42 replies to this topic

[C. Wollenhaupt]

The past few months have left me worried about Evernote...

We had a disastrous experience with the Safari 5.1 clipper which took forever to get fixed. I personally even dropped Safari in the process because I really need the clipper functionality. Shared notebooks are still in its infancy and are treated like unwanted step-children. There's no search across regular and shared notebooks, tags can only be created by the owner, web clipping doesn't work, not even drag&drop between a regular and a shared notebook. It took ages to get formatted editing capabilities on the iPad and still today the Evernote editor is lightyears behind OneNote in the desktop version.

I haven't a single installation of Evernote that is showing the same number of notes in my notebooks on any computer or the web interface. Can I manually resync a notebook? No, the only way is to delete everything from a computer, download the enture archive of 4000 notes and hope for the best.

Honestly, Evernote has a great concept. But there is so much that need to get fixed quickly. I had confidence that you guys were working on these problems, that things just took longer because of unforeseen issues. It's software development, after all.

Now I'm not so sure anymore... Week after week you release completely unrelated products like Skitch, Evernote Hello, Evernote Peek, and more... Development effort that I expected to go into the core product.

Does Evernote still have a future? Are YOU still committed to Evernote?

[GrumpyMonkey]

I feel like you might be jumping to a conclusion here (you pose it as a question, but obviously you think Evernote's future is in jeopardy). Let's assume that Evernote's core mission is to help you remember everything (that's what their website says), and let's take a look at the issues you raised:

1. Safari clipper. I don't know anything about this, but it appears to have been fixed, so not an issue anymore. That is a good thing, right?

2. Shared notebooks. I wouldn't call this a core feature. Assuming Evernote's core mission applies to an individual's memories, and not the collaborative construction of group memories ("projects" in the business world), then the limits kind of make sense. Evernote is a bit confusing on this (see their blog), because they seem to be conflating "collaboration" with "sharing." Anyhow, I can see something like dragging and dropping as a nice feature, but not high on the priority list.

3. iOS formatting. It looks like you are saying they are the best app on the market. The fact that it took "ages," but even a behemoth like Microsoft hasn't developed it, should give you some idea of the effort that probably went into improving the app. That is a good thing, right?

4. Different numbers of notes. My numbers match exactly across the OSX, Web, and iOS apps. I don't have that problem. Perhaps you need to create a support ticket?

Am I correct in saying that the only "problem" here is the numbers of notes in your notebook that don't match? This is serious, but I wonder how widespread it is.

It seems important to me that we separate what we think Evernote ought to be from what Evernote is. There are plenty of bugs and performance issues in Evernote (see my other threads), and lots of things we hope that they will improve/add/change, but that is true of any application.

Personally, I think Evernote is headed in the right direction, especially if they can solve the iOS problems. We'll have to wait and see, but if past precedent is any indication of future success, Evernote seems to have a pretty bright future.

[jefito]

I think that it might be of interest, before worrying about where Evernote is going, to consider what Evernote is?

As best as I can tell, Evernote is a platform for building and retaining digital memories. The platform provides fairly simple facilities to create, collect, and organize those memories and to share them with others. To that end, there are a number of clients on different computer platforms available that help you to do that (it's known that each of the individual clients has its own set of quirks and issues). But there's more than just a set of clients: there's an API that allows developers to make tools to add in to Evernote's capabilities. Those capabilities, by the way -- and as noted -- are still fairly simple, and there's obvious pressure to improve on all fronts, sharing included. These things are important, and I'm pretty sure we'll see improvements as we go along.

BTW: Skitch was developed by a separate company, before being bought out by Evernote. Evernote Food and Evernote Hello were developed, I believe, by folks who were not Evernote employees (though maybe under contract). Don't be fooled by their appearance on the scene at a time when the software that's actually maintained by Evernote has known problems (and continues to get worked on). It's often easy from outside to second-guess what's going on inside. Evernote is still growing and hiring, as far as I know.

Short answer from a non-Evernote employee: yes, Evernote has a future, I'm committed (as an Evernote user), and my sense is that the folks behind Evernote are, too.

[Owyn]

I haven't a single installation of Evernote that is showing the same number of notes in my notebooks on any computer or the web interface. Can I manually resync a notebook? No, the only way is to delete everything from a computer, download the enture archive of 4000 notes and hope for the best.

You need to file a support request. See my signature for link.

There are a lot of valid reasons for differences, and, some known problems which require fix at the service.
See here for some of the reasons.

[jbenson2]

Does Evernote still have a future?

Other organizations certainly think so.

Inc Magazine named Evernote as the Company of Year
http://www.inc.com/m...f-the-year.html

Techcrunch on Evernote's longterm goals
http://techcrunch.co...million-a-year/

Evernote gets $50 million
http://blog.evernote...nding-with-faq/

[Metrodon]

I'm guessing that all of the people that work at Evernote don't care any more and are just sitting around picking up their pay checks and sipping west coast home made chilled soups.

If you can find me a software company that doesn't have issues and bugs I will show you my piece of real alien space ship that I found in St Paul's Cathedral.

One of the great things about Evernote is that they always treat your data as your data so it is easy to get out and go somewhere else if you are not happy.

Sounds to me like you need your account reindexing - open a support ticket and they get it done pretty quickly.

[BurgersNFries]

You had me at "real alien spaceship"...

[jbenson2]

Hmmmm...
The alien ship in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
http://www.flickr.co...res/1310817304/

[Owyn]

You had me at ...

