roschler

Hello my fellow developers. 

 

A word of caution.  This is just my opinion as a two-time participant in DevCup, especially last year's competition.  Stay away from any idea that can't be used by a significant percentage of the Evernote population, no matter how innovative or technically advanced you think it is.  Take a hard look at every finalist in DevCup 2012.  You'll see that the winning apps were all usable by a big percentage of the Evernote user base.  This was a sharp and definitive change from DevCup 2011 where the $50,000 first place winner was TouchANote, a really unique and intriguing NFC tag based app that was extremely niche by its very nature since you have to place NFC tags on objects to use it.  In contrast, the winner of DevCup 2012 was EverClip, a powerful app and a worthy choice indeed.  My reason for pointing EverClip out is only that it can be used by any iPhone user, a huge population, in contrast with TouchANote.  Judge for yourself, but if you do a side-by-side comparison between the winning apps in 2011 and those in 2012, and you will see a similar comparative relationship.

 

I think Evernote does developers a disservice by putting up categories such as Robotics or any other category that is similarly severely limited in its scope of adoption.  I don't believe an app in a strongly niche market has a chance of being a finalist and especially not winning the contest.  So if you're considering entering just to have fun, or because you already have a niche app that you're dying to adapt to Evernote anyways, then have at it.  It's a fun ride.  But if you're in it to win it, the heartbreak you save may be your own.  This is all strictly my opinion of course.

 

-- roschler

Hello Wux,

You are correct.  There is nothing wrong with BitQwik.  Norton A/V is simply saying that BitQwik has not been downloaded yet by a lot of other Norton A/V users.  For a small developer (and even medium size developers releasing patch updates), this is a guaranteed occurrence.  It's strictly a case of "guilty until proven innocent".  Norton is taking a heavy handed approach that protects its users the same way you can protect yourself by living in a large crash resistant bubble-ball or by not ever going outside at all.  They do have a cumbersome process with a 2 to 3 month delay to have an app certified as "safe", but it has to be redone for every new update.  For a company that releases updates for features and bug fixes rapidly, the kind of company that a user wants, this makes that certification system useless.  Worse, it means that any user held hostage to the certification system would have to wait 2 to 3 months before utilizing a critical bug fix, unquestionably an untenable situation.  

-- roschler

The Evernote Web interface keeps getting better and more attractive each version.  Still, there are two minor changes I'd like to see.

1) Have the Notebook and Tag trees in the left hand pane be collapsed initially or create an account setting so that you can specify that if you want.  For those of us with huge Tag lists, this speeds things up considerably.

2) On a high resolution monitor it is hard (at least for me) to quickly differentiate and locate the shared notebooks because of the notebook icon colors and size.  It would be great if the icon for shared notebooks were a different color than non-shared notebooks, like they are in the Window client.

-- roschler

A big group thank you to all of you for your kind comments both here on this thread and on The Elephant Channel post.  It means a lot to me!

-- roschler

I love the interviews Jason Calacanis does and this one is no exception.  It's a fun, juicy, and informative interview with Phil Libin (CEO of Evernote if you have been trapped in a transporter buffer loop for the last 7 years):

http://thisweekin.co...note-twist-320/

Here's a Table of Contents:

