Evernote 4: Capturing Notes Naturally on PC, Web, and Phone
- Capturing notes on your computer
- Grabbing Notes on the Web
- Phoning in Your Notes
- Tweeting to Evernote
For most of us today, technology has become an important part of every day. We keep track of our schedules on our phones; we bookmark websites we want to return to later; we share links with colleagues, and text our kids at lunch.
Being able to connect—with each other, with information, and with ideas—in such a powerful, immediate way is certainly a good thing. But it does bring a challenge: How do you get all these computers, programs, and devices talking to each other? How do we work out the kinks so that our different choices—of computers, of cell phones, or software—don’t divide us or derail our ideas?
Evernote is an easy-to-use, free notetaking program that seems to have found the answer to that question. Because the program works with all platforms and provides a way for you to capture all sorts of notes from almost anywhere, you can capture your great ideas and save them to your notebook whether you’re using your computer, browsing the web, or out and about with your mobile phone. This article shows you the various ways you can use Evernote to grab those ideas so that you can save, organize, use, and share them easily.
Because Evernote is designed to be flexible and work on all sorts of hardware configurations, you have a number of choices for the way you work with the software:
- It’s not necessary to download Evernote to your computer (you can use the web interface for all your note organizing if you prefer), the software is available for both Windows and Mac computers.
- You can use your phone to capture notes—text and pictures—and then e-mail the notes to yourself at your special Evernote email address.
- You can use Evernote’s web clipping tool to grab just what you need online and save it it to the notebook you specify. Evernote keeps track of the URL so that you can return to the page easily at a later time.
- You can even get Evernote talking to Twitter so that you send copies of tweets directly to your Evernote notesbook.
Capturing notes on your computer
If you want to grab notes you create on your computer, you first need to download the software and set it up. This is a simple process and takes just a few minutes. Follow these steps:
- Go to http://www.evernote.com and click the Download Now button.
- Click Run to install the software and follow the prompts.
- When Evernote starts, it will prompt you read and accept the License Agreement. Click the acceptance check box and click OK.
- Click Get a Free Evernote Account Now and follow the prompts to create an account. Write down the user name and password you create for login.
- On your computer, you can begin capturing notes by clicking New Note in the toolbar (see Figure 1) and choosing one of the following:
- New Note if you want to type or paste content into the body of the note
- New Ink Note if you want to use a pen to write or sketch a new note
- New WebCam Note if you want to record audio and video for your note using your computer’s webcam
- Type, paste, or drag and drop information into your new note (or, if you selected New Ink Note, click the pen and begin to draw).
- If you selected New WebCam Note, click Take Photo to capture the image you want and then click Return to Evernote.
- You can synchronize the notes you take on your computer with your web-based Evernote account by clicking the Sync tool in the toolbar above the note area. This synchronizes your new notes with your online notebook so that you can make sure both notebooks reflect your most current entries.
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Figure 1 Choose New Note in the Evernote window and then select the type of note you want to create.