Have you been watching Jerry Maguire recently?
http://www.imdb.com/...uotes?qt0389299

[cgk]

The

I think that it might be of interest, before worrying about where Evernote is going, to consider what Evernote is?

As best as I can tell, Evernote is a platform for building and retaining digital memories. The platform provides fairly simple facilities to create, collect, and organize those memories and to share them with others.

Which raises an interesting point - I wonder what percentage of Evernote users are interested in or are making use of the sharing capabilities? I can completely understand how for many people that might be core to their experience but I have no need for or use of sharing capabilities.

[BurgersNFries]

Which raises an interesting point - I wonder what percentage of Evernote users are interested in or are making use of the sharing capabilities? I can completely understand how for many people that might be core to their experience but I have no need for or use of sharing capabilities.

Based upon this post, by Dave Engberg (CTO of EN):

"Basically, a bunch of the people who built Evernote have a lot of experience in the "Enterprise software sales" business, and it's completely 180-degree different than Evernote's "freemium" personal memory service. It's hard to do both business models under the same roof, in my experience. "

(Emphasis, mine.) It appears that the focus is on the individual with fairly simple sharing for families, rather than geared toward true business collaboration. Like yourself, I have little to no interest in sharing any of my notes.

[May]

I find it very useful to share notes with other people, I use it rarely but when I do use it - it's a godsend

[megsaint]

Which raises an interesting point - I wonder what percentage of Evernote users are interested in or are making use of the sharing capabilities? I can completely understand how for many people that might be core to their experience but I have no need for or use of sharing capabilities.

For the life of me, I can't imagine another human being on the planet who would be interested in sharing (or with whom I would want to share) what I put in Evernote, except perhaps the occasional recipe.

[jbenson2]

With a two married kids in the military (changing home locations frequently), my Evernote shared family address notebook is very helpful among my other family members.

[BurgersNFries]

except perhaps the occasional recipe.

OTOH, I do have this shared notebook linked to my account:

I have 1007 recipes in my evernote cookbook, "A Moveable Feast." I include tags, pictures and links to recipes I find online, or make myself. I've made it publicly available and a lot of my friends and clients use it as well. You all can get to it here. Enjoy!

[Krellan]

Does Evernote still have a future? Are YOU still committed to Evernote?

Absolutely agree. Evernote seems to be working on unrelated applications such as "Evernote Clearly". Many CSS stylesheet-strippers already exist, unsure why Evernote is also doing this.

I've been unsuccessfully lobbying for plain text support, and the ability of users to be able to freely enter notes without having to worry about their line spacing getting lost, or their font getting changed, or anything like that. Simple plain text seems like something that could be knocked out fairly quickly, in less time than it would have taken them to make "Evernote Clearly". I'm disappointed.

[GrumpyMonkey]

Does Evernote still have a future? Are YOU still committed to Evernote?

Absolutely agree. Evernote seems to be working on unrelated applications such as "Evernote Clearly". Many CSS stylesheet-strippers already exist, unsure why Evernote is also doing this.

I've been unsuccessfully lobbying for plain text support, and the ability of users to be able to freely enter notes without having to worry about their line spacing getting lost, or their font getting changed, or anything like that. Simple plain text seems like something that could be knocked out fairly quickly, in less time than it would have taken them to make "Evernote Clearly". I'm disappointed.

The Evernote app seems to be working great for me. There are some exceptions on the iOS platform, but the worst problems there have largely been solved. What, specifically, has disappointed you?

Evernote Clearly and other products are related to their stated goal of helping you remember stuff. I don't think they are just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks like an Evernote version of Angry Birds. I don't work at Evernote, but if it is like any other company, there are several projects going on at once. Some are in development and others are at a mature stage. But, everyone isn't working on the same thing. That seems normal, and a good thing to me.

[ping13]

Hi Krellan

[...]
I've been unsuccessfully lobbying for plain text support, and the ability of users to be able to freely enter notes without having to worry about their line spacing getting lost, or their font getting changed, or anything like that. Simple plain text seems like something that could be knocked out fairly quickly, in less time than it would have taken them to make "Evernote Clearly". I'm disappointed.

I just stumbled upon this thread and your statement on plain text support. IMHO, due to Evernote's many client apps and the underlying data structure , it is not just a quick job to "knock out plain text". Evernote uses an HTML variant to store the note contents. Okay, you can simulate plain text in HTML. But in order to edit the note in plain text, you would need to update all client apps, which is probably a huge effort. (An example for an app handling both plain text and HTML text could be your mail client, where you can switch between plain text and HTML text as the body's content format).You would also need to redefine the HTML format (known as ENML) and the API. This may become a problem with 3rd party apps.

While I sympathize with your desire to have plain text input, you have to realize that it is not just that easy to accomplish.

[megsaint]

Does Evernote still have a future? Are YOU still committed to Evernote?

Absolutely agree. Evernote seems to be working on unrelated applications such as "Evernote Clearly". Many CSS stylesheet-strippers already exist, unsure why Evernote is also doing this.

Clearly, is, well, clearly related to core functionality which is to remember things. I saw some statistics a while back on how people used Evernote. No, I don't remember where as I forgot to clip it but, as I recall, most of what goes into Evernote is clippings from web pages. Clearly makes clipping webpages that much easier. Sure, there are other stylesheet strippers but I haven't found one so perfectly integrated into Evernote.

As far as plain text support goes, many plain text editors already exist, right?

[gbarry]

Our 2012 recap post and podcast seems relevant here.

http://blog.evernote...a-year-episode/