0:40 Welcome to this live TWiST from RocketSpace! On today’s show we have Phil Libin, CEO of RocketSpace, stick with us!
2:00 How is it as an entrepreneur knowing everyone in this room is using your product?
2:15 How many users do you have now?
3:30 How many employees do you have now?
4:00 How long ago were you a 10 employee business?
4:30 Was there a time that you thought about pulling the plug on Evernote?
5:30 Did the iPad have a huge effect on your business?
7:30 Why have you guys decided to be on every platform possible?
8:15 So you took the opposite path as Zuckerberg?
10:00 Who do you feel is your competition?
12:15 When should you use Evernote? When should you use Google Docs?
14:00 Do you think the next generation of the workforce has more fluidity in using multiple tools?
15:00 What do you say to people who say, “We have to be in the email business!”
16:45 What is an example of the technology getting a product completely wrong in terms of working with your brain?
18:30 How critical was the Skitch acquisition to you guys?
20:45 Do you think it is your job to give people what they need and ignore what they say they want?
21:55 By information rich, do you mean that people are at times overly intense?
24:20 Do you think the apology letter Apple released after Apple Maps was appropriate?
25:50 Thanks to NewRelic for sponsoring the program. Go to newrelic.com/thisweekin for a free TWiST T Shirt
26:25 Thanks to SnapTerms, visit snapterms.com and enter the code TWiST for a free NDA with every order
27:40 Do people expect just as much from as a freemium service as a paid one? Is it justified?
29:10 What percentage of people pay for Evernote with cash?
30:45 How is Evernote Business doing?
31:35 How do you charge for that?
32:15 What does the Business version offer that the regular version doesn’t?
38:30 How hard has it been to scale Evernote? How is it different? What have you learned?
40:20 What do you think about Windows 8?
44:45 What do you think Window’s should have called the Surface?
46:20 Do you ever see Evernote creating its own hardware?
48:45 How does Moleskin Notebook work?
51:00 What was the biggest mistake you made in your first business plan?
55:40 What do you think Google Glass will do for Evernote moving forward?
57:50 What could Evernote do with Google Glass?
59:45 What parts of the brain has Evernote failed to take full advantage of up to this point?
64:40 Is there a danger that Evernote is actually dumbing us down by not taking full advantage of our brain?
69:40 Can you talk a little bit about Evernote’s user testing?
72:15 Can you explain how/why you almost shut Evernote down?
73:30 Why do you think you sucked at pitching back in the day?
76:30 Do you think there is a benefit in a tool that helps you forget things?
77:40 When did you know that Evernote was more of a niche tool?
82:45 How much does audio and voice play into Evernote today?
85:50 How much of your $250M in funding did you actually need?
90:00 Thanks to Rocketspace, NewRelic and SnapTerms for helping ud put on this live episode
==============

Not in the list is some plain honest talk about the Skitch makeover that blew up on them.  Phil's honesty is unusual, as usual, and refreshing.

-- roschler

Advice like that doesn't come free. I will save some room for waffles tomorrow. I believe FedEx delivers overnight

Waffles! 10 stars for Waffles with strawberries and cream!

-- roschler

Hello everyone,

BitQwik is now officially in the Evernote Trunk, in the Productivity section:

http://trunk.evernot...bitqwik/windows

I am very happy about this and wish to offer a personal thanks to Gervis, the Evermpte Trunk Manager, for the helpful suggestions he gave me that led to critical improvements to the product.  

-- roschler

@MediaFred,

I think the easiest line that can be drawn is between retrieving and cataloging or said differently, being a hoarder or a librarian.  If you just want to use Evernote as a giant info repository and your retrieval operations are strictly the "just find it" kind, you can easily get by with little or no tags at all thanks to Evernote's comprehensive search.  If however you want to be able to filter your searches easily by a particular trait or topic, or if you have a need for maintaining your information in a manner akin to a catalog, then tags become an invaluable tool.  After a month or two of usage you'll find out pretty quickly whether or not you need them.  However, if you are sure up front that you are a librarian and not just a hoarder and you create notes frequently (something that happens blindingly fast if you use the web clipper a lot), you'll save yourself a massive, tedious headache later on by tagging now rather than going back and tagging a slew of previously untagged notes.

Another sure sign that you need to get tagging is if you find yourself creating too many notebooks and notebook stacks or constantly shifting them around.  Remember, notebooks can only be "one level deep" as part of a stack and you cannot brachiate your notebook hierarchy further.  Tags do not have that limitation, lending themselves to deeply nested trees that can become an ontology onto themselves.

-- roschler

I think another way to do the mental metrics is this.  Is it worth $5 to support the company that?:

• Does not sell your account usage patterns (mine them for contextual ads)
• Does not even let their own staff look at your notes unless you give them express permission to do so during a tech support incident
• Physically destroys the hard disks that contain your data when they go bad and need replacement, for extra security
• Has publicly stated their intent to be a 100-year company so your grandchildren (and you will have them) can see your musty, old, yet still intact notes
• And (insert every other major Evernote feature here)...

-- roschler

Voted! (Best Mobile Application and Best CEO)

-- roschler

Is this too archaic?  I wonder if Evernote should offer people a service you pay a few bucks for to get your whole database on a DVD with the option of expedited shipping?  It could even come with a little Autorun program to backup your existing files, copy over the DVD ones, sync the fresh copy by grabbing all new notes from your old files that occurred while waiting for the shipment, and you're good to go.

-- roschler

We all have creepy accounts then

Don't you have a note from the future on the day the hundred year company ends?

Seriously (?), though, Muad'dib's sister, Alia, used to send him messages from the future, so I kind of think of my account as fulfilling that sci-fi vision! I quite like the current system, but I can certainly see how it would be ill-suited for some GTD implementations. As mentioned elsewhere (see link to my website in my sig), I prefer the date in the title.

