tavor

Seconded. I'm in the process of consolidating task management into Evernote instead of running that separately (in Remember the Milk). Even with the integration between the apps, I disliked having to split the functions between apps. 

Expanded checkbox functionality would be a welcome improvement for a lot of people using various GTD / TSW implementations in EN.

 

2 hours ago, DTLow said:

I just don't want to open the potential for my work to be messed up

LOL. That potential exists any time data is manipulated and features are tweaked or added. Should we stop all software development at version 1.0? Every task management app has similar functionality to what the OP describes. I've been using RTM for years and they've never FUBAR'ed my data. 

56 minutes ago, eric99 said:

{   |   }  ~     see http://www.asciitable.com/

 

 

 

I had already tried ~

That character sorts relatively high, and it will sort before a letter or number, so !~ will sort before !z

I'm looking for a (quick to type on standard keyboard) character that will sort AFTER letters.

It looks like the sort order Evernote uses in the tag dropdown field is different from the ASCII table numerical sequence.

1 hour ago, csihilling said:

May not be quite what you want, but ! Recur will sort before !Annually.  The space makes the difference.

The space also sorts before special characters, so this would move ! Recur to the very top of the list of tags starting with !. 

I'd like to sort as above.

7 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Ω 

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

That works for the sort, though unless there is a more convenient shortcut than ALT+234 it's not great for quick entry of a tag. I use the dropdown list as a means of narrowing the tag list, but I typically type characters until the list is winnowed down to one tag. So in this case, I'd have to type the theta character using the above shortcut, which is too slow.

I'm trying to sort all my When tags so that when I enter a tag starting with '!', I get the following sort in the dropdown list:

• !!Daily
• !1-Now
• !2-Next
• !3-Soon
• !4-Later
• !5-Someday
• !6-Waiting
• !9-Completed
• !Recur
• !z_Annually
• !z_Monthly
• !z_Quarterly
• !z_Weekly

You'll see that I used 'z' to get the periodicity tags to the bottom of the sort. Is there a special character that would sort below letters? I.e., a character that I could replace 'z' with and still have my desired sort order?

On 11/19/2014 at 2:13 AM, lean_ninja said:

To "wake up" this thread, I still find true Boolean search an essential - and missing - capability in Evernote.  All the work-arounds with temporary tags, other applications, or temporary notebooks (as suggested in other threads on this topic) seem like kludges that should be below the bar of excellence set by Evernote.

Another kludge that I am forced to employ is multiple saved searches, when one saved search (using full boolean search) would suffice. So instead of getting one list of results, I have to go back and forth between two lists. For 2017, this is ridiculously clunky. Heck, Craigslist, which has all of 40 people, so probably less than a dozen developers, has had this search capability for many years. And of course it's used by many other services, including ebay.

Any time users are sifting through lots of information to find something specific, full boolean search can be useful, and if users embrace the EN philosophy of 'external brain', this is essential. Our internal brain performs full boolean searches all the time.

1 hour ago, Ahantate said:

As much as I would like to say otherwise, I think we as Linux users need to accept that we are never going to be a targeted OS for Evernote. Geeknote is solid for Terminal fans, and Nevernote is an option for GUI.

Yep, with everything on Evernote's plate and all the competition it faces on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android from OneNote, Keep, Dropbox Paper, and many smaller players, I cannot imagine EN is going to allocate resources to developing and supporting an app for an OS that has a tiny market share, and which itself is fragmented into many different variants.

Not. Going. To. Happen.

The native apps that use EN's API, or EN on Wine or EN in a Windows/Mac virtual machine are all options.

But hey, Evernote, if you do decide to build a Linux app, please make it for Debian/Ubuntu.  

I'm not going anywhere. I think a lot of people who leave for OneNote will be disappointed. And a lot of the other competitors aren't even close to where EN is as a note taking solution.

I have no problem with EN trying to step up monetization of its user base - after all, that's the whole point - but I think it was handled very poorly given the myriad of better options available to management, and I do think it raises legitimate concerns for users who have bought into the 'external brain' concept and have so much of their info stored in EN, and are now wondering what the next misstep by this clumsy elephant will be.

7 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

yeah. this is the kind of stuff microsoft does that makes me question their commitment to customer privacy / security.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/microsoft-may-have-your-encryption-key-heres-how-to-take-it-back/

why they would do such a boneheaded thing is beyond me, but it might have something to do with fears about users losing their own keys or concerns about answering government demands to unlock devices. in contrast, apple gives you the option (in a popup) of sending your data if you want. otherwise, apple says it doesn't know how to unlock your devices, and it doesn't care what is in them, because it is your stuff. nice. if you are going to do encryption, then you ought to do it right like this.

my hope is that evernote will someday follow apple's lead, offer zero-knowledge encryption of notebooks, and just be done with it.

