Making sense of all the Evernote notes

[noduslabs 10]

I have a lot of notes in my Evernote folders and sometimes I need to have a sort of overview that shows me what they're all about and how they connect. To address this problem I created an open source tool that can visualize the text contained inside the notes as a graph network, so you can see the main terms, how they connect, and the main topics inside. A bit like a tag cloud but with the added context. I thought I'd post it here in case you're interested as over the last years it has been updated quite a lot and has a lot of features like sharing, comparing the different folders, identifying the narrative shifts, etc. Here it is: www.infranodus.com

Let me know if you're looking for some specific features as I would be happy to add them to this tool...

 

 

 

[gazumped 9,305]

Hi.  I have used this app a few times since you first posted in 2015.  It seems very capable,  though I haven't found a specific use for the additional insights.  Thanks for the reminder though - I have a current project to collect events at different venues around the UK over the next couple of years and this might help give me new perspectives...

[Newton M. 1]

Hi, Noduslab! Thanks for sharing it here again. Since I didn't catch it the first time you posted, I'm looking forward to trying it out with some of the lengthy notes I have in my Evernote folders. That said, congratulations on building the tool, and keeping it open source. I haven't had time to explore properly yet, but after watching all the videos on your site, I plan to try it out in the coming days. I confess that I was full of ideas.

[Sayre Ambrosio 402]

10 hours ago, noduslabs said:

I have a lot of notes in my Evernote folders and sometimes I need to have a sort of overview that shows me what they're all about and how they connect. To address this problem I created an open source tool that can visualize the text contained inside the notes as a graph network, so you can see the main terms, how they connect, and the main topics inside. A bit like a tag cloud but with the added context. I thought I'd post it here in case you're interested as over the last years it has been updated quite a lot and has a lot of features like sharing, comparing the different folders, identifying the narrative shifts, etc. Here it is: www.infranodus.com

Let me know if you're looking for some specific features as I would be happy to add them to this tool...

 

 

 

This looks really interesting. Thank you for sharing it again. Look forward to checking it out.

[noduslabs 10]

Yes I’m going to put out some interesting use cases with my own Evernote notes. 

Another cool feature is if you Google using InfraNodus — the button next to the edit after you log in — it gives a pretty good representation of a topic that interests you (even if it’s just your own name:) and helps you explore some relevant information along the way. 

https://noduslabs.com/features/overload/

 

[Newton M. 1]

18 hours ago, noduslabs said:

Yes I’m going to put out some interesting use cases with my own Evernote notes.

Please,  do it! For sure will highlight some cool things we can do using both tools.

[Boris Rusev 0]

I have a probably silly question, since I just tested Evernote today, for the first time. I am very much interested in InfraNodus, so my only question is how do you use it on your Evernote notes? It's not a plugin, so I guess I should export my nodes? But how?

[gazumped 9,305]

On 10/30/2019 at 12:33 AM, Boris Rusev said:

I have a probably silly question, since I just tested Evernote today, for the first time. I am very much interested in InfraNodus, so my only question is how do you use it on your Evernote notes? It's not a plugin, so I guess I should export my nodes? But how?

You need to sign up with InfraNodus and in that process you'll give it access to a subset of your notes.  It'll do its magic and show you any linkages it finds.  It might be unwise to use this for anything serious as yet though - you're new to Evernote and just getting to use this third-party add-in.  Get some notes together and see what sort of analysis results.  If it seems useful you may be able to try it out on a real world task in a few weeks...

[noduslabs 10]

Dear friends!

I have dramatically improved the Evernote note visualization app, so now you can also see not only the graph of your notes' content, but also how they are connected.

Here is a short video about this new functionality: 

 

And if you're interested to try it out, log on to https://infranodus.com 

It does cost €9 / month to use the app to support the development efforts, because we don't have any external funding or investors (this is on purpose to avoid playing the capitalist startup "hot potato" game). But we do have a 14-day money-back guarantee, so if you find the app not useful, we will refund you immediately. However, I'm pretty sure you'll find it much more useful than that 

[NoteNerd3000 8]

Dear @noduslabs, thank you for sharing this tool - that's awesome!

Question for you: can I use the tool to visualize my Evernotes based on my own tags that I have created within Evernote?

I have a lot of Evernote tags, and my notes all have multiple tags associated with each note. So, I want to be able to visualize how the tags of each note are connected.

This would help guide my train of thought, as I read a note, see all the ways in which it could branch off because it is connected to various tags, and then if I pick a tag, I can see all the notes related to that tag.

