Celebrating Our 9th Anniversary

[gbarry 2,658]

Today we’re celebrating Evernote’s 9th anniversary. We’re honoring the origin of our co-founder Stepan Pachikov’s idea for Evernote, and how Evernote’s technology has impacted our lives.

To celebrate, we’re capturing and sharing community posts on social media with the #ThankYouStepan hashtag. Has Evernote helped you achieve something important in your life? We’d love to hear your story below or on social media.

If you haven’t seen our historical and celebratory posts just yet, check them out below and please share the inspiring news!

Twitter:

Facebook:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6285459381320589312

 

[DTLow 5,736]

4 minutes ago, gbarry said:

Has Evernote helped you achieve something important in your life?

Nothing specific, just the day-to-day filing of my documents/data and task management.  This is an important function in my life and I'm grateful to Evernote for simplifying the process

[gazumped 11,661]

I've told the story before,  but I started my business life as an insurance underwriter.  That's the guy who guesses* how much money to charge you to insure your <insert random valuable here>. 

As a part of this I needed to know a little bit about everything - from how do gas turbines work,  to what's decennial insurance.  And this was in an age before personal computers and electronics.  So I literally had a 'Farleyfile' - a paper library of cuttings,  correspondence,  calculations,  flow charts,  pictures,  collected over the course of my activities.  It started out as one of those old-fashioned filing cabinets...

...but over a period mushroomed out into shelves and shelves of files and folders.

Initially it was easy to get a new item and file it into place,  or add a new letter or photocopy to an existing file,  but as things got larger and larger I fell foul of the thing that bedevils filing even today:  did I put that thing about 10-year insurance policies under insurance, policy, ten, 10,  or D for decennial?

Finding anything was a but of a trial too - which shelf,  or which drawer?  And toward the end of my paper filing,  there was my 'old' stuff,  a small hoard of more recent stuff,  and my current files - three different filing systems (which often had folders of unfiled stuff parked alongside them).  All valuable data,  but pretty much unusable.  Eventually it occupied a 'library' at my home office - a small bedroom all to itself.

Over the same period of course,  personal computers were developing.  I looked into scanning the content of my files into electronic records,  but doing that commercially was impractically expensive for a long time.

Then I noticed this thing called "EverNote"

I didn't do much with it for a long time - its flexibility is in some ways a disadvantage.  Users can get to grips with applications that ask specific questions,  or do simple things - like address books or browsers.  But looking at a (pretty much) blank screen and coming up with my own system to store and manage data took a little time.  But after about a year of trials I came up with something.

I started out with a flatbed scanner,  which is a surefire introduction to a number of aches and pains as well as being a slow way to copy content.  But it did the job,  capturing old press cuttings and letters.  (I also got involved with a little DIY,  making a copy stand for my camera for items that were too big to fit onto an A4 scanner)

After a while (and a bad attack of backache) I switched to a ScanSnap and started motoring through the files.  Being able to stack 100 pages and zip through them at a (double sided) rate of 1 per second was tremendous.

It still took me another year to get through the library (I was working on other things too!) and I still have that last box of old paper lying around that I haven't yet gotten to - as well as a near 6-foot tall pile of empty file folders that I plan on taking a picture of someday.

My 'bedroom full of files' now looks more like this -

- and finding content,  or filing new stuff is pretty quick.  Plus moving my office is a lot less hassle than it used to be!

So #ThankYouStepan for helping me sort out my filing mountain.  I'm no longer an underwriter - I'm more into writing,  speaking and photography now - but everything still goes into Evernote,  and still lives on my internal hard drive,  the external backup and in the cloud.  I use it daily for both personal and business items,  and maybe lean on it a bit harder now,  as my increasing -er- 'seniority' means I sometimes seem to forget things a bit more quickly than I should.

* It was always nice to see my insurance bosses flinch whenever I say that,  but it's absolutely true.  No-one knows how many claims an insurance company is going to get in the next 18 months,  or how expensive they're going to be.  There's usually a lot of history from which you can 'project' the likely outcomes,  and once you've projected,  you can guess how many customers you're going to get,  and how much each one of them should pay.  But believe me when I say - even accountants find this sort of thing overly complicated...