Yeah, between stuff like this and the very limited opt outs of Windows 10's data collection on users, I think I'm done with Microsoft once Windows 7 is obsolete.

3 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

it appears from the documentation mentioned that ms is using zero-knowledge encryption, which is great news. however, they do the same thing with the encryption of your hard drive while sending the encryption key to headquarters. bad news.

Are you referring to Bitlocker? Microsoft has Bitlocker users' encryption keys? That's crazy! 

13 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

It is still too early to tell for sure, but it seems to me that Evernote is getting back on track.  Although I use other Evernote platforms, my primary is EN Mac, and I have definitely seen improvements in quality and responsiveness to user requests and complaints.  

Unfortunately, the big issues of scalability, encryption, and robust sync are still issues that need addressing.  But I am hopeful for Evernote progress in 2016.  Time will tell.

 

I agree, I was a bit frustrated a year or so ago, but we have seen improvements in the editor, with hopefully more to come, while they have cut back on some of the peripheral products (I know, it sucks for people who had incorporated those peripheral products into their workflow - as a former Google Notebooks and Reader user, I feel your pain!) to help redirect that effort back to the core product. I would take the lack of activity in this thread for several months as a sign that other users are also feeling a bit better about Evernote's direction.

Like you, I no longer jump on new EN releases, unless the prior version had a bug that was having a significant effect on my use. I'll wait for others to play guinea pig for a bit.

25 minutes ago, DTLow said:

There are all sorts of conspiracy theories out there.

Do you think it could be that Evernote has considered expanding to the Linux platform with the following views
- where to best allocate limited resources
- number of users impacted

Are there more Windows Surface users than all the flavors of Linux? I doubt it. 

Given where Microsoft is going in terms of stomping on user privacy with very few and limited opt outs, I imagine a not insignificant percentage of Windows users are going to pass on Windows 10 when they reach their next hardware upgrade decision. And for those abandoning Windows over privacy concerns, Apple doesn't offer a safe haven, and neither does Chromebook. Linux is very appealing from that perspective.

I wonder if Evernote has any way of knowing how many EN users are operating on Linux, whether it's a 3rd party app, or EN Windows on Wine. That information might inform their decision as to whether a Linux version is worthwhile, as opposed to leaving the current options for Linux users - 3rd party apps, Windows app on Wine, web app.

Internal note links is another way to handle this type of situation (in this case, at the very top of the note, you'd have internal note links: "Today", "This Week", "This Month", etc.), and is something that has been requested for years.

Implementing that feature would negate the majority of the features that Evernote has to offer. This is because a large portion of Evernote's features require server-side access to your note content to do the indexing and OCRing and whatnot. Having users choose between not encrypting their data, or encrypting their data and getting none of the features they pay for is a pretty ugly pair of decisions. The solution is local processing of these things, but that comes with other major downsides (and would likely severely handicap the functionality of their mobile applications) and can't replace all of the server-side processes that plus/premium users pay for (as well as those that benefit free users). 

 

I agree, good, (ideally) zero-knowledge encryption is super important, but I think Evernote is a long way away from doing it (in fact, I don't think they ever will). In the meantime there are other options for storing sensitive data.

One possible solution is offering zero-knowledge encryption for selected notebooks. So one could have 3 potential notebook types:

1. Local - for sensitive data that you don't need to access anywhere except your 'home' computer

2. Synced/Zero-knowledge encrypted - for sensitive data that you need to access away from your 'home' computer

3. Synced - for non-sensitive data

That gives users the choice between security and the EN features that require access to unencrypted data. Users already have some choice in this regard via the local notebook option, and this would further user choice, and would be far more convenient than individually encrypting note contents.

In a world where unethical employees, hackers, various governments, etc., can potentially access user data, this user choice with respect to security is valuable, and some note taking/retrieval company will figure this out.

For those who think hacking is not something they need to concern themselves with, here's a link to a live hacking map: http://map.norsecorp.com/

dropbox is experimenting right now with its own notetaking alternative, but it is pretty late to the game.

I wouldn't say that. I think it's still pretty early in the game given that such a tiny % of computer users are using any kind of dedicated note taking app, e.g., EN, ON, Keep, etc.

Plus, each of the existing apps have a number of shortcomings, so a robust new entry into the space could capture not only new users, but draw away users of competing products.

