Admin’s Arsenal: Evernote 3.1

Initially I had some trepidation about doing an AA on Evernote, because as of v3, it is web centric, and some of the great features of the old v2.2 have been removed. But man is it useful!

ok, so what is Evernote? It’s difficult to explain correctly. Basically it is a note taking application on the order of Microsoft’s OneNote (which I like, but can’t justify buying a copy of for every system I work on, so it’s kind of limited in its use for me), but taken to a whole different level, oh, and it’s free (sort of).

Here is the description from the Evernote site:

Remember everything.

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Did we mention that it’s free?

Yeah, that’s about accurate. Currently there is a free Evernote app for Windows, and Mac OS X (Leopard), a bookmarklet that will work on just about any browser, a Firefox extension, and apps for the iPhone, Palm Pre, Windows mobile phones, and limited Blackberry models .

It requires Blackberry OS4.6 or above so at the moment it is limited to the Bold (and since I just got one, this is a good thing), Curve (the new one), and Storm, however I have no doubt that RIM will update all others to 4.6 soon.

The thing that makes this a killer app for me is that Evernote can make text in images searchable. So if I take a picture with my Blackberry of say, a BSoD error message, and save it to Evernote, I can then access it on my desktop (or another machine connected to the internet), and figure out what that error message is telling me.

All in all, the ability to clip portions of websites, entire web pages, text from documents, and email from Outlook (yeah it integrates with Outlook), makes this a really really handy tool for IT work (not to mention blogging).

The free accounts are limited to 40MB of Monthly upload data (text, images, audio, and .pdf files only), whereas the premium version gets you 500MB per moth, removes the small advertising window in the desktop app, and can sync any kind of file.

While 40MB may not seem like much, it is roughly 20,000 text notes, or 400 mobile snapshots, or 270 web clips, or 40 audio notes, or 11 high resolution photos. 500MB is roughly 12.5 times that amount of data.

The cost of the premium account is $5/mo. or $45/year.

If you’d like to try Evernote out, you can sign up and download it here: http://www.evernote.com/