Nathan Hangen » Evernote

Why Your Ideas Are Never Where You Need Them

Nathan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:30:23 +0000

I’m the type of guy that has trouble sticking with a single activity for a long period of time. I like to multitask and start a bunch of projects at once until I find one that sticks with me. Sure, you could argue that it’s a character flaw, but at this point I’ve learned to just deal…as such, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to stay on track even when I’m working on more than one thing at once.

In the past, when I’d start a new project, I’d spend very little time organizing my thoughts and as a result, I’d wind up losing momentum trying to recapture the essence of my idea. When I lost that focus, the project would either live forever as an incomplete task, which would weigh on my mind, or it would be completed as an inferior quality product. The thing is, multitasking is possible when you learn how to organize and store your ideas, but until you do you’ll likely struggle to maintain consistency and efficiency.

Create an Idea Bank

To fix my problem, I started creating an idea bank to store the notes, images, and URL’s that helped spark the idea for my projects. For instance, right now I’m working on a new product design and I needed to provide my designer with a list of products that I liked. Thanks to my idea bank, I’ve got that covered. I sent a list of a dozen different PDF’s and images that inspired me.

Another project, Twitter Rockstar 2.0, requires me to have a large amount of information on hand so that I can reference it when need be. Thanks to my idea bank, I can quickly scroll through my Twitter Rockstar folder and grab what I need on the fly. As a final example, I’m working on a book called Beyond Blogging, which profiles quite a few A-list bloggers, including their bio’s, past projects, and current products. I use my idea bank to store every piece of information I find so that I never lose time trying to remember an important piece of information.

As a blogger, an idea bank is crucial for keeping post ideas, inspirational stories and quotes, and great designs in one place for when the writing mood strikes. Having one has saved me countless hours of wasted productivity, and more importantly, keeps me from feeling burned out.

Evernote is My Hero

In the past, I used a combination of StumbleUpon, Google Notebook, Evernote, and Del.icio.us to store links, pictures, and web content. In fact, in the early days of this blog I provided an in depth comparison of Google Notebook vs. Evernote. Although it took me a while to find a true winner in the deal, necessity forced me to move to the most efficient system I could find.

Bookmarks were difficult to maintain and I lost the ability to tag properly with StumbleUpon…at least in a manner that allowed me to find my idea quickly. Google Notebook was no longer being developed, and so I started testing Evernote as a system of its own. It didn’t take long before I realized that not only could Evernote become my single idea bank, but it could also be the most important tool on my desktop.

How to Set Up Your Idea Bank

To get started, grab the Evernote desktop app, which allows you to note things on the fly with Evernote’s web clipper. In the past, I would copy URL’s and text to Google Notebook, but the problem was that my text didn’t capture the essence of the idea. In otherwords, when I would go back through my notes, I couldn’t figure out why I had noted that particular piece of text.

Rather than copy and past text or URL’s, I use Evernote’s web clipper to take full screen shots of the page I am on. Evernote automatically labels the note with the URL, but more importantly, the image of the page will provide the context you need to understand your notes.

I set up folders in Evernote for:

Inspiration and Ideas – Websites that motivate me, quotes, cool designs, cool products, etc
Designers – I use this to keep a file of all the web designers I find as I’m browsing the interwebs. I got sick of not being able to remember names when I needed them most. Now, I have a list of hundreds of great designs, and dozens of great designers, including ecover artists, iPhone app programmers, and web designers.
Product Files – I use Evernote to keep a product file for every project that I’m working on or will be working on in the future. Rather than search based on need, I keep a file handy to snag ideas on the fly.
Communication – Important chat logs and SMS/MMS texting records.
Clients – I keep a file for each consulting client and for any customer that I communicate with often.

This is just a sample of what you can do with your idea bank, but as you can probably see, having all of these notes on hand, in image format where possible, allows me to have my own wiki file. The best part is, you don’t have to be online to use the Evernote desktop app…you can synchronize when your internet connection is re-established. You can also use the iPhone app to grab notes while you are traveling. Thanks to mobile capabilities, there is no limit to what you can log in your idea bank.

Notebooks be Damned

I used to carry a bunch of notebooks around to store ideas, I don’t have to do that anymore. Sure, I keep a notepad handy in the event that I can’t pull out my iPhone, but most of the time I’ll log something with Evernote or Posterous rather than write it down on paper. However, if you are the type of person that prefers to write things down, use your phone or scanner to move your notes into Evernote so you will have a backup available online. There’s nothing worse than forgetting your notebook when you need to reference your ideas!

Once you try out this system and implement it in a way that works for you, I think you’ll be happy with the way your efficiency and energy improves. As a Zen blogging lifestyle designer, I think it is important to find the most effective way to stay inspired and find the balance between work and play. Spending less time looking for your files and more time working means that you can get done faster and have more fun.

Why Your Ideas Are Never Where You Need Them is a post from: Nathan Hangen

Google Notebook vs Evernote

Nathan — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:44:36 +0000

The Battle of Web Based Notebooks

I’ve been using Google Notebook for nearly a year now and although the product wasn’t perfect, I really couldn’t complain all that much about it. Any time I was on the computer and had a random thought or business idea I wanted to jot down, I’d throw it into Google Notebook and quickly be done with it. Although there is no real lack of Google haters, I find myself to be a very happy and content Google fanboy. Still, something didn’t feel quite right about Google Notebook and all my Twitter friends kept talking about this new software called Evernote. Often times when I’m under a barrage of tweet attacks I’ll find myself ignoring most of them due to stubborness (a trait I refuse to apologize for), but eventually I couldn’t withstand the attack and checked it out.

Note: Although Evernote offers paid “pro” features, this review features Evernote’s free functionality.

