I’ve been a user of Evernote since 8th December 2008, and I don’t think there’s been a day gone by since then that I haven’t used it either on my desktop, laptop or iPod Touch (they have a version for Windows Mobile too).
The premise of Evernote is simple. It’s your second brain. Everything you need to keep track of, or remember, you key it into Evernote and it’s stored in the “cloud”, which then can be accessed via web, mobile or even the Evernote client that can run straight off your desktop. All of these are synced centrally, so you always have the latest version of your updates when you access your notes.
Evernote comes complete with the ability to recognise words within images, the ability to tag and geotag notes, include photographs and voice, and for the premium (paid) version, to sync the same version of files everywhere, which can be useful for people editing documents on the go.
I first really realised the power of Evernote when I clipped some details of my flight on a whim, and then was at the airport trying to check in, but they couldn’t find my name. My e-ticket had the flight number, full name etc, but not the booking number. Luckily, it was a matter of taking out my iPod Touch, checking the tag that said “flight” and all was solved.
Since then, my Evernote usage has evolved in several different ways:
As a fan of GTD, I have a “tickler” tag in Evernote where I keep track of things I need to pay attention to each day. So I can open up Evernote and know I have a presentation due in 2 weeks. You can read about more about using Evernote and GTD here.
I’m obsessive about keeping track of what money I spend. I used to key it into my phone, but then would have the hassle of switching between my phone screen and my computer screen (where I key expenditures into an Excel sheet). Now, I just key it into my Touch with the tag “todo”, sync it up, and when I open my Excel sheet, it’s right there on the same computer.
I keep an “archive” folder in Evernote, where I put things like Amazon shipping costs (so I don’t have to keep going to Amazon and searching for the shipping page), quotes from books, my Sony service number and other things that might be useful.
I keep track of new books/music/games to check out when I’m at the store, and when I get home it will be on my Evernote so I’m reminded to check out reviews of it to make a purchase decision later
I used to take notes in class and save them as “week 1″, “week 2″ and so on. Now I just open a note with the tag “comm250″ and type everything in there in chronological order, which makes revising so much easier.
Everytime an idea pops into my head, I label it “todo” and key it in. When I start up my computer, the “todo” tags are usually the first things I look at, so it helps me focus.
As you can see, the uses and benefits of Evernote really are like having a second brain, and being able to tap into that literally anywhere. I’m rarely in the situation where something important flashes into my head, and I’m stuck trying to recall it two days later.
Because I’m using an iPod Touch, there are a few functionalities that I’m limited from using. Geo-tagging, for one, which can be very useful. For example, if you always have the same type of meeting at a particular spot, you can tag that location, and everytime you’re in there for a meeting, you can call up that tag and see previous meeting notes.
Similarly, if there’s something that needs to be done at a particular store, you can geo-tag it and when you’re in the vicinity, use that to remind you.
Still not convinced? Check out Evernote’s short introduction video. You’ll be sold.
Tomorrow, I’ve got another post lined up with some thoughts on the lessons that can be learned from Evernote, so if you’re a fan, check back for that. Meanwhile, how do you use Evernote? What tips and tricks do you have?
Our criteria is simple: If we are likely to use a particular brand on an average day, we’ll include it in. So for example, even though I may only use my Flip Mino once or twice a week, I include it because the probability I use it on an average day is about even.
While originally, this was organised by timeline (i.e. at what time would you interact with which brand), I’ve decided to do it by category because I think it says more about my consumption patterns that way. Does it mean I use all of these brands everyday? No. But it’s fairly representative in that if I feel like a coffee, Tim Hortons is my destination.
Social Media/Web Apps
Social Media/Web Apps
So I’ll start, obviously, with social media and web apps. This is fairly straightforward, but the one thing I noticed when I started to list down the brands I’d include, was that Windows Media Player was an app I particularly wanted to list due to my immense dislike of iTunes.
Technology/Gadgets
Technology & Gadgets
Pretty straightforward here, so I’ll leave it as that.
Apparel
Apparel
This was just about the hardest category to do. For each of the brands listed up there, I have only one or two products from them: Zara (jacket, coat), Nike (sneakers), American Eagle (wallet), H&M (jacket, scarf), Guess (jeans), Levis (boxers, jeans).
This by no means indicates clothes aren’t important to me, just that I’d rather find some obscure shop and find a “slogan” tee, rather than head to the Gap or wherever to purchase one. However, the brands I do purchase for clothes (particularly Zara, Guess and Nike), I’m particularly loyal to.
Hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene was fun to do because I have so many products. The ones I’m listing here are only those I’m using here with me in Canada, and I’m sure I have plenty more back home. I’m going to say hygiene is one area where I’m most susceptible to advertising.
