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EverNote to Help You Keep Organized - A Guest Post

by Jean Murray on January 12th, 2009

Today’s guest post is from Sheryl Schuff, a CPA and home business success coach.  Sheryl writes about making your business with productivity tools. Her post today is about EverNote, which sounds so cool, I’m going to leave you to read this while I go to the Evernote website to try it….

I’m Sure I Wrote That Down…Somewhere. If you’re like most of us, you write yourself notes to remind you of things.  Things to do.  Things to buy.  Things to tell other people.  Things you see on the Internet.  You write these messages on sticky notes and scratch paper.  Maybe you type some of them into documents on your computer. Perhaps you jot them down on the palm of your hand.  But later, when you need to find them, it seems like an alien has snatched them and hidden them away.

Sound familiar?

Evernote - The Answer to the Mess. Prepare to be amazed.  I recently found a terrific new way to get rid of the paper clutter that surrounds many of our desktops and organizes it in a truly useful way.  It’s called  Evernote, and it’s a free note-taking, picture-capturing, voice-recording, handwriting-recognizing memory service that lets you capture, organize, and (most importantly) FIND all your important stuff.
There are versions for the MAC and the PC as well as the iPhone, iTouch, and Windows mobile.  There’s also a version you can use with SanDisk U3 flash drives. There’s even a Mozilla extension designed for use with Firefox and Flock browsers.

Here are just some of the things you can capture:

1. Copies of all those sticky notes piled on your desk
2. Pictures from your web cam or camera phone
3. Photos of business cards
4. Pictures of expense receipts
5. Text notes
6. Clippings of web pages
7. Voice notes or other audio

Store and Search. You store these items in virtual “notebooks” and you can synchronize all your data (with one simple click) across all your devices so you can access it from virtually anywhere. In my opinion, the best feature is that all the saved items are searchable.  I’m really excited about the advanced search capabilities of Evernote.  It can search through text and handwriting in images; that’s why I can snap pictures of the sticky notes and be confident that I’ll be able to find them when I need them. I don’t know of any other free or inexpensive software that can do this.
It can also search audio files and recognize spoken words that you’re looking for. Now, for example, I can quickly find all the recordings I have where I discuss self-employment taxes.
Do you see why I think this is such a cool organizational tool?
Evernote Image Formats. Evernote supports these formats now: text, html, pdf, jpeg, gif, png, wav, and mp3, and they will likely be adding more in the future. You can send snapshots from most popular cell phones via email or MMS.

Text Storage Too. If you don’t have a camera or scanner or you’re feeling somewhat technically challenged, you can still take advantage of Evernote’s powerful searching capabilities.  Just type a note in an email message and send it to the special Evernote address you get when you sign up.
Their free account gives you 40 MB storage per month, enough for about 20000 text notes or 400 mobile snapshots, 270 web clips, 40 audio notes or 11 high resolution photos.

Premium Access. Need more?  A premium account gives you 500 MB for $5/mo or $45 /yr.
Your notes are stored in a notebook that’s set to be private by default, but you can share it with other people by giving them the URL. You can have multiple notebooks.
It’s so loaded with features that I haven’t had time yet to try them all out, but what I’ve seen so far is quite impressive.

The CEO of the company calls it your “external brain.” That’s how it’s been working for me.  No more excuses for not being able to find things.  And a lot more space on my desk.

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Thanks for the tip, Sheryl. I went to the Evernote home page and watched a YouTube video showing how it works.  It is unbelievable.  I’m convinced enough to give it a try.  After all, it’s free.

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More about Sheryl: Sheryl Schuff BS, MBA, CPA
Sheryl is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who specializes in consulting with new business owners, particularly those who are home-based . She helps them with the startup paperwork and choice of business structure and teaches them how to manage their finances and maximize their tax deductions.  She is the founder of the Business Startup Success Club, and frequently writes about free software and services and productivity tips on her blog at SherylSchuff.com/blog.

Sheryl has been working from home for over 30 years.

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Tags: evernote, home businesses, home-business-success, sheryl schuff

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POSTED IN: Guest Posts, Online Resources, Productivity