MakeUseOf » evernote

Dolphin Browser For Android Now Features Skitch & Evernote Add-Ons [News]

Yaara Lancet — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:31:29 +0000

Dolphin has recently announced the release of two brand new add-ons for its popular Android browser. The Dolphin browser already features a number of useful add-ons such as Read It Later, Dolphin Translate, Dolphin.fm, and various tab management add-ons, and has now added the Skitch add-on and the Evernote add-on.

Skitch, a powerful photo editor and annotator, has recently been acquired by Evernote, the popular notetaking app, and both are now available as add-ons for Dolphin browser on Android. To use the add-ons, you will need to have accounts with Skitch and Evernote. With Skitch, you also need to have the actual Skitch app installed on your device. If you don’t already have accounts or the apps, Dolphin will redirect you to the market when you try to use the add-ons.

To use the add-ons, slide the screen to the left to reveal the right side panel. For Skitch, first find an image you want to edit, and then tap the Skitch icon. This will load the image in Skitch where you can edit and annotate it. For Evernote, simply choose the text you want to save, tap the Evernote icon and insert the clipping. You can upload it to Evernote right from within Dolphin.

Dolphin is promising lots more add-ons in the upcoming year, and asks for user feedback and ideas for new add-ons and features. So if there’s an add-on you always wished you could have in Dolphin, go ahead and contact them. You’ve got nothing to lose!

What do you think of Dolphin’s new add-ons? Did you get a chance to try them yet?

Skitch add-on for Dolphin [2.2+]
Evernote add-on for Dolphin [2.0.1+]

Source: Dolphin Browser Blog

Read-Only Extension Clearly Comes to Firefox [News]

Bakari Chavanu — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:31:51 +0000

The popular digital notebook development company Evernote, released last week a handy little browser extension called Clearly for Firefox. The extension was first released for Google Chrome users back in November. Similar to the Reader feature in Apple’s Safari, Clearly, when enabled, strips away webpage ads and other obtrusive content that surrounds downloaded articles. This read-only feature is also great for saving articles as PDFs.

Since this is an Evernote extension, Clearly includes additional features for copying selected articles to your Evernote account, as well as three types of reading formats, including small, medium and large font sizes, and a Night Owl view that changes the background of the page to black, and the font color to white.

You can access Clearly in the Firefox menu bar (Tools > Clearly) or its extension button in the browser’s toolbar.

When you use Clearly to clip an article to your Evernote account, it sends the read-only version to your default notebook. This means you no longer have to manually strip away clutter from clippings in your Evernote account and notebook. To use the Clearly clipping feature, you will of course need a free Evernote account.

Source: Techcrunch

Try Out Hello & Food: Two Stylish Evernote Apps For the iPhone

Bakari Chavanu — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:30:51 +0000

For many of us savvy computer users, Evernote is among the top 10 essential apps for our computer and mobile devices. Even as a free app, Evernote provides a lot of online storage and app space to stuff notes, web clippings, screenshots, small PDFs, etc.

Though Evernote is just a file cabinet for collecting all sorts of stuff, its attractive design and simple user interface make it stand out above the rest.

And it is also its design appeal that makes Evernote’s two recently released iPhone and iPod touch apps, Hello and Food, worthy of a download.

Evernote Hello

On a few occasions I’ve taken out my iPhone and recorded the contact information of people I’ve met. It’s no big deal, for it’s part of what you do with a smartphone. I’ve also handed my phone to others and asked them to type in their contact information for me. Again, no big deal, but that’s exactly what Evernote Hello app does. It’s a simple way to collect someone’s contact information, except the user interface looks more like a greeting card than the techie text fields of an address book.

Let’s say you’re at network business meeting, event, or party and you meet someone who you want to keep in touch with it. You launch Hello on your iPhone, tap the + button, and then hand that person your phone. Your recipient enters his or her contact information and then snaps a photo of him or herself using the iOS self-facing camera.

The user interface for Hello consists of your photo and a personal small greeting that I would imagine — for I haven’t tried it on anyone yet — would make the recipient feel more comfortable about entering information into your phone.

If the recipient includes an email address, your contact information along with your snapped photo gets automatically emailed to your recipient. This email feature alleviates the problem of your contact not having an iPhone with the app installed on it to exchange information. (Remember the old Bump app that required you to “bump” another person’s iPhone to exchange information? Yeah, right…how many people did you ever get around to bumping with?)

Now of course if you meet someone who would give you a dazed look when handing them your iPhone, you could simply enter the information yourself and snap their photo, making sure you switch the lens direction of the camera.