Oral B from the whole “more dentists use” ads, Colgate was on all the time growing up, Axe from all the cool male advertising, Gillette is everywhere as well. I also want to say I actually have a strong dislike for Adidas as a brand, but only use their deodorant because it complements the cologne.
Interests
Interests
This was another really hard category because you don’t have brands for “books” or “music” or “Heroes” or “Lost”. So I included the brands of graphic novels I’m likely to read, as well as MTV (the TV channel I’m most likely to watch) and EA Sports which is the brand of the game (FIFA ‘09) that I’m playing now
Food
Food And Drink
This was not surprising at all. I generally don’t care about the food I eat, but I do like my drinks. The interesting thing here is that none of these brands would exist if I was blogging about this from Singapore. Tim Hortons would be Starbucks, Molson Canadian beer would be Corona, and Vitamin Water doesn’t exist. In other words, my brand preference is rather flexible and easily changed. Prior to coming here I hadn’t tried either Tim Hortons or Molson Canadian, but they’ve displaced my usual brands pretty quickly.
Finally, one miscellaneous brand:
Equality Logo
This is Equality, which is, from what I can tell, the house brand of Canada. Easily 20-40% of the stuff we buy here for the house, is from the Equality brand. Microwave food, toilet paper, eggs, canned food and much much more is all Equality.
I guess this is meaningful because when we first came here and went to the supermarket, we didn’t know what brands to get, but the mere pervasiveness of Equality made us gravitate towards it. Also, even though Equality easily accounts for a large portion of our weekly expenditure, I couldn’t find its’ logo online, and had to take a picture to get it. An overlooked brand, perhaps?
My takeaways from this exercise?
1) I experiment with a lot of brands. Nikon, HTC, Molson Canadian and Vitamin Water didn’t exist in my mind one year ago, but they do now.
2) I consider myself part of the “tribe” of some brands than others. Skullcandy, Nike, Flip, Sony, Axe, and MTV just to name a few.
3) Old habits die hard. I don’t think I’ve ever used another toothbrush except Oral B, or toothpaste except Colgate. Even if I did see products from other brands on the shelves, they don’t even register. It’s also very hard for me to use other social bookmarking tools like Twine because I’m so used to Delicious.
4) Word of mouth influences my purchase decisions a lot. Skullcandy, Sony, Nikon, Axe, Firefox, HTC, Flip, Versace and Tim Hortons are all word of mouth brands, that are now favourite brands.
How about you? What are the brands you feel passionately about? How do they fit into your daily/weekly/monthly behavior? If you were to do one of these by category or by timeline, how would it look?
ps: I’m sure I left out some brands of stuff that I use but just didn’t take note off, please excuse that.
I first found out about the Flip Cam from a Hack College video podcast and was immediately impressed. The best things about the Flip Cam are its size and ease of use. It’s about the size of a handphone and I’ve had it for almost a week and have not looked at the user manual once. You switch it on, press record and press stop. End of story. It’s so nice to have a no frills piece of equipment these days.
The one thing that I was a little bit hesitant about at first was the size of the lcd screen. You can see it’s pretty tiny, especially compared to what I’m used to on my 2.5inch Nikon D40x, 3inch Canon Ixus 860 IS and 3.5inch iPod Touch. However, with more use I’ve realised that the screen is meant for little more than making sure you have all the objects you want to capture in your view, because the Flip Cam’s video quality is so high that it takes care of the rest. In other words, as long as the object of interest can be seen on the lcd screen, even if it looks like an ant, you don’t have to worry.
Memory-wise, the Flip can hold an hour of video. At first I thought it didn’t sound like much, so I decided to keep all my videos on it and see how long before I run out of space. Fastforward a week later and I’ve barely used 10 minutes of video. Pretty amazing! That said, I don’t think you could go on a long trip without laptop to transfer stuff to because sooner or later you will probably run out of space.
The other thing that bugged me was the lack of batteries. The original Flip Video used AA batteries whereas the Mino uses an internal battery charged by your USB port. However, seeing as it’s unlikely I (or for that matter most bloggers) will go more than a week without connecting our gadgets to our laptops or computers, it’s safe to assume that the battery can be easily charged. And it only takes a couple of hours.
Brian also alerted me to the fact that the Mino has a omnidirectional mic attached compared to the older versions of the Flips. That means that it picks up sound from all direction, not just in front of the camera. That makes it great for interviews or running commentary as well (as you can see from my videos)
All in all, I think the Flip Cam is a fantastic piece of equipment. Sure my Canon Ixus 860 IS can take videos, but I’d much rather save the space for pictures, and use the Flip for dedicated video taking. It’s also much smaller which makes it easier to store in my pocket for quick retrieval. I think this is going to be a great accessory for the next Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, PodCamp Montreal and other fun stuff while I’m up here in Canada.