[Metrodon 2,184]

Evernote is now making me feel old.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, Metrodon said:

Evernote is now making me feel old.

Evernote or @gazumped?  

[gazumped 11,661]

[jefito 5,589]

Almost 9 years on the Evernote train (first created note is 10/28/2008, though I may have played around with the earlier "ticker-tape" version). My use of Evernote keeps on, fairly steadily, in much the same way I've used it for years. It's invaluable for my work life, and very handy for my personal life. Here's to continued progress and success for the Evernote team!

@Metrodon: get over your old age...

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

20 minutes ago, jefito said:

I may have played around with the earlier "ticker-tape" version

That's before my time (at least, my time with Evernote!). Can you elaborate? Even point me to a screen shot? (I looked and couldn't find anything.)

[jefito 5,589]

12 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

That's before my time (at least, my time with Evernote!). Can you elaborate? Even point me to a screen shot? (I looked and couldn't find anything.)

The actual term is "timeline", not "ticker-tape".

I can see the old version 3 executables here: http://filehippo.com/download_evernote/history/11/

Earlier ones are here: http://www.oldapps.com/evernote.php

I can't vouch for the safety of any of these.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

Thanks, @jefito; but I don't think I want to install any old versions. The main thing I seemed to find was posts griping about the timeline being taken away around v. 3.5. Sooo familiar! I did find one screenshot with basically a strip of dates running up the right side of the window (see below; taken from https://cdn.secursoft.net/gen_screenshots/it-IT/windows/evernote-portable/large/evernote-portable-21.jpg). Is that it? (I have no idea why I'm so curious about this; it does beat working, however.)

[jefito 5,589]

Hmm, the OldApps site doesn't appear to actually have the old applications. And the version 3.0 that I downloaded from FileHippo won't install, and I don't feel like fooling around with it any more. But I think that the Time Band is the timeline thing that I was referring to. I didn't care for that, and I think I finally caught on when they dropped it in the 3.5 release (though the screen shot shows it). If you look back through old posts here, you can find some embittered commentary about the loss of this feature. Plus ca change...

[gazumped 11,661]

FWIW My source for old software seems to have a lot of options back to v3.0 in Dec 2008 - http://filehippo.com/download_evernote/history/11/ - but I'd strongly advise against trying to use any of them without very good reason: Windows has changed rather a lot since then,  much less Evernote.  Use an old computer and a long stick...

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

@jefito, thanks for trying; I apologize for wasting your time on something so very pointless! I also found some of those old expressions of outrage at the loss of the timeline, complete with threats to leave. The problem with making really useful software is that then you are apparently forbidden ever to try to change it!

@gazumped, definitely not going to install any superannuated versions. Got enough stuff around here that's years old and barely functional.... 

[gazumped 11,661]

See what you did there.  I feel your pain... 

[tomcal 18]

I found my Welcome to Evernote note, dated 3/21/08.    Actually, there are a bunch dated earlier than that, but they were imported from OneNote.   And, I remember playing around with the timeline version (reminded me of a roll of register tape).

 

 

 

Here is my second note: (I guess I figured it out, since I now have 17,827 notes)

 

 

Thanks, Stepan!!

 

[mikeinpcb 2]

I’ve actually been using EverNote for more than ten years. Can't remember exactly when I signed up, but my original "Welcome" note is dated 9-24-2006. Check it out: http://www.evernote.com/l/AAE3_oG7yNNPTqYVAPMDnVtHS4TekCYfC6A/

I don't remember which version I started with. I know for sure I was using version 1.5 back on April 1, 2007 (more than 10 years ago). That was back when EverNote had a blue theme (which I preferred) and a much different logo (shown below), long before the "green elephant" made its debut.

 

Welcome to EverNote®!
To create a note, click on the New Note  button above. Every new note is appended to the end of the endless tape.

	All Your Notes in One Place Copy/Paste or Drag/Drop any content from the web or any document.
	Take Notes in Your Favorite Format Click the "Note Type" button in new notes to create text, ink, or template notes.

 

Once you have a number of notes, you can filter your tape by categories -- just click category names to the left. Then, to see all your notes, click on the All Notes  button above.

Press F1 to learn more from our Getting Started Guide or visit www.evernote.com.