My first impression of Evernote was that the site was much better looking than I expected and it had that unmistakable web 2.0 quality to it. They had a cool logo (an elephant, totally cool) and the signup looked easy, so I gave it a spin. Mind you, this was about a month ago and I wasn’t even really looking to replace Google Notebook, just to voraciously consume every web 2.0 site I could get my hands on. What ended up happening however, was a battle so fierce that…well I actually can’t give it away yet because that would defeat the purpose of the review, but anyway I had a really hard time deciding which application I preferred. So in an effort to decide who would be victorious in the realm of web based notebooks, I matched them up head to head, and this is what I found:

Ease of Signup

The first thing that people do when they want to use a new web 2.0 product is sign up…easy enough right? Well Google Notebook is a very easy process, particularly if you already have a Google Account. You simply press a few buttons and boom, you’ve got a new notebook.

Evernote is fairly simple as well, you just click a button to get to the new user page, type in a few details about yourself, and off you go.

I’d call this one a toss up because both of them get you off and running in just a minute or so, which is how it should be.

Interface

Google Notebook’s interface is fairly straight forward, albeit a little bland. The left side of the screen lists all of your current notebooks with the note labels in a box below. There is a typical text editor and a few buttons to save or start a new notebook. Here is a screenshot:

As far as Evernote goes, the interface is more involved, which I believe to be a good thing. At first glance, the options are a little overwhelming, but at least there are options. The opening interface lets you see all of your notes combined onto one page in the form of little sticky notes. If you open an individual notebook you will find the same interface as well as the option to open up the text editor to add or change your notes. The interface allows you to customize the page to your preference, which is a far cry from Google’s simple interface. Here is a screenshot:

Overall, I’m going to have to give this one to Evernote because of the ability to customize the interface as well as the overall “feel” of the page itself.

Labels / Tags

Labeling and Tagging is a huge issue for me because I keep a ton of notes and without a good labeling system my notebooks become a cluttered mess. What’s the point of keeping notes if you can’t go back and find them easily?

Google Notebook gives you the ability to label every individual note at the click of a mouse. You can also comment on your own notes, which comes in handy if you want to monitor progress or add something to your original note. Although the feature isn’t fancy, it works well enough to keep a handle on your notes.

Evernote has tags as well, but they are a bit more difficult to access and record. However, once they are stored they are very easy to access via a menu on the sidebar.

I happen to like Google’s tagging feature better, but that doesn’t mean Evernotes is lacking in any way. Still, I’ll give this one to Google.

Browsing

This is where an online really defines itself in my book. Having to do the whole copy and past thing on a webpage, especially if I want to bookmark or stumble a page, is just an added hassle I don’t want. Luckily, both of these programs offer great solutions to this problem.

Both Google and Evernote require the Firefox plugin to make these features work, but they are a very quick install. Google’s is here, and Evernote’s is here.

Google’s plugin gives you the ability to pull up your notebook from the bottom of your browser window, which is really handy if you don’t want to open a new window. It pops up attached to the bottom corner of your browser and lets you add a quick note and close it in a hurry. You can also choose to go full screen if you wish. Also, when on a web page you can select anything on that page, right click and add to Notebook. The only problem I have with this feature is that it can be difficult to get the content into the right notebook and the loading time is a little slow.

Evernote has a nice concept with their plugin because although it basically works the same way, a small pop-up opens in your current window allowing you to choose the notebook, tags, and title for the note. This saves you the aggravation of loading time and waiting for a new window. Also, there is a very cool feature called web-clipper that lets you screenshot anything with a resizable box and then post the screenshot to Evernote.

Although I like Google’s innovation in this department, Evernote came out and improved on the design. Give this one to Evernote.

Extras

This is where things will really start to get fun and I’m so excited about some of these features that I’m going to go against order and talk about Evernote first. Evernote wasn’t happy with just a web interface and so they decided to go all out. If you visit their download page, you will find not only a Windows and MAC version of the software, but you will also find a mobile version and an Iphone version. Although I haven’t used either mobile version, I have used the Windows version and I love it even more than the web interface. For starters, you have the ability to synchronize your account from Windows which allows you to access and use Evernote from nearly any PC in the world. The software has easy to use buttons for adding, printing, emailing, tagging, and deleting notes and lets you export them in a variety of formats. The software is flat out excellent.

Evernote also lets you email yourself notes in the event you don’t have access to the software online or on your desktop. You are assigned a simple email address and you can email notes, photos, and audio clips from your computer or phone right into an Evernote notebook. Emailed notes are placed into your default notebook. Although I haven’t used this feature much, having the option to is great.

Lastly, Evernote offers you the ability to import Delicious Bookmarks and their tags. Although I don’t use this feature a lot, its nice to know that I can hit up my bookmarks while going through my notes.

The only extra that Google Notebook really offers is a way to share your notebooks. This may be handy for collaborative projects or if you like to share lists (I use it to share Gift Wish Lists), but this really isn’t that special or irreplaceable.

Now, obviously I’m going to have to give this category to Evernote and although it looks like Evernote has the clear edge, I’m going to have to pause before my judgement. You see, even though Evernote clearly beats Google in several categories, I still find myself using Google Notebook nearly half of the time. As I’ve tried to find a reason for this I can only think of one reason: Google Notebook is cleaner, simpler, and really I’m just used to using it. Where Evernote reigns supreme, features and innovation, Google is weak. However, Google Notebook’s strengths lie in its ability to be used quickly and without effort for quick notes or ideas.

So there you have it, Evernote is the clear victor by category, but I’ll still be using Google Notebook for simpler note taking and random thoughts. If you haven’t yet, try them both and let me know what you think.

Google Notebook vs Evernote is a post from: Nathan Hangen