TL;DR version: I have found an incredible replacement for CardDesk. It's called Milanote. It is in beta and it is spectacular!
It has been sad to see CardDesk with all its promise, lose steam. Entirely understandable on Ashley's part as he has a life to live and I imagine, as most of us, bills to pay. CardDesk was a great concept and it is a shame that Evernote did not pick up on it and somehow integrate it or replicate it and introduce the functionaility into the main Evernote program. In my nine years of using Evernote, I have always used secondary tools (LiveMinutes, OneNote, Springpad