Never Forget Anything!

I read a lot of books. The trouble is that I buy more books than I read. To stop this, I am limiting myself to only buying a new book after I've read one of the books on my shelf. The trouble is I keep making lots of notes about books that I'd like to read someday.

Of course, making notes of the books that I want to read is not the only thing I make notes of! Have you ever been in a restaurant and thought to yourself that wine was great, I must get some, or a film you want to see at the cinema, or a place to visit one weekend?

In the past I've either commited these things to memory or written them down on a scrap of paper. The trouble with both of these methods is that I've either forgot the 'note' or lost the piece of paper. This is the story of how I came to take much better notes.

A few months ago I read about an application called Evernote, which is fast becoming the receptical of choice for storing all bits of information which cutlers a busy persons life - gaining c10,000 users per month.

Evernote is essentially a 'cloud' based appliction where you can store your notes. With both a desktop app allowing you to copy and paste (or clip) webpages or browse the notes that you have prepared, or a smartphone, which is where the real power of Evernote lies.

The desktop app and web versions allows you to to search your notes:



When I had a Blackberry I was using an older version of Evernote and either fired off a text email to my Evernote account or snapped a picture and emailed that. With the upgrade to my new iPhone I downloaded the Evernote application for iPhone. According to Business Week this application was downloaded 260,000 within the first 4 days of Apple releasing its new iPhone Operating system! So, clearly a lot of enthusiasts!

A number of people have been sceptical about the benefit of Evernote. However, the more you use it the more you can see what the benefits of it are.

I would personally summarise these benefits as the following:

1. Searchable text - which enables even pictures of text to be searchable, making that wine label photograph findable in seconds
2. Tagging - similar to searchable text, but essentially indexes all your notes
   
3. Multimedia - ability to store words and pictures and voice recordings - all instantly searchable
4. Synchronisation - across every device that you use, web, iPhone/Blackberry/Pre, desktop.
   

However, the best bit is probably that in basic form, it's free with a premium version at $5/month $45/year. The free version allows you to send 40mb of data per month v's 500mb with the premium version.

You can see how it all works in the Evernote Youtube video or click to download Evernote.