As a small business person I appreciate the value of a dollar, and when I can get something of real value for no cost then I want to share my discovery with others. So here is Part I of a planned series of short posts on my favorite free business tools. Most are software/internet related, but not all of them.
Evernote
I only discovered Evernote a few weeks ago, and it is already my favorite single business tool (other than maybe MS Excel, but that’s a long way from being free).
Evernote is a simple idea, executed brilliantly. It is a combination of an online application, browser add-in and a small downloadable application – although you can use the online application by itself, including accessing all of your notes via a browser on a PC that doesn’t have the application installed. I’ll provide a quick list of my favourite things about Evernote, but I think its slogan says it perfectly: “remember everything”. I now have Evernote open all of the time and use it many times every day for things like recording ideas, memos, drafting documents (including this post), saving sections of websites for later, etc.
If you have 4 minutes, here is a video showing some of the uses for Evernote:
Here are some of my favorite things about Evernote:
- It is a light application that can be left open all of the time;
- You can start writing a new note in about 1 second, so you end up using it much more than Word, and maybe even more than finding a pen and paper to write something down
- You can store notes in notebooks (folders), tag notes, and use the search function to find notes quickly
- You can move notes around with a simple drag and drop
- Any images stored in a note are indexed, so any words in the image will also show up when you do a search
- You can send emails to your private Evernote email address and a new note will be created from that email
- You can email notes to anyone
- All of your notes are sync’d with your online account, so they are always available anywhere you have an internet connection
- When syncing between your local and online accounts, only changes are sent (saving bandwidth and time)
- You can make notebooks public and send people the URL for the notebook so they can see any notes you have in there
- If you have an iPhone or Windows Mobile phone you can download an application onto your phoneAnd the list goes on.
I think the best test of the slogan “remember everything” is when you go back through your notes from the previous day, week or month, and see how many of the notes you had forgotten about. If you hadn’t recorded them, whether in Evernote or some other way, those ideas/notes/links/etc risk being forgotten forever.
Finally, I thought I would provide one single reason why you should give Evernote a try: ease of use. I genuinely find it easier to record a note in Evernote than to write it down on a piece of paper. The fact that I then know exactly where the note is, it won’t get thrown out or lost, I can search for it, file it, edit it, email it, share it and access it from any computer, are just bonuses!
And of course, unless you are transferring enormous amounts of data, it’s free.