Personally I can’t wait to use this app, for I can’t count how many times I’ve lost someone’s business card or didn’t have pen and paper to write down their contact information. I use my iPhone as my wallet now, so an app like this is perfect for storing contact information. The contact information you receive is also synced to your Evernote account for instant backup, but unfortunately it doesn’t get copied to your Address Book.

Of course with the first version of an app like this, there are many things you wish it could or would not do. First off, the camera snaps four photos, all of which are retained in the app. (Thankfully they are not copied to your device’s Camera Roll.) However, the camera starts snapping photos when the person raises the iPhone to his face. This may feel a little awkward for some users, which will probably mean retaking the photo several times to get it “right.”

It would be better if the recipient could just select one photo from the four that are snapped, though that would take away from the mini slideshow effect for each of your contacts on the homepage.

It’s also great that your contact information is sent to the recipient, but it would be even better if you could somehow select from a few previously setup profiles, say one for business and one for social contacts.

And many users will wonder why they can’t add their Facebook info, like they can their Twitter address.

Evernote Food

Evernote Food is another simple information gathering app that is quite frankly similar to how you probably already use Evernote or another note application that can also capture images.

Evernote Food has a clean easy-to-use interface, in which you simply launch the app, tap the + button, and snap a photo of a memorable meal that you have eaten at home or at a restaurant.

I have already started such an image collection in the aNote app I use on my iPhone. But honestly, I will now start using Food because the layout is more attractive.

Food will also record, using GPS integration, the location in which you take a photo, as well as allowing you to tag your images and write your own captions and additional notes.

You can share your captured content via e-mail, Twitter or your Facebook account.

The photos you take in Food are also copied to your Camera Roll, and the content can be saved to a notebook in your Evernote account.

Food might be very useful for recording recipes, restaurant meals and menus, wines and special types of coffee that you want to remember. But this Evernote app doesn’t have a folder structure, nor can you search content by tags, which are used in your Evernote account and related apps.

Let us know what you think about Evernote Hello and Food. As free apps, requiring iOS 5.0 or later, they are so well designed that you will want to check them out for their sheer simplicity.

Evernote Launches Clearly For Cleaner Article Reading [News]

Dave LeClair — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:31:26 +0000

Evernote, the highly popular note-taking platform, is taking their service to another level with a new service that allows users to store an article and read it later in a clean, ad-free way. This is very similar to the service offered by Instapaper, but wrapped in your already existing Evernote account. It’s a great idea, and one that I have always wished Evernote had.

It’s a simple browser plug-in available for Google Chrome right now, and soon for Mozilla Firefox. It takes the article you want to read and gives it a very Kindle-type feel in how neat and clutter free the article is. As an Evernote user myself, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Normally, when you clip an article into Evernote it does not always grab it very cleanly, and for me, it would often miss parts of the article all together. With Clearly, that is no longer an issue as it snags the article quickly, and makes it easily available from anywhere I can get access to my Evernote account.

Source: Cnet

Evernote’s Ambassador Program Looks To Expand Their Audience [News]

Dave LeClair — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:01:45 +0000

Note-taking giant Evernote has a long term plan. Their plan is to become your daily life tracker, and not just a place to jot down notes and sync them across various platforms. They are poised to do that, because in terms of quick easy software for jotting things down, they are certainly at the front of the pack. Evernote CEO Phil Libin says they don’t “have an exit strategy and we’re not going to sell.” They plan to be here for a while, and a huge part of sticking around is expanding and capturing new users.

That is exactly what their new Ambassador program is looking to do. Basically, it is a way for users to learn from other like minded people and find new and creative users for Evernote that they may not have considered. For example, it makes sense for teachers to look at what other teachers use the program for. They may find something that changes their work day and makes their life easier.

Evernote’s Ambassador program features users from a number different categories like bloggers, teachers and designers, each with their own ways of using Evernote to make life easier.

They also let users apply to be an Ambassador, so if you think you have some new and creative uses for Evernote, apply at the bottom of the Ambassador page and start sharing your methods.

Source: TheNextWeb

Evernote Acquires Skitch & Makes It A Free Download [News]

Bakari Chavanu — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:31:25 +0000

Last Thursday, Evernote announced its acquisition of the Mac image annotation application, Skitch, as well as the company that produced it. Skitch is a screen capture and desktop photo application that includes over a dozen annotation tools (including highlighter, shapes, arrows, text, paint bucket) for marking up image files. Files are instantly saved inside the application and can be re-edited, as well as shared to your online Skitch account.

