(Archived) Using Evernote as a gift registry

[jayp 0]

So this feature request will probably never happen, but the functionality is so close, I'm wondering if it's possible.

I already use Evernote to keep lists of gift's that I might want to buy for certain people.

In a flash of genius this morning, I got really excited when I thought I could make a public notebook with items I wanted myself, and then share them the URL with family or friends. It would be an awesome wishlist, since Evernote is so good at capturing information.

The problem quickly dawned on me. There's no way for others to "claim" a gift. Thus nothing prevents different people from buying the same gift repeatedly. It would be really helpful if there was a way to claim a gift.

I'm guessing there has to be wider application for a feature to have a snowball's chance in hell of making into the Evernote. Thus, you might allow users to create one or several custom fields that could be interacted with on the website by others. The possibilities here become enormous for how people could use EN creatively. Another option would be to just allow user comments for a given note in public notebooks, but the caveat is that you'd need to allow (perhaps optionally), both the comments to be anonymous* and the owner of the notebook to hide all comments so that one can't see if a gift is reserved. (*You could require people to register for an account to leave a comment, but allow them to hide their name.)

The possibilities are great. Evernote becomes a super easy way to publish snippets on the web that others can interact with. Heck, I think it would be interesting to even consider something like a public notebook type that is also a "wiki" format that others (either anyone or just users you gave permission to) could interact with. You could use this for coordinating gifts, who's bringing what to a picnic or party, anything.

And regardless of how to control access (whether truly anonymous or sign up for an account first), you'd get a tremendous amount of exposure of your product to other people who may not have used it or seen it before. Even if they've seen it and don't think they need it, you'll convert these people into users from seeing how their friends and family are successfully using Evernote.

Any thoughts from the Evernote devs?

[engberg 89]

Thanks for the feedback. We're hard at work on expanding our options for sharing and collaborating with other people. I think that this may fit into your idea ... you'd be able to share a notebook with other people who have permissions to edit/delete those notes via the web, and they could delete or annotate any entries that they'd purchased.

It might not be quite as fancy as some of those dedicated registry systems on the web, but it could probably get the job done.

Thanks for the feedback.

[jayp 0]

That sounds awesome. The only trick is that I would need to the option of not seeing who left a comment or if they deleted the note, not knowing who deleted it. In fact, it would really be nice if this could be hidden such that I wouldn't know that a gift had been spoken for... Perhaps an annotated comment, that would be hidden from the creator, would be the best way. I know you don't want to do anything too hard, but think about it since it sounds like you're going to get 99.5% of the way there with the features you're already planning.

And I would think that some time of very basic security might help, either from them signing up for a free account just to validate who they are on the web or a simple password to delete notes. That way, people that I send an email out to can do what they want, but people can't delete or annotate notes as a prank.

[dvdmon 0]

jayp, my question to you is - why are you trying to fit a round peg into a square hole? ;-) Really, Evernote is great and can be used for tons of stuff, but there are some applications where a deadicated specialized tool is going to work worlds better. Really you don't need to use Evernote for everything. I know some people think that trying to have a universal tool/service for everything makes things simpler, but sometimes it can make it a lot harder because you are trying to get it to do things that it wasn't really made to do...

[jayp 0]

While this is a fine point in general, what you fail to see is that current tools are way more difficult than they should be. At least all the tools I've found. For example, Amazon's gift registry is great, as long as every gift you want is sold through Amazon. And other services, like WishCentral that I've used, show lots of ads and have a generally cumbersome interface. So while I would love to use a specialized tool, I haven't found a good one. Evernote make's it so easy to capture information, including pictures, that it would be effortless to set this up and add ideas to it over time. No specialized tool to mess with. No extra website to log into.

[dvdmon 0]

While this is a fine point in general, what you fail to see is that current tools are way more difficult than they should be. At least all the tools I've found. For example, Amazon's gift registry is great, as long as every gift you want is sold through Amazon. And other services, like WishCentral that I've used, show lots of ads and have a generally cumbersome interface. So while I would love to use a specialized tool, I haven't found a good one. Evernote make's it so easy to capture information, including pictures, that it would be effortless to set this up and add ideas to it over time. No specialized tool to mess with. No extra website to log into.