Hello GrumpyMonkey,

I think your mobile device is malfunctioning again.  It's not auto-adding the proper message signature anymore, which I have included below:

"-- This message sent from my Sandworm e-Reader from a local Spice planet belonging to House Atreides"



-- roschler

Evernote's head of Data Products, Mark Ayzenshtat, announced a major new feature for the Public API in the video linked to below: Related notes, notebooks, and tags.  In the video he offers a quick usage example for developers, that of a utility that integrates with your E-mail, showing you notes related to the E-mail you are currently viewing:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=26m58s

I suggest watching the whole video.  It's a rapid-fire entertaining and informative look at the thought processes and principles behind Evernote's analysis of user usage patterns and the new features that analysis creates:



-- roschler

The Evernote YouTube video channel just published a fascinating video featuring a talk given by Mark Ayzenshtat, Evernote's head of Data Products.  Data Products in this context is the analysis of Evernote usage patterns to increase Evernote's effectiveness as an extension of your brain.  Below is the video and below that is a table of contents with jump links into the video highlighting key parts of the talk.  At the very bottom is a link to "Data JuJitsu", the free downloadable book Mark mentions for those that are interested in the field of big data analysis:



Table Of Contents (Jump Links)

* Remove all incentives except user delight:  

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=8m56s

*At Evernote the customer (and their data) is not the product, the product is the product unlike Facebook, etc.:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=10m20s

*Design principles behind Evernote's architectural decisions:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=12m52s

* Your privacy at Evernote.  By default, Evernote employees can't see the contents of your notes.  Only tech support can and only after you grant them consent:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=16m46s

* Specific features as a result of Data Products analysis:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=20m30s

• Note Auto-Titles
• Smart Filing in the Web Clipper
• Related Notes in Web Clipper and Clearly

* Public API will now have related notes, notebooks, and tags.  This new API call opens up new vistas for exciting new applications.  For example, a related notes utility that integrates with your E-mail, showing you notes related to the E-mail you are currently viewing:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=26m58s

* A peek at what's next for Evernote and Data Products, solving the problem of hard to find notes:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=29m40s

* Q & A with the audience:

http://youtu.be/pLMvoH-FRlc?t=34m0s

Resources mentioned:

"Data Jujitsu: The Art of Turning Data into Product" by J Patil.  Link to page for free download below:

http://oreilly.com/d...ata-jujitsu.csp

DJ Patil is the former head of Data Products at LinkedIn, currently at GreyLock:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/dpatil

Book blurb: "The art of using multiple data elements in clever ways to solve iterative problems that, when combined, solve a data problem that might otherwise be intractable."

-- roschler

Hello everyone,

This is something I've been thinking about on and off for a while since I started using Evernote and I'm betting a few of you have too.  Since this is The Lounge I'm taking the liberty of writing it as a sci-fi blurb in the form of a future news report.

"May 16, 2024: Citizens of the global web were shocked today when the only information available on their Google Glasses was a looping message about a devastating attack on several of the global data centers that are most critical to the global Web's operation.  For those with Kurzweil cerebral cortex implants this was especially debilitating as many of them had trouble navigating their environments due to vertigo induced by faulty augmented reality enhancement modules, that were unable to communicate with their update servers.  The synchronized attack was carried about by several of the most notorious digital anarchy groups, destroying not one but all the linked colocated servers at the heart of the global Web and leaving the mega-corporations that owned them without a single valid backup.

The Global Internet Consortium has asked all citizens to remain calm during this terrible event and have announced a plan to repair the damage.  The plan involves a coordinated rebuild effort with the help of the 4.2 billion strong Evernote user base.  If you are member of that group please access your priority one emergency Inbox provided to you by your local government for further information.  Those Inboxes run on legacy government servers and therefore are still operational during this catastrophe.  If you are reading this message then you have access to these servers that survived the attack and should see Global Directive 4.6.0.7670, the Evernote Repair and Rebuild initiative.  We ask that you provide temporary full access the locally synchronized notebooks in your Evernote account.  Only trusted mega-A.I. supercomputers will see your information (triple certified with a 10+ morality/ethics rating) and in a format that no human can understand.  These trusted servers will rebuild the Web from your combined Evernote Note stores.  With your help we expect to have the Web up and running again in a few days, saving countless lives and minimizing the damage to the global economy.

-- Office of The Global Internet Consortium"