(Archived) Clipping Note into a Tag

[crane 38]

Shouldn't I still be able to do a web clipping and have it go "into" the tag that's currently selected in my desktop version? I'm sure I read this in the help. But every time I try it, the note goes into the *notebook* that's selected, but not the *tag*. PITA.

[crane 38]

I can't even create a note in a new tag. Regardless of what tags/notebooks I have selected in the left panel, any newly created notes have no real tags attached. (I can get the "created:today" tag automatically assigned). So, I have to create a new note and then assign its categories.

Am I missing something?

And given that there's no "uncategorized" category, finding those stupid notes that I've just created is a pain.

[marcclarke 0]

And given that there's no "uncategorized" category, finding those stupid notes that I've just created is a pain.

I'm using the Note List and sorting on the Tag column to see notes lacking tags. It is not what you are asking for, but it is a partial workaround.

[marcclarke 0]

I'm really missing the ability to automatically assign the selected category (oops, I meant "Tag") to new notes.

[iafanasyev 1]

I can't even create a note in a new tag. Regardless of what tags/notebooks I have selected in the left panel, any newly created notes have no real tags attached. (I can get the "created:today" tag automatically assigned). So, I have to create a new note and then assign its categories.

Yes, you can't automatically assign tags to new notes (i.e. first select a tag, then clip). You can only select the current notebook you work with, and all notes will go there. If you need to sort notes which you clip, you can just create some separate notebook, select it, do some clipping, then work with the notes with that notebook (or create another notebook and start another clipping session). This is pretty easy.

And given that there's no "uncategorized" category, finding those stupid notes that I've just created is a pain.

You have no "uncategorized" category, you are right. There are no more categories. Instead, you have [more] powerful search syntax and, yes, saved searches as a shortcuts to your queries. The -tag:* query will do the trick. This means: select all notes which have no single tag assigned. So, if you create a special saved search called "Unsorted notes" with -tag:* query, you are done.

[crane 38]

You have no "uncategorized" category, you are right. There are no more categories. Instead, you have [more] powerful search syntax and, yes, saved searches as a shortcuts to your queries. The -tag:* query will do the trick. This means: select all notes which have no single tag assigned. So, if you create a special saved search called "Unsorted notes" with -tag:* query, you are done.

Thank you for the tip iafansayev. I've now got a new "Untagged" Saved search, which is good.

I guess I should have been more clear. The ability to select one or more tags and then either do a clipping or create a new note, and have that new note put into those tags, is a feature which I would really like to have back. Will that feature be coming back in the future?

[iafanasyev 1]

The ability to select one or more tags and then either do a clipping or create a new note, and have that new note put into those tags, is a feature which I would really like to have back. Will that feature be coming back in the future?

Right now, there are no plans on implementing it back. As I said before, this feature can be easily modelled with notebooks: create a temporary notebook, clip stuff into it, then do whatever you want to all notes in that notebook (assign tags, toss them to another notebooks, email, print, merge, etc.), then delete the temporary notebook if you wish.

[crane 38]

Right now, there are no plans on implementing it back. As I said before, this feature can be easily modelled with notebooks: create a temporary notebook, clip stuff into it, then do whatever you want to all notes in that notebook (assign tags, toss them to another notebooks, email, print, merge, etc.), then delete the temporary notebook if you wish.

Right now, two things are becoming glaringly obvious to me:

1. People who design EN do not work the same way as people who use EN. I now have to *touch* every note I create twice. Once to create. Once to tag it with the desired tag. I guess that matches more with the whole concept of del.icio.us tags, or whatever, but what it means for me is increasing my workload. It would be like finding out that every time you save a Word document, you have to save it to your desktop. And then go move it.

2. Power users are most definitely not the target of this new beta. I knew this going in, but I didn't not expect to have such seemingly key functionality pulled out from under us. All notes have to manually tagged? Tags cannot be sorted in manual order? Tags cannot have automatic filters. Instead, we have to use the new saved searches (which I like) but which are (1) in a flat list and (2) not interspersed with tags.

It's like a completely different piece of software.

