A possible compromise for offline note access

[ymatto 14]

I hope a more robust solution for more complete offline access to notes is already in works, but I thought I'd put forth a suggestion that might serve as a reasonable compromise for some needs -- specifically for the iPhone.

For myself, one reason I really want full offline notes is that I assume a more browsing-centric UI would come with it. If you look at notes apps going back to the Palm Pilot, notes apps have always been streamlined to make it very quick to add notes and browse notes to find what you need. In fact in many cases, the majority of the content of the note is in the title for me (as in quick to-do items). On the Palm, to find a note I entered yesterday (let's say in a certain category), I would do the following:

- Launch Notes

- Tap the category menu to select where I put the note

- Immediately see my note near the top of a dense list view of that category

- Tap to instantly open up the locally-stored note

Very quick!

The iPhone Evernote app is actually already great for adding new notes, but I find the interface for *finding* notes really cumbersome. If I'm trying to do a deep search for something, it works just fine, but if I just want to go back and look at a note I made yesterday, I have to do the following steps:

- Launch Evernote

- Tap "Notes"

- Tap the search parameters bar

- Select the Notebook menu to select where I put the note

- Tap to go back to the results page

- Wait for a network search to complete

- Tap and wait for the note to download from the server

That's a lot of tapping, and 2 slow network operations! As a result, I'm always finding myself reluctant to pull up notes in Evernote for iPhone unless I really have to, preferring to just wait until I get back to my PC. Why can't it be as quick and handy as my old Palm was, with all the power of Evernote added?

It seems that this could be fixed by adding 2 things: a browsing-driven UI, and local syncing of *just note titles* (not the contents of the notes). By syncing the titles, the first of the network operations could be eliminated, only forcing you to use the network to pull down the actual note content. And the browsing-based UI would allow me to get to what I'm looking for quickly, when I don't need the full power of a multi-parameter search (which is great in some cases, don't get me wrong!) The great thing is that the iPhone is beautifully set up for a browser UI, using the iPod model. Notebooks (and saved searches!) at the top level, with notes beneath. This would then cut my operation down to:

- Launch Evernote

- Tap "Browse" (or better, let Evernote remember this is where I left off, since I will almost always use this mode)

- Tap the notebook where I put my note

- Immediately see my note in a locally-stored list

- Tap the note and wait for it to load from the server

Thanks for listening!

[shollomon 0]

What the Evernote guys wanted to make (I think) was a note system that focused on the OCR aspects of their service. Take a picture of a label, a business card, a sign, a book cover or a wine label and be able to retrieve it by searching. Text notes you entered for yourself were an afterthought of sorts. I'm sure that's not entirely correct, but I'm pretty confident they thought the OCR thing would be the BIG DEAL.

For myself and many others, text notes are much more important than pictures of stuff with words on it.

They also assumed that internet connections were fast. That's usually wrong on a smart phone even with 3G service.

So what do we need, we need a local note store. I don't know about you, but my 16 gig iPhone will hold a heck of a lot of notes. Back when I used an ATT Tilt it had a memory card that held 32 gig of whatever, even more notes. Smart phone users have tons of space to store notes on, even picture notes. A client that made use of this local storage and only synced changes would, it seems to me, save bandwidth while providing the users a better experience.

Local notes storage please. I'd pay for that app.

[lucianofuentes 1]

I know what you mean. The iPhone app is promising but it seems to overestimate real-world network speeds. For me, it even feels a little sluggish as if it's taxing the iPhone hardware a little. This might not be a bad thing though, if it means the software will improve as newer models and better networks make it snappier.

Have you tried accessing the Evernote mobile site through the iPhone Safari browser? I actually have it bookmarked directly (with it's own icon) right next to the icon for the app itself. I find this most useful for the situations you describe where you just want a fast chronological view of recent notes.

I mostly use the app to capture photo/voice notes, and the browser version for quick lookups. My most common use is for saving information into Evernote from my desktop that is going to be required out and about later that day or night. The browser version suits this use much better.

*Edit* I also forgot to mention.. the browser version has a handy saved search drop down built in. I have a couple of saved searches that I know I'll find useful when I'm mobile. I name them with a 00, 01, 02 etc system so they are conveniently located at the top of the saved search list. On the desktop it makes no difference but on the mobille version it helps a great deal.

[ymatto 14]

Have you tried accessing the Evernote mobile site through the iPhone Safari browser? I actually have it bookmarked directly (with it's own icon) right next to the icon for the app itself. I find this most useful for the situations you describe where you just want a fast chronological view of recent notes.

Well, that does one specific thing: showing a list of recent notes. No editing, no other options.