Skitch has been around for a few years now, and before it was acquired by Evernote, the full version sold for $19.95 in the Mac App Store. Now it is completely free, and will integrate with the Evernote application service. Evernote says, “New users can sign into Skitch with their Evernote credentials and existing Skitch users can continue to use their Skitch.com accounts”.

So far there are no significant changes to the Skitch program, but the company says, “in the coming months, you will see tighter integration between Evernote and Skitch to let you easily draw, ink, grab screenshots, annotate, and share your favorite memories”.

Evernote, a free desktop and mobile application and service, now has over 12 million users. Screen captures can be dragged and dropped between both Evernote and Skitch applications. You can also copy and export Skitch files to your online Skitch account, and from there share, title and tag them to your Evernote account.

The latest version of Skitch is compatible with Mac OS X Lion, and is available for free download in the Mac App Store.

Source: Macworld

Access Your Evernote Data With The Open Source Client Nevernote [Linux]

Danny Stieben — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:31:20 +0000

Linux users have long been used to the fact that a lot of online services that also offers its own optional client generally doesn’t have one for Linux. Instead, they have to use the service without the optional client. While using the service will still be very possible, the clients sometimes add a few nice little features that would make using the service be a tad bit easier and more enjoyable.

Officially, Evernote has the same situation going for it as described above. However, a different open source project has been trying to make a client of its own that will work with Evernote, called Nevernote. It is a project aimed at bringing an Evernote client to Linux, although it has also been able to run under Windows and Mac OS X. To install it, you’ll need to head over to its download page. Choose the package that is made for your specific distribution. Go ahead and install it using your package manager, and agree to install any other dependencies that it may ask for.

When you go ahead to launch it, you should find it under the Internet category of your menu. You’ll then be greeted by a pleasant little splash screen before the program’s main window appears, ready to do your bidding.

Features

If you really wish, you could use the program locally and never sync with the Evernote servers. However, in a lot of cases you probably will, so if you already have an Evernote account, you can connect to it via Online –> Connect. Enter the login details, and everything should be set. You can then go to Online –> Synchronize with Evernote to do exactly what it says.

The interface is relatively clean and simple to understand, which is a quality that Nevernote did not have in previous versions. However, I’m glad that they cleaned up the interface, because now I’ll have an easier time explaining where something is.

Layout

At the top, you have your regular menus and buttons, which allow plenty of simple actions that you can do with your notes. In the left pane you will see your various notebooks, tags, attributes, recent searches, and trash.

Going up and to the right, you’ll find your list of notes that exist in the currently selected notebook. Below the list is what the currently selected note actually contains. This section also has a number of different editing and formatting tools, so you’ll be able to customize your notes as you please. One thing I have noticed is that there isn’t a way to add pictures, though maybe I just can’t find the button yet.

Other Mentions

Nevernote doesn’t have a dedicated options screen. Instead, you’ll find a few Option-like items under the Tools menu that may be of use to you at varying levels. Therefore, there isn’t much to configure, which may come to the relief of the user.

Conclusion

Nevernote is a great start for a solid Evernote client for Linux. It is fairly functional, but stable to run, clean, and easy to use. If you’re a heavy Evernote user in your browser or on your phone, you may want to try out Nevernote to manage all those notes. Also, even if you’re not an Evernote user at all, you can still use Nevernote to have a local database of notes to help you organize.

Do you use Evernote? What do you think about Nevernote? Do you tend to use clients at all? Let us know in the comments!

Evernote Peek: Turning Your iPad 2 & Smart Cover Into A Cool Learning Tool

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:31:37 +0000

While it’s better known as an entertainment gadget, the iPad is also a student’s best friend. The slate can act as a perfect replacement for physical books and notebooks, a portable sketchpad, a mini multimedia player, and a great gaming device. There are also lots of apps that can help students in their study, such as MathBoard and InClass.

One of those study tools is Evernote Peek from Evernote. If you are the proud owner of an iPad 2 and Smart Cover, you already have a cool learning tool.

Take A Peek

The Evernote Peek app is the modern manifestation of traditional flashcards. Using the app is as simple as opening and closing a lid of your iPad’s Smart Cover.

After downloading and installing the app, open a customized notebook and close the smart cover.

Opening the bottom lid of the Smart Cover will reveal the bottom part of the note where the question is written. Try to answer the question, then check your answer by opening up the rest of the Smart Cover and read the answer on the upper part of the notebook.

Tap the “Correct” or “Incorrect” box according to your answer. Then close the smart cover, and reopen the bottom lid to see the next question. Evernote Peek will keep a record of your correct and incorrect answers throughout the session.

You can see your result at the end of the session. Then you can choose another test or retake the previous test. You can also choose to redo only the incorrect answers.