An EN alternative would be to place sensitive data on a local notebook only. Does anyone do this how how is it working out practically? I'm assuming that local and synced notebooks are all searchable with the local EN app?

I use local and synced notebooks. It works fine, but of course you can only search/access the local notebook notes on one computer. It would be nice to have access to all notes from any device, but I find that from a practical perspective, this is rarely necessary, at least in my case. So I have no problem separating the sensitive stuff into a local notebook and everything else goes to synced notebooks.

 

If EN dropped local notebooks, I'd drop EN because it's only a matter of time before that growing treasure trove of data on EN's servers proves very attractive to very capable hackers.

 

Here are a couple perspectives from senior Evernote employees:

 

On the Evernote podcast (#18) the Evernote VP of Marketing, Andrew Sinkov, said

he stores his tax returns on Evernote. He said it could be kept local, but he prefers to keep it sync'd via the server.

I would expect nothing less from the VP of Marketing.

 

Thankfully, Evernote has the local notebook option. It blows my mind that there are somewhat similar products that do not offer local storage - I think many users are oblivious to the risks. While it's true that Google doesn't offer local storage for just about any product they have, and many millions of people use Google products, Google has a much larger security budget than any personal information mgmt software company.

The recent Ashley Madison hack and threats to publicly post hacked data online serves as a stark reminder that data stored online is not secure. Zero knowledge encryption is long overdue.

What would be most useful to me is the exact subject of this thread:  Encrypt an entire Notebook.

That way I could just throw all my sensitive PDFs (or other data) into that Notebook and not have to bother with encrypting each and every PDF.

Agreed. Ability to access content everywhere + real security would be a boost over local notebooks, particularly if EN support is advising users to avoid local notebooks due to data integrity issues.

Anyway, the Evernote support guy told me he recommends never using local notebooks for this reason (and that's something when Evernote's own employees are telling you to stay away from a feature).

That's scary for those of us who have local notebooks!

That brings us back to my encryption advice earlier in this thread, and my recommendation that users not put un-encrypted data into the cloud. In this sense, Evernote's local notebooks would be a far superior choice to Google Drive.

And Google will never offer local-only storage. It's tied to their vision of privacy, i.e., you shouldn't expect any. After all, we are talking about the maker of Google Glass. From Google's perspective, that's not creepy at all! 

 

I certainly agree that Evernote's pivot to the business market opens up opportunities for existing competitors and new entrants in the PIM space, but Google will never be answer for those who wish to keep at least some of their notes out of the hands of others, including the corporation providing the service, hackers and your government.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it does.

Check out the strong, adverse reaction to the new EN Web Beta.

 

Thankfully, I rarely use the EN Web client.

Just checked it out. Awful. Like you, I use the desktop client, so this doesn't bother me.

 

I really hope that 'white space' design doesn't make it into the desktop clients.

 

It's up & running.  If I missed sending you the URL, please let me know. 

 

Apparently I can't send a PM? I'm interested

 

Might be a post count limitation; i.e., you don't have enough posts yet to access the messaging system. I tried sending you a PM and got a message saying you can't use it yet.

I guess I am not motivated to toss in the towel at this point.  The pain of changing my practices and learning something new outweighs the pain of dealing with EN.  It just isn't hurting bad enough yet.  Maybe they will fix themselves, maybe they won't.  For sure I am doing automated ENEX backups until that is determined.

 

I may be just fully missing something (wouldn't be the first time), am being totally myopic, or just have my head firmly in the sand, or someplace else.  So best alternative to En for me at the moment is EN.  FWIW.

I'm in a similar boat. I could switch to ON, but I don't think it's better suited (yet) for my purposes. But the various issues with EN, as well as with management's communication with users, has me concerned and on the lookout for a potential replacement if/when the time comes.

 

Given EN's seeming shift toward business users, I found some of the recent business user posts amusing. Some of the issues they are facing reveal just how difficult it will be for EN to become polished enough to really gain significant traction in that space.

The scalability issues raised by GM, BNF and others have persuaded me to limit the number/size of pictures and document scans I keep in EN. I know many of the guides and books out there recommend putting all that stuff in EN, and I think many users who take that advice are going to eventually regret it.

 

As stated earlier in this thread, out of respect for EN, I won't discuss (on this board) details of my migration to Onenote.  And when someone complains about the quality of customer service or that the Windows client is so darned sloooooow, etc, I have to agree. And finally, I'm having to devote a lot of time to learning/adapting to a new PIM & migrating my notes to it. 

Is there a discussion forum/site for ON that you are using?