: we create a subfolder in your Google Drive space which automatically stays synced with your reference library, so PDFs and supplementary files are accessible from anywhere.

It's tuned more specifically towards academic work than Evernote, but the Drive sync is quite simple and robust.

(Disclaimer: I co-develop Paperpile, a web-based reference manager)

alexholehouse2• 13 years ago

I don't even.... this is amazing. I've been toying with the idea of making something like this, but could never have produced anything as good. I don't know when I was last this excited about a piece of software. When the paperpile option appeared next to PDFs via the Chrome extension - goosebumps! Thank you, this solves a massive problem I have and have had for a while, and despite trying all kinds of managers have never found anything which really combines organization with raw PDF access in a distributed manner.

WA• 13 years ago

A 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• 13 years ago

You can feed the wget output to 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 doesn't include this feature.

tekalon• 13 years ago

I 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.

cylinder2• 13 years ago

So how much did Evernote pay for this ad?

Can HN auto-filter links with "Here's Why" and "21 reasons why..." headlines?

streptomycin• 13 years ago

You could write a short Greasemonkey script to ensure that you never have to see them.

jseliger• 13 years ago

This 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/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• 13 years ago

Yesterday 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• 13 years ago

I'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• 13 years ago

I'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• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

Former 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• 13 years ago

Using 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• 13 years ago

The 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 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

It 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/

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Wherein 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• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

Too 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?

I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

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