I tend to agree that the iPhone app seems set up primarily for taking pictures of stuff and being able to search through them later. I do actually really like this functionality, but I'd say it's 5% of my actual usage. I'd just really like a tab in the Evernote app that lets me quickly look through my stuff without network hits and without tapping back and forth through search-mode menus. I guess I just kind of assumed this would be added soon, since it's the core of basic notes functionality (and the desktop apps are awesome for this) and the iPhone has great developer hooks for this sort of interface.

I can kind of understand that there are bandwidth issues with full syncing to the iPhone, and issues as well with formatting (the desktop apps can store, display, and edit anything -- the iPhone can't necessarily, so can you trust it to store a full sync?). So that's why I'm putting forth this idea of syncing the information that an iPhone can handle -- titles -- and enable a quick, simple browsing interface to look through them, while leaving the actual content to the server (except when favorited).

Of course it would be even better if it were feasible to make everything sync'd, such that I never have to deal with the situation of not being able to get to that critical piece of information just when I happen to not have a net connection (which happens rather a lot it seems).

[ymatto 14]

Local notes storage please. I'd pay for that app.

If it came with a really great UI, then yes, I'd actually pay quite a lot for that.

[markkcurtis 0]

Local notes storage please. I'd pay for that app.

If it came with a really great UI, then yes, I'd actually pay quite a lot for that.

Agreed.

[dirtbagg 3]

Favorites is the current feature for offline viewing. It has many obvious limitations. First among those limitations, for me, is the need to individually open a note on the iPhone and then select it as a favorite. It would be a big help if favorites were recognized and selectable on the web or desktop versions of Evernote. If I could select (or deselect) a number of notes on the desktop and set them as favorites I'd be very pleased.

Oh, and a list view on the iPhone as well...

[Julian 40]

I'd like to participate in this discussion because the iPhone is likely to be my next device and offline working is the only way I want to work but unfortunately I don't have an iPhone yet so I'd be grateful if someone could fill me in on a few details regarding how things work right now. (I currently have a Windows Mobile device, an HTC Touch Cruise. I have installed Evernote on my Touch Cruise as an experiment but of course, without even the favourites feature on WM, Evernote on WM is a total no-go as far as off-line use is concerned.)

On my WM device the very first thing that Evernote does when launched is try to initiate a data connection. If I had the iPhone version (on an iPhone obviously!) and every note in my one and only notebook is marked as a favourite then I'd be grateful for the answers to the following:

1) Will Evernote still try to connect to the internet on startup?

2) If no then are there other circumstances that cause Evernote to try to initiate a network connection during use?

3) If Evernote does try to initiate a data connection then what does that look like on the iPhone? On my Touch Cruise I get a popup window from Windows Mobile that warns me that it's initiating a data connection and, if I'm quick, I get the chance to cancel. Is there a similar popup warning on the iPhone or is the connection initiated totally silently with no ability to prevent it?

Thanks.

- Julian

[ronaldvr 0]

I started using Evernote as a tool of always having my notes at hand. I was pointed out to this program via other Iphone users using this software. It seems to work fine if you are using a PC, but the version for the Iphone turned out to be a big disappointment as it does not have off line usage. When I am over in a foreighn country I however want to have the ability to read my notes without a connection. Today I discovered that to do this I need to mark my notes as favorite on the Iphone one by one. Quite annoying, but now my problems: it does not show my notes when I work in flightmode (no connections). I have opened all my notes, checked that it was a favorite and I did even perform a refresh. In the start screen in flight mode I see text, but on a lot of the notes when I open then I don't see the text at all (some of them do though). Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Further question: is synchronization working with marking notes as favorite? As I and I am sure a lot of others want to have off line usage of evernote and syncing on request, which is not available (is that planned in version 3.0 for the Iphone?) I am using Evernote mainly on my home and office computer, we are using the work around to mark notes as favorites. Are all items marked as favorite however synchronized automatically?

[jesseftw 0]

I think it's totally insane that this app doesn't at least give you the option to store text notes locally on your Blackberry device. I am constantly finding myself out of a connection in the mountains, on the subway, in the parking garage, in a subterranean conference/classroom. Let me worry about my device storage limits. It'd be great if the Text Note could integrate with the Blackberry's MemoPad, the Snapshot with the Camera's Pictures, the Audio Note with the Voice Note Recorder's Voice Notes.

It doesn't seem like it'd be that difficult to put it all together. Offline access to my notes on my Blackberry would definitely convince me to upgrade to a paid account. It's too much of a pain to manage two note systems. So, until I don't feel like I'm going to be stranded somewhere without an internet connection and without access to my notes that contain the map back to civilization, I'll be managing my notes on my device.

[shollomon 0]

They want to sell a service, not provide an app that works without the service. However, I would pay for an offline app, that only synced when I told it to, and on which I could do everything the current service does (absent OCR) without the service.

[Julian 40]

They want to sell a service, not provide an app that works without the service. However, I would pay for an offline app, that only synced when I told it to, and on which I could do everything the current service does (absent OCR) without the service.

