Evernote

For years I have been refraining from installing extra applications on my systems. Basically trying to live within a browser. It started long time ago with GMail. GMail has taught me using the browser as an application. Since then I have been typing documents and created spreadsheets in Google Docs. Only occasionally reverting to local apps, like PowerPoint for presentations or Visio for drawings and diagrams. Even for mind mapping I have been using the MindMeister.COM. Web platforms have one brilliant advantage over desktop. multiplatform access, collaboration and sharing. It is much easier to share a Google Docs spreadsheet than its Excel equivalent. And you get versioning as a free bonus. With Excel, you still have to maintain file naming conventions and us email as a transport layer.

But one of the big disappointments of the Google Android Honeycomb tablet platform I have been using recently on the Samsung Galaxy Tab has been very poor support for Google Docs. Honeycomb has some very nice applications. The GMail app is fantastic, especially with the support for multiple accounts and contexts. The Reader app is another I love and use every day. Both are perfectly optimized for the tablet experience. Unfortunately the Google Docs app is not. It is and old style application targeted at phones, not tablets and it has very poor support for the editing process.

So I set out on a quest to find a new solution for organizing notes (which I was hoping to use the Google Docs for, but failed). A lot of friends recommended the Evernote, so I have given it a try. First I thought it does not make sense to invest in a cloud platform that is not owned by one of the big guys. After all one day they may shut down the business and users will be left stranded. But it seems Evernote has already reached the critical mass and even if its business fails, somebody will pick it up just to grab the huge user base. The other aspect of the Evernote is it has client apps for every platform. Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Blackberry. And I have to say the Android tablet version is probably the best of the set. I tried Evernote on the iPad but it was crashing quite frequently. Honeycomb version is rock solid (which by the way may have to do with the platform itself - it is MUCH easier to write a good app for Android compared to iOS). Windows version is not bad too, after you learn how to handle it. It continuously messes with formatting, so the rule of the thumb has been to keep the notes as simple as possible. Plain text, little use of fonts and other styles. Works fine for me. The Blackberry version is not that great, but it allows to edit the notes on the phone, while the Google Docs do not. And this was the most important reason I started using the Evernote.
I live entangled in threads. Keeping multiple contexts open at all time. I think many of us do. This by the way is the way we live and communicate today - one of the observations I made at the last eComm conference. It used to be single - context sessions (phone calls), each having a beginning and an end. Today it is multiple threads that never end. So you have to do context switching and the less overhead the switch imposes, the more efficient your work is.

So back to the Evernote - it is a perfect application supporting multiple threads and context switching. I keep about twenty active threads. Some are related to my daily job, as a CEO of an ambitious startup I have to take care and track a lot of threads and even "fibers" within them. Then I have my hobbies, which are related to my daily business, but I keep them somehow separated. Then there are many other threads, like my investments, finances, long term projects and new emerging ideas. Every now and then my brain raises an interrupt signal when one of the threads running in the background of my head requires attention. Usually there are some big or small ideas I have to put down. With Evernote, regardless where I am and what device I use the the moment, I can quickly get to the relevant note and update it. And it all gets synchronized in the background, so I can get back later to whatever I need anytime and anywhere. Not thinking of saving the documents, synchronizing them and retrieving back on the other devices. I would still prefer to use a purely web - based solution for that, and I think Evernote will one day come up with a good HTML-5 client. After all maintaining all the separate platforms must be a huge resource drain for them. In my business I have just two platforms - Android and iOS and keeping them in sync feature - wise is a headache. They have much more.

By the way, in this context I am happy the PalmOS went bust (Amazon, please do not buy it!), and I am happy BlackBerry is going down too (drop the QNX and adopt the Android, PLEASE!!!!).  Also Microsoft not gaining much audience for the Windows Mobile 7 is a good thing too. I understand the civilization may need more than one application platform, to maintain competition. But having more than two starts to be a big headache.