Based on the YouTube video, it seems that the Infranodus tool automatically creates associations/links based on the title, text within the body, and/or manually created "hashtags" (e.g. #topic1, #topic2) that one would write in each note. But in my case, I already have Evernote tags and simply want a way to visualize the link between my notes and the tags.

Is this possible?

Thank you!

[PinkElephant 4,650]

You better go to the website of that offer, and contact their support.

I think it is an interesting approach - however it does not come for free, and on the larger plans, the subscription fee is significant.

[gazumped 9,305]

On 7/18/2022 at 9:34 PM, NoteNerd3000 said:

I want to be able to visualize how the tags of each note are connected.

I'm not sure that it will be possible to separate tags from notes - infranodus does allow you to import Evernote notes, and will indicate connections between concepts in the notes.  The app is not specifically designed to parse the Evernote tag hierarchy though - the best way to find out what it can do for you would be to download a trial version (I believe they still offer a free trial) and copy a small number of notes into a test notebook to see what happens.

You may be overthinking the whole tagging concept though - I've found through long experience that it is impractical to apply every possible tag to a note.  Rather than try to tag notes into coherent concept groups,  I'll aim for broad categories and if I need information on a particular subject I'll search for keywords which will already be part of the note body anyway - space,  spacex,  orbit for scientific topics for example.

Anyway - try it and see.  There are some very helpful Youtube videos which should give you more of an idea how Infranodus works...

[NoteNerd3000 8]

Thank you both for the reply! I got the free trial.

By default, it seems to have an algorithm that tries to pick commonly used words or phrases and treats those as "nodes." Which is interesting because it picked very uninteresting words for me...

I would prefer to create my own nodes, but as you both mentioned, Infranodus can't understand the Evernote heirarchy.

What Infranodus does work with are built in #hashtags directly in the body of my note. So the only way to achieve this for now would be to always manually add a hashtag symbol "#" followed by the name of the tag in the body of my note (for each tag I want Infranodus to recognize), and then also add the Evernote tag to the note for use within Evernote. 

Seems quite cumbersome for retroactively applying to hundreds of notes unless there's an automated way to do it (which I can't think of at the moment).

Maybe Infranodus is also an overkill for what I need.

My goal is - since I am working on a standup comedy script - is I have hundreds of notes (containing a single joke idea). Each note has multiple tags indicating what topics the joke is related to (e.g. family, marriage, going to the doctor, etc.). 

A cool way to come up with the flow of the script would be to click on a note, and then in order to figure out what the next joke could be, to click on one of the tags (or nodes in Infranodus), and see what all jokes exist within that tag, quickly scan through them, and then pick one. And continue the process.

For example, let's say I dive into a joke about how I hate going for long shopping trips with family because they end up maxing out my credit card. Well, that joke is about #shopping, #family, #money. So, it would be fun to quickly click on "#shopping" and see if there are any good follow-ups where I would talk about other things related to shopping. Or perhaps there's another funny story about #family I'd rather bring up next.

What I'm looking for is having a quick and easy way to hop between potential topics that could follow after the current note.

I think Infranodus can do this, but it would require some effort since it cannot read Evernote tags at the moment.

 

[gazumped 9,305]

2 hours ago, NoteNerd3000 said:

it would require some effort since it cannot read Evernote tags at the moment

As you're discovering,  there really ain't no such thing as a free lunch (tanstaafl) - you need to be an expert user of most software for it to save you a lot of time in processing,  and the only way you get to be an expert is spending a lot of time learning stuff... (and if my experience is anything to go by - making mistakes!)

Another app Filterize will 'batch process' tags for you - you could set up some rules to add (forinstance) a "#shopping" hashtag to the body of any note with a <shopping> tag and in the same process check for all your other tags and add suitable hashtags.  That's something called parameterization,  which is a paid-for feature,  but might be worth signing up to while you convert your existing database over - if that's what you decide to do...

Good luck with your quest anyway - and do let us know if/ when you get airtime!!

[NoteNerd3000 8]

@gazumpedThanks so much for the link to Filterize! That sounds exactly like what I need! I gave Infranodus a shot and it seems to work the way I was hoping, so now I just need to duplicate all the Evernote tags as hashtags in my notes. Haha I have much to learn about comedy, so I wouldn't hold my breath for airtime 😅

For anyone else that may come upon this thread: Infranodus is indeed able to display only your hashtags as nodes, rather than its own auto-generated nodes based on the text it finds in your notes. I manually added some hashtags to a bunch of my notes on infranodus to test it out, it actually works quite well! Once you load the data into infranodus and see the graph, there is a setting under the "Language processing" tab called "Show as Nodes." Make sure "only hashtags" is selected for that option, and voila!