[marcclarke 0]

Right now, two things are becoming glaringly obvious to me:

1. People who design EN do not work the same way as people who use EN.

I concur, sadly. I know that the developers and execs at EverNote really use EverNote daily. But I discern that they use it in a very different way than the power-users do. What we see in this new product is an entirely new use model, which emphasizes multi-device synchronization and ease-of-capture (esp. on mobile devices). The new model (which may be highly valid for a majority of people) seems to me to be "capture and find" versus the model I use, which is "capture and associate". To me (remember, I have m power-user's hat on here), automatic keyword categories and the Category Intersection Panel are the "Essence of EverNote". In the new EverNote both are currently effectively unusable (despite the wonderful new enhancements to searching), as the AKC list (now called "saved searches") is flat, tags are separate entities from AKCs (oops, I meant "saved searches"), the Category Intersection Panel is gone (though it looks as if there will be a new way to get the same job done in a different way), and one can't turn off notebooks so the visual clutter from not-applicable-to-this-notebook tags and searches overwhelm my brain in my small EN3 test database with three notebooks and fewer than 170 notes. (I also keep firmly in mind that this is very, very young code, so I don't think it is at all fair to judge EN 3.0 Beta when what I really want is EN 3.7 or beyond.)

When I put on my "new users" hat and think about all the people I know who use PhatNotes, OneNote 2003, OneNote 2007, Tinderbox, paper notebooks, etc., and think about the new EverNote, I get a different perspective. Nearly everyone I know who takes or collects notes has those notes trapped in one place. People who use paper carry around those huge leather zippered Day Timers (and other brands) that are the size of a 3-ring binder (in fact, they are three-ring binders). People who use computers to collect their notes have their notes trapped on their computer at home. People who use a combined PC and PDA solution (e.g. PhatNotes) have to give up graphics to get a small database size that fits into the precious RAM of their Power PC or SmartPhone. The people I know who are rabid OneNote 2007 users carry their Tablet PC with them everywhere, literally. They refuse to be cut off from their notes, and they trade the inconvenience of carrying around a slate or convertible Tablet PC in order to not have their notes trapped somewhere else.

David Allen proposes the 2-second rule for taking notes or jotting down to-do items (or whatever). He insists that if deploying the technology take longer than 2 seconds, people will eventually, quietly, and maybe even unconsciously abandon the technology. People who carry their life in a 3-ring binder or a paper (Moleskine?) notebook can deploy their technology (paper and pen) in 2 seconds or so. People who carry a small notebook in their pocket, or even a stack of index cards clipped together with a binder clip can do the same. I speak from first-hand experience on both, BTW.

These days, nearly everyone I know carries a cell phone on their belt or in their purse. It is difficult to wander into a mall and see someone who does not have a cell phone.

Today I use Jott and my cell phone to send myself a voice message that gets translated to ASCII and sent to my Outlook 2007 inbox. That is my current 2-second technology, as it gets the text to Outlook, where I organize and manage everything. But most people do not use Outlook, and most of those who do use it only very lightly.

Almost everyone has a cell phone, most with cameras and many with considerable smarts built-in. Almost everybody has e-mail in one form or another. Almost everyone knows how to use a web browser. Hmmm.

I think the question might be, "Can EverNote replace the Post-It?" Every woman I know has a small stack of Post-Its in her purse that she uses to make quick notes an stick to something relevant. Because her purse is always with her, her note-taking system is always with her. Nearly every guy I know carries a small notebook in a pocket somewhere (guy's clothing has pockets).

For the non-computer-literate, paper is time-tested, works great, is abundantly available, and costs approximately nothing.

For computer users, and especially for cell phone users, I think the story is different. What if your cell phone did all that (snapped pictures, took voice notes, etc.)? What if the cell phone (which you are going to always carry anyway) could displace that stack of Post-It notes or that little shirt-pocket notebook?

Right now I think EN considers the smart cell phone (whatever the platform: Windows Mobile; iPhone; Android; or whatever else comes next) as the ubiquitous capture device. With EverNote 3 the cell phone everybody carries suddenly becomes "Post-It Notes on Steroids", deploy-able within the 2 second limit, able to capture pictures (and suck the text out), voice, scribbles with the stylus, and/or thumb-typed ASCII.

I started out thinking about EN 3 as a way to (finally!) have my notes with me on my SmartPhone, the way I used to always have all my PhatNotes with me on my PDA.

I think I started out with the wrong conceptual model (hardly a new experience for me). I think that the conceptual model for EN 3 is to have the mobile device (SmartPhone, iPhone, Android, etc.) be the mobile capture device, not so much the mobile access device.

I think the rest of the conceptual model then falls out naturally; wherever you are, with whatever device you can access (PC, Mac, etc.) you can access all your notes (pictures, voice, text, etc.). (BTW, to make this model really work EN 3 needs good untrained voice to text, possibly running on the central monstrous EN servers' CPUs.)