Excellent point. There are also commercial issues at stake and, although I desperately need full offline working, I also fully accept that Evernote need to make a living.

A few alternatives occur to me:

1) Make the offline-capable version of the mobile clients paid-for versions. This at least gets some revenue but I suspect isn't optimal for evernote since their business model seems to be built around annual recurring fees and this does tend to be a more stable and predictable business model so I can see why they prefer it.

2) At least on the iPhone I think that I saw that one of the new features is the ability for apps to manage annual subscriptions so they could still have an offline-capable mobile client that had an annual subscription totally independent of uploading anything to the web site. For other mobile platforms (and maybe for the iPhone too if my memory of that new 3.0 feature is wrong) then they could just have some licensing scheme with time-limited keys so that the user needs to repurchase a key every year. Anti-virus software companies do this with the subscriptions for their PC security suites all the time (e.g. Kaspersky which I use).

3) I would think that most people using Evernote on their mobile device would want to synchronise with their main PC, at least when they recharge their device at night. They could enforce syncing via the EN web site so, even if the offline-capable client remains free, data upload will still happen on a daily basis, or at worst weekly as device run time per charge improves, so that will still trigger subscription charges/revenue just as now (won't it?).

I've left the above but by the time I got to (3) I'm thinking that even if the client is kept free then there is very minimal loss-of-revenue issue here, it would occur for the users that only ever want to keep data on the mobile device and never sync it to a main PC which I would assume would be a tiny percentage of users (but I could be completely wrong there). If it is a tiny percentage then implementing option (1) above (a one-time purchase cost) would probably more than offset the loss.

- Julian

[ymatto 14]

Excellent point. There are also commercial issues at stake and, although I desperately need full offline working, I also fully accept that Evernote need to make a living.

Yeah, I am absolutely willing to pay for a "premium" version of Evernote for iPhone that includes offline browsing/editing (and the browsing UI to go with it). Although that said, I also am already a Premium subscriber and consider syncing across clients to be one of the primary features of Evernote, so I would never consider using Evernote only as a local app.

In fact, if I didn't care about syncing, I would have long since moved on to one of the many notes apps that are local-storage based and have wonderful, easy-to-use browsing/editing UIs!

[gabenhils 0]

I was honestly shocked to discover that notes weren't available offline. I feel mislead. Granted, I haven't paid for this app yet, because I wanted to test it first. But I had intended to use this professionally and expected that I would want to upgrade to premium. But not having my notes available offline on my ipod touch is just unthinkable - that's the whole point! Bottom line is the iphone/ipod touch app is lousy. It's slow, even on a network, and useless when not. Selecting every note that I may need as a favorite isn't a solution.

[GregWoods 0]

Forget compromise, the mobile app needs offline access to notes.

I've already paid for PhatNotes for Pocket PC (phone), and neither the desktop or mobile app have moved with the times (searching and UI is very old fashioned, no web access).

Evernote is superb by comparison, but even with an 'unlimited' 3G data allowance, my notes are frequently unavailable on the device due to bad connection in the UK.

I'd certainly pay a one-off for this, but the days of a £30 mobile application are now over. Thanks Apple

[Julian 40]

Forget compromise, the mobile app needs offline access to notes.

I've already paid for PhatNotes for Pocket PC (phone), and neither the desktop or mobile app have moved with the times (searching and UI is very old fashioned, no web access).

Evernote is superb by comparison, but even with an 'unlimited' 3G data allowance, my notes are frequently unavailable on the device due to bad connection in the UK.

I'd certainly pay a one-off for this, but the days of a £30 mobile application are now over. Thanks Apple

I agree with everything you say. I didn't start this thread but maybe it should have been entitled "A possible INTERIM compromise for offline note access".

Evernote staff have posted in a few places that it would be a huge project to fully implement offline note access on all clients, and they are sceptical that some of the current range of devices are up to it. In this case then I ask myself, would I rather live with the current situation for 6 or 9 months or maybe even longer before a full offline client comes out or would I like some partial fixes ASAP while they work on full offline access.

Personally I don't think that Evernote can afford to do nothing in this area for 6 months or more because they leave the door open for people like me to move to a competitor and judging by the amount of posting on this topic there are lots of other people like us. I will almost certainly be moving to an iPhone so that is the platform I care about. Right now I haven't found a workable alternative that is strong on both the client device and the desktop PC side but I suspect it's only a matter of time.

- Julian

[ymatto 14]

I agree with everything you say. I didn't start this thread but maybe it should have been entitled "A possible INTERIM compromise for offline note access".

Yup, that's just what I meant. I hope Evernote is already working on a more robust solution, but at the least I wanted to put forth something that might be easier to do in the meantime (or perhaps would be something Evernote would consider, if it isn't already working on something).