I haven't looked at registries in a while, and Amazon does sell a heck of a lot of stuff, but that aside, seems like you need something much more structured than Evernote is with colaboration features built in. If you can offload some of this stuff to a third party (best man, etc.?) you could set up a Yahoo! Group and just send this intermediary links to the items. He could get all your wedding guests in into the Yahoo! Group, then create one database for people to post what they'd bought and one to hold your list of items - or he could use the links feature to do that. Either way, he would have to maintain your list, adding/editing/removing items as you sent him emails about them, and maybe even posting to the list to alert people that you were no longer looking for item X. People could add items in the database about what they bought, then your intermediary would cross off the corresponding item (or lower the needed number) in the master list. This could also then server after the wedding as a record of who bought you what, since sometimes that information can get mixed up or misplaced, etc. Anyway, just a thought - it's a lot more management, but it takes a lot off that off of your hands. The reason I suggest an intermediary doing this is of course because you're not supposed to see (let alone manage) what people are getting for you!

[jayp 0]

It's not for a wedding. I'm already married.

The real impetus is that historically, I've done a horrible job of letting family know what kinds of things I might want for birthdays and Christmas. I finally decided that a gift registry would allow me to show a large of number of suggestions, and I've used a couple of services with varying degrees of success. I also have gotten a couple of family members to do the same, and it really helps me too.

The point I was trying to make is that you could use the service for other things too. For example, let's say a family or a group of friends needed to put together a party to honor someone. The need to come up with a list of items needed, possible sources to get them, and then handle the logistics of what's been done and what hasn't and who's doing what, could all be handled by something like Evernote (doesn't have to be, but you'd want it very easy to capture the information from anywhere -- paper or digital) and then you'd just need a way for everyone to edit or collaborate existing records.

I'm sure there are other ways of using these types of features that we haven't even thought of.

[dvdmon 0]

It's not for a wedding. I'm already married.

The real impetus is that historically, I've done a horrible job of letting family know what kinds of things I might want for birthdays and Christmas. I finally decided that a gift registry would allow me to show a large of number of suggestions, and I've used a couple of services with varying degrees of success. I also have gotten a couple of family members to do the same, and it really helps me too.

The point I was trying to make is that you could use the service for other things too. For example, let's say a family or a group of friends needed to put together a party to honor someone. The need to come up with a list of items needed, possible sources to get them, and then handle the logistics of what's been done and what hasn't and who's doing what, could all be handled by something like Evernote (doesn't have to be, but you'd want it very easy to capture the information from anywhere -- paper or digital) and then you'd just need a way for everyone to edit or collaborate existing records.

I'm sure there are other ways of using these types of features that we haven't even thought of.

Added functionality can always add to the potential uses, sure, but your initial example is pretty specific. Gift registrees have a fairly specific set of requirements. Even though your other example might be able to use a similar setup, I still think this is getting well beyond the scope of what Evernote is trying to do. I'm sure we can all think of a ton of applications we'd like to build into Evernote, but do they really make sense? IE, Evernote could create a kind of Evite functionality, but how appropriate is this? Evernote is a great tool, but it's a) not perfect, and it's not a jack of all trades. I'm much more interested in Evernote perfecting it's core uses than in branching off into something well beyond it's current functionality. Colaboration is great, but let's start with just being able to allow more than one Evernote user be able to edit a single note. Doing a more complex colaboration application such as a registry or a sign-up sheet that was actually tracked in a database is a much more complex issue. If you really don't like what's out there now, you might try your hand at Zoho Creator, which allows you to create your own web applicaitons with minimal coding knowledge.

On a seperate note, regarding a gift registry, to me it sounds like you really don't need anything quite so elaborate. Just put your wishlist in a public notebook whose url you just share with your family. Unless your family is huge, why can't they just communicate with each other about what to get you. It just seems like this is one of those examples where the desire to simplify means that you actually are making things more complex for people. You might be very comfortable with these things, but it's a whole lot easier for a lot of people just to email within a small group and figure out who's going to get what. When you're dealing with 20 or more people, things get less manageable, but do you have that many people coordinating what to get you? If so, you're lucky! I feel good when I get presents from more than 5 people!

[gtr 0]

For example, Amazon's gift registry is great, as long as every gift you want is sold through Amazon.

Just as a side note, this isn't true any longer (at least for wishlists). I routinely put items from non-amazon sites in my wishlist.

http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/get-button

[jayp 0]

This is actually interesting to know. Thanks for pointing it out. Now the only question is if you really trust Amazon to learn about all your purchasing habitats. While I like them a lot and think they make buying things online about as easy and pain free as anyone, this is just one more way for them to aggregate information on their customers.