The other question to think about (remember, I have my new-user hat on still) is, "How many notes do most people actually have?" I suspect that most people run their lives with 200 or fewer (usually paper) notes. Sure, I have 10,000+ notes in my EverNote 2.2 databases (and growing rapidly). But I also have a house full of bookshelves, with more than 5,000 books the last time I took an inventory (and yes, I have read all but perhaps a dozen). But I know people who literally do not have any books in their house other than the phone book and the bible. Really. :shock: These are the same people who are always urging me to "Simplify!".

These same people always have a cell phone in their purse, on their belt, or in their pocket. I think these are the people that EN 3.0 Beta targets. So maybe the question for this early version of EN 3 is, "Will it meet the needs of these people, and will it be easy enough to use and give enough value that they will abandon their Post-It notes for EN3 on their cell phone and their computer?" :?:

2. Power users are most definitely not the target of this new beta.

Yes, we knew that going in. No surprises there.

It's like a completely different piece of software.

I'm calling it "EverNote Lite" so far. I think it might be really useful to many people (for example, to my barely-computer-literate sister who always has her cell phone with her).

[crane 38]

Once again I must bow down to marcclarke's greatness. He manages to express in a clear and concise manner the thoughts that are running around inside my head.

I've really been thinking alot about this new EN (before bed, upon waking, in the shower, etc.) and about how could I use this *new* software. Given its new paradigm, how could it make my life better?

I think I must conclude that I can't do my research work with the new version. I knew going in that it wouldn't have all functionality included, but I think there are several things that will never be included that would not allow me to work the way I like.

However, I think I could probably translate some of my stuff into the new paradigm. For instance, one subset of my notes deals with books that I read for pleasure. I've brought those 410 notes into the beta, and will try to maintain them there, and see how that works for me. Another segment of my notes that I could see bringing in are recipes.

I think it will important for me to remember, and perhaps for other power users, that this is not your mother's Evernote It is most definitely a new beast. For sure, I can see it replacing the Google Notebook for me (which I use very very sparingly, i.e., when I'm on another computer.)

Given that I can see using both ENs side-by-side, I have to say I'm really happy that there are two clippers - one for each. That pleases me to no end.

[vogelap 25]

It's like a completely different piece of software.

Ditto, and that is sad. Sure, it's an alpha (err... beta) and continuing to evolve, but I am not enthusiastic at this point. They've taken away or changed nearly everything I love about EN2.

[dstavisky 0]

The intent of all these changes is to make Evernote more powerful and convenient both for casual and power users. Now your notes are accessible wherever you go, you can use your mobile phone to capture notes on the go, you can publish selected notes... Your participation in the Beta program helps us understand how you use Evernote and prioritize features needed by power users. We really appreciate you input, time... and patience!

[crane 38]

I think we all realize that you're trying to bring EN in a new direction. I don't think any of us realized how different that direction would be from what we've become accustomed to.

Unfortunately, I don't think that any of us power users are actually in your target demographic For instance, while I have a cell phone, it doesn't have a camera. It does access the web, but I refuse to pay 10 cents per page load to read something that I could write down on a scrap of paper. I also don't have the need to publish stuff. That's what email and blogs are for

Just out of curiosity, who are all of these users that want to capture things with their cell phones and publish them to the world? Is there really that big a market of jet setting wine lovers with their own audiences out there, waiting breathlessly for the next wine label to be published?

[dstavisky 0]

Just out of curiosity, who are all of these users that want to capture things with their cell phones and publish them to the world? Is there really that big a market of jet setting wine lovers with their own audiences out there, waiting breathlessly for the next wine label to be published?

Well, this is another subject that this Beta will shed some light on. But here are some use cases - taking snapshots of a whiteboard during/after meetings; receipts for expense reports; product label in a store; hotel entrance sign... From my personal experience, when you start using your cameraphone as a portable scanner it becomes very handy...

[salgud 11]

Just out of curiosity, who are all of these users that want to capture things with their cell phones and publish them to the world? Is there really that big a market of jet setting wine lovers with their own audiences out there, waiting breathlessly for the next wine label to be published?

Well, this is another subject that this Beta will shed some light on. But here are some use cases - taking snapshots of a whiteboard during/after meetings; receipts for expense reports; product label in a store; hotel entrance sign... From my personal experience, when you start using your cameraphone as a portable scanner it becomes very handy...

I could be wrong again here (I was dead wrong about the pet rock), but I'm not sure how many people out there want to use the camera phones as scanners. You may be solving a problem that doesn't exist, and in the process, losing your existing and very loyal customer base.

I don't really see a lot of people taking pictures of other people's business cards and keeping the picture on file for when they want the information on it. A few geeks will love it, but you've already got a bunch of geeks who like EN as it is, with enhancements to futher it's use as a general information gathering/retrieving tool. I sincerely hope than EN is not shooting itself in both feet here.