Expert's Rating
Pros
- Create categories for saved data and back it up online, handwriting recognition
Cons
- Doesn’t record audio or video despite support for formats, premium account needed for some file types
Our Verdict
There are lots of potential uses for Evernote – as a tool for collating project material, research and ideas it does a sterling job. Online access is a welcome feature too. But we’ll be keeping an eye out for the next version.
Like VoodooPad Pro ( www.macworld.co.uk/reviews), Evernote is a place for storing snippets of information in many formats. The unique selling point, though, is its existence as both a desktop application and an online service, meaning that anything you drag into Evernote is accessible online and on other platforms. There’s an app for your iPhone and a plugin for Safari, as well as programs for Windows, BlackBerry and Palm. With web access too, that should cover just about any device.
So what does it do? Almost any kind of data can be dragged into Evernote and categorised, from web content to audio clips, text documents to photos. These are stored in ‘notebooks’, which can be used to organise material for distinct projects. Tagging adds another dimension of categorisation – and you can search through the stuff you’ve added using keywords. When you’re ready to upload this material to the online backup service that is part of the Evernote package, you just click on the Sync button.
The Mac desktop app has a couple of nods to unique Apple features. For example, there’s an iSight button that lets you take snapshots for your notebooks. Curiously, you can’t record audio or video direct, even though you can drag and drop files you’ve created elsewhere into the program. We can’t help thinking that this is functionality that’s on a future feature list – and it contributes to a sense that the software is a work in progress.