(Archived) How is Evernote different from web based e-mail?

[beimon 0]

I realize this might raise some controversy, but I would like some help in wrapping my mind around Evernote.

I've been using the service for a couple of weeks, and love Evernote's ability to search text within images of printed text.

I guess my handwriting is pretty bad, because I haven't had any luck with making my handwritten notes searchable.

The geotagging of notes seems cool, but I have a blackberry and I can't see how I can perform a location based search.

So aside from the character recognition capabilities, what does Evernote offer that is different from using your e-mail system as "your other brain"?? Both gmail and yahoo mail offer powerful search capabilities. They are accessible from various devices, and offer practically unlimited storage. There are browser plug-ins that make it very easy to e-mail web-page clippings to yourself.

The character recognition functionality is great, but the inability to extract data from the images is a slight drawback for me (e.g. scanning business cards and importing into my address book).

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to knock Evernote. I want to like it. I just haven't found the main reason I would use this instead of a web based e-mail system in combination with a decent scanner.

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.

Thanks,

- B

[venture 1]

I'd have to chew on this one a bit, but what immediately comes to mind is the presentation, and, for me, how the iPhone app works. An email app just wouldn't have as quick and easy access to notes as I do on my iPhone. Also, images in Evernote are embedded directly into the note. It is usually bad practice for an end user to show images in an email client, due to tracking beacons and other nasties. Also, when I scan something like a bill or receipt, it goes directly into Evernote without me doing anything else. At least with the email I use (email for Google apps), I would need to start an email message for each receipt I want to put into Evernote, browse to it on my hard drive, and then hit send. A bit more work. Good question though.

[engberg 89]

Email can function ok as "cold storage" ... before I had Evernote, I would frequently email files to my gmail account just to make sure that I always had a copy in an emergency.

Email systems aren't really design for editing or updating content at all. The content of an email is frozen in time forever. Evernote offers more fluid usage ... my note with handy SQL queries grows and changes over time.

The BlackBerry client doesn't have a UI for arbitrary geo-location searching, but if you have Use GPS enabled in the main menu, the main menu should also have an option to show nearby notes, based on your current location.

[ruudhein 29]

For me (desktop PC) the search-as-I-type is gold