Creating Study Notes

Evernote Peek can use notes that you created in Evernote as study notes. But you must collect the notes in notebooks since Evernote Peek can only import notebooks.

Notebook is the place to collect questions and answers from the same subject. For example, you can create a notebook about World War II and fill it with notes about dates and events from the war.

To create a notebook, click the small arrow next to “Notebooks” in the Evernote sidebar. You can create notebooks using the web app and desktop clients, but you can’t create notebooks in Evernote for iPad.

You can rename and delete the notebooks that you’ve created using the pop-up menu. If a notebook is grouped inside a stack, you can remove it using this menu.

Stack is a folder where you can collect notebooks from the same theme. To create a new stack, click the menu next to an unstacked notebook and choose “Add To Stack – New Stack“.

After creating the notebook, you can start populating it with questions and answers. The correct way to write notes for Evernote Peek is to put the question as the subject and write the answer(s) in the body.

Try to keep the answer short because long answers will be truncated. You can attach images to the note, and it will be displayed on Evernote Peek.

Playing With Notebooks

Evernote Peek comes with three default notebooks. Adding more study notebooks to the Evernote Peek app is as simple as tapping the plus box.

You have to sign in using your Evernote account before you can download any notebook.

There are two sections in the notebook repository. “Featured Notebooks” contains ready to use materials created by Evernote and StudyBlue, while “My Notebooks” is filled with notebooks from your Evernote account.

Tap any notebook that you want to add to Evernote Peek. Click “Done” after you have added all the notebooks you want. The notebooks will then be downloaded to the library.

To delete a notebook, tap and hold a specific notebook. Then choose “Delete Notebook“.

The “Re-Download” option is useful to update your notebook to the latest version. Use the option if you edit the source notebook in Evernote.

If there’s only one thing that will make Evernote Peek stand out above other similar apps, it would be the Evernote name as the backbone. It’s very easy to build a learning community and share notebooks. For example, students from the same class could form a study group and divide the creation of notebooks among themselves based on the subject. Every member could share their notebooks to others.

Are you using Evernote and the iPad to help you study? Have you tried Evernote Peek? Do you know of and use other similar apps? Share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below.

5 Uses For The Evernote Desktop Clients [Windows & Mac]

Jessica Cam Wong — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 01:31:06 +0000

A couple of years ago, we had a post on the myriad uses for Evernote, which could well be an all-in-one second brain. The best part is that, unlike some of the alternatives, it works on many platforms and accepts information in numerous, different ways. Not only that, it works with countless third-party apps as well.

With the advent of improvements on the desktop clients, there have been inevitably many more uses today. Thus, here are a few more tips on using the desktop clients for Evernote.

Use It As A Desktop Email Client

Since I prefer to use the webmail interface of Gmail and Windows Live Hotmail, I haven’t had the need to download Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail 2011, etc. However, once in a while, I use a desktop program that provides the convenient option of emailing, say, a screenshot, so having no mail client at all can sometimes be counterproductive.

I’ve been using the Evernote desktop client for Windows (it works on the Mac client, too) to email text, screenshots, etc. for these occasions, which at times, is a lot faster than launching Gmail in my web browser.

A tiny caveat is that Evernote posts a link to its website on the actual email, which is not a big deal, considering that it’s a free service.

Transfer Multiple Photos From iPhone/iPod Touch To Your Desktop In Seconds

I don’t know if this also applies to the Android app, but with the Evernote iPhone app, it’s really a breeze to upload several photos at once to your desktop without having to pull out the USB cable, plug it in and then wait forever for iTunes to open up.

This is actually how I have been able to almost instantly transfer my iPod Touch screenshots to my blog posts. The Dropbox iPhone app could be used as well, as it actually works really well to upload several iPhone screenshots at a time. However, Evernote can be a great place to archive all kinds of notes and photos, in particular, temporary screenshots, whereas Dropbox seems more like the type of service you use to back up your most current work, which a quick screenshot is usually not.

Transfer Photos, PDFs, URLs, Text & Clipboard Content From Desktop To Mobile In Seconds

Whatever you have on your desktop, whether it be a PDF file, an image, an MP3 file, an URL or any text (and more if you’re an Evernote Premium subscriber) can be quickly transferred to your mobile via the Evernote desktop program. There are apps that serve this purpose specifically and do a very good job at it, like Firefox Home, Site To Phone, Instapaper, Read It Later, Dropbox, PushBrowserApp, KeepItWith.Me, Pastefire, and AirLink, among others.

Most of them transfer the information to the respective iPhone app, which you have to then open to get the information displaying on your mobile. The Evernote mobile apps can pretty much do the same thing, and they even display text and articles in mobile-friendly font sizes and all, just like Instapaper and Read It Later!

