Crusoe: Perfect Recall of Your Evernote Notes

[Rocket J. Squirrel 43]

Crusoe: Here it Is, Here you Go.

 

The Problem with Evernote:

 

Evernote is great for finding the notes I’m looking for, but it’s not very good at finding the notes that I’ve long since forgotten.  With over 6,000 notes, those notes I’ve forgotten comprise at least 95% of my database.  And I can’t look up notes that I don’t even know exist.

 

The Solution -- Perfect Recall:

 

Crusoe gives you instant, perfect recall of the exact notes you want at the exact moment you want them.  No scrolling through tags, no notebooks, no search lists--you don’t even have to remember what to search for.  Just instant, perfect recall of the precise information you want, exactly when you want it: “Here it is, here you go.”

 

That’s Crusoe.  Sounds Impossible, doesn’t it?  Actually it’s simple.  

 

How it Works:

 

Let’s say you read a blog post on some new type of  web design and think “Wow, this is really cool.”  But wait, why do you think it’s cool?  You think for a second and say, “Because I saw an awesome website yesterday for funkycoolwallets.com and they used these same design methods.”  Okay, so imagine this: Take a piece of string.  Staple one end to the blog post and one end to funkycoolwallets.com.  Now when you pull out one note, you see the other. And since funkycoolwallets.com is the reason you think that blog post is cool, that’s not a connection you want to lose.  Now imagine all your notes connected together that way.  

 

After you get used to connecting your notes in Crusoe, you’ll learn that connecting your notes matters more than saving them.  Think about it--every note you save you save for a reason.  Every time you connect a note in Crusoe you connect a question to its answer, a solution to a problem, or a great example to a good idea.

 

Crusoe lets you save those connections so you can retrieve the exact information you want, exactly when you want it. Here it is, here you go.

 

Beta Users Needed

 

Crusoe is ready for a pre-beta launch.  We need 10 or so users that are ready to put Crusoe through the wringer to trigger as many bugs as you can find.  

 

Our initial release is for the iPad only, so if you have an iPad, an Evernote account, and a lot of notes, you’re our man (or woman).

 

For this pre-beta launch we need Evernote users who can give us a 10 or 20 minutes of time in a Skype session or a phone call to tell us what they think.  What do you like? What do you hate?  What do you want us to change?  Our pre-beta users can have a big impact on what the final release will look like.

One word of warning: the connections you create during the pre-beta testing will not be saved so don’t worry about making meaningful connections just yet.  Once we are through this phase your connections will be saved forever on your iCloud accoun until you delete them.

[joelsivi 0]

Thanks For Sharing such a great information with us. Crusoe gives us instant, perfect recall of the exact notes you want at the exact moment you want them.

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Hi Douglas,

 

I'm rearing to give this a test drive. I'll send you a PM with my iPad's UDID.

 

A tip for those would-be beta testers... if you want to find your UDID without having to hook up to iTunes, visit this site on your iPad: udid.io

[Rocket J. Squirrel 43]

Below is a blog post I wrote for our website (not yet up and running).  I've had a few people tell me they really like this Steve Jobs quote, so I thought I would post it here:

 

Crusoe does something new in the field of information management: it saves and retrieves notes based on how you personally think about and use those notes.

 

As one of our advisers told us early on: “Crusoe is a little unusual. To succeed, productivity apps have to do one thing: take something I already do in my life and somehow make that task easier.”

 

“Why,” he asked, “would people care about connecting things?”

 

Good question! This blog is all about answering that question, but Steve Jobs had a quick take that’s tough to beat:

 

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

 

“Creativity is just connecting things.” He was exactly right! Shouldn’t there be a way to quickly save, and then browse, the connections we make?  

 

We think so. That’s why we made Crusoe.