Sharing any URLs is especially useful since you can just open the mobile app, find your latest note and click on the link in the note’s body.

Share Temporary Screenshots, Photos, & Text

Since the desktop client offers the handy screenshot tool for both Windows and Mac, you can usually share screenshots very easily. After you’ve taken your screenshot, simply click on Share > Copy Note URL To Clipboard at the top of the note (for the Mac client, the location may differ).

You’ll quickly be able to share a webpage with your screenshot, although it can be whatever you want, code, text, photos, etc. It’s sort of a quick and easy way to publish webpages with your images, text, etc.

If you want to change a note and make it private, you can right-click on the note in the note list and go to Share > Stop Sharing.

Dropbox’s Public folder is also a very handy way to share screenshots, but you likely need the space for current files like I mentioned before. Evernote, on the other hand, does give you 60MB for you to use every month.

Keep A Photo Journal

If you like to share your photos on Facebook, Flickr and Instagram, or any of those one-photo-a-day sites, then you don’t need this. For anyone else that’s interested in private journaling (Penzu, anyone?), Evernote is a great place to start. You can already potentially use the Evernote mobile apps to record audio notes (which I think make excellent personal keepsakes) and snap photos of anything and everything so you can keep a food photo journal, travel diary, etc.

Now the desktop app adds another potential journal-friendly feature: webcam notes (on Mac, I think they’re called iSight notes). I actually thought the webcam feature in Evernote was for recording webcam videos, but it just basically takes a webcam snapshot.

You can be much more creative than I am here, but the idea is that you take a self-cam often (since you’re on the computer almost daily, right?) and jot down your mood or write a few thoughts à la Twitter. In a few years, your entries might bring you a good laugh or a good refresher.

Do you have any more possible uses for the Evernote Desktop Clients you wish to share? If so, let us know in the comments!

Image credit: Evernote

5 Simple Apps That Let You Do More With Evernote

Steve Campbell — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:31:31 +0000

When you test as much software as I do on a fairly regular basis, you tend to notice which apps you rely on and which ones fall off your radar after a while. Evernote, which is a handy note-taking and web clipping utility, isn’t necessarily one of those apps that I’ve been using regularly, but it is one that I keep coming back to again and again, and I’m always looking for ways to incorporate it into my routine.

Did you ever notice how the most popular apps & platforms have lots of additional add-ons and extensions that were created for them? Evernote is no different – check out the Evernote Trunk and you’ll see. In this article, I’ll show you a few of the simple applications that will help you do even more with Evernote.

1. Read It Later

While it’s easy to copy text from a website to read later in Evernote, Read It Later makes this process even easier.

Read It Later gives you an easy way to copy text from a website to read later in Evernote. The service’s bookmarklet makes reproducing the contents of a webpage simple with just the click of a button, and the iOS app comes with Evernote integration built-in. What’s good about that is it allows you to take your archive of pages on the go.

I also recommend you check out Instapaper, another great app that functions a lot like Read It Later.

2. FastFinga

Livescribe smartpens are great because they keep a digital record of the things that you write and draw with them, but if you don’t have one, FastFinga could function as a suitable replacement. This iOS app lets you write your messages by hand on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

You can link up your Evernote account and store the messages you’ve written there. The service’s handwriting recognition will transform what you’ve written into searchable text, which is really cool if you ask me.

3. Twipple

Twipple isn’t the most well-known or widely used Twitter client for iOS devices that’s out there, but it integrates with Evernote really well. With Twipple, your tweets can be saved to notebooks and tagged, allowing you to refer back to them later. This is especially useful considering Twitter Search only displays tweets for up to 2 weeks.

4. Twitter: @myEN

Okay, this isn’t an app as such, but I felt I had to include it here because it is very handy. @myEN, which Mark covered a while back, is a Twitter account that lets you save tweets straight into Evernote. Using this service is simple. All you have to do is follow @myEN on Twitter and you will be direct messaged a link that will let you link up your Twitter and Evernote accounts. Afterwards, just add @myEN to the end of the tweets you would like to save.

5. Voice2Note

Evernote already allows you to record voice notes, but they aren’t searchable and you have no cut and paste functionality. With Voice2Note, however, you can convert audio notes into text to make them easily searchable. Simply connect your Evernote account and the first 30 seconds of your notes will be transcribed.

Conclusion

If you aren’t a fan of Evernote but you like the idea of a web clipping utility, be sure to check out Saikat’s article on the 5 best Evernote alternatives.

What are some of your favorite Evernote add-ons?