I’ve been asked by a few people how I am using Evernote, or what can Evernote be used for?

I am someone who likes to have information available when I need it.  In my home office, I have book shelves of material in a variety of forms, but I have a fairly large 3-ring binder collection with each one labeled for the content it contains.

Examples include Digital Photography, Photoshop, Lightroom, Project Management, Financial Planning, Investments, etc.  Whenever I come across something on the Internets I find interesting and want to remember, I often highlight, copy, and paste into a Word document or a PDF document.  I also will do the same if I see an article in a magazine, newspaper, or other print media.  I then add it to a folder on my home ‘archives’ drive in corresponding folders to maintain all my information.  I also print each item out and add it to a 3-ring binder so I have it handy when needed.   This can be a bit tedious and tiresome when the 3-ring binders start getting full, pulling old information, punching 3 holes into the paper or adding the pages to sheet protectors, etc.

Enter Evernote.

With Evernote, you get a tool that is amazingly complex yet very simple to use.  Evernote is a desktop application, browser plugin, website/cloud application, and a smartphone application.  It allows you to organize your information in infinite amount of ways using notebooks and tags.  Adding the Evernote add-on for Firefox, any time I find something on the Internets that I want to keep, I simply click on the Evernote button and I can either save the highlighted material (Text, Images, Links and all), or I can save the entire page.  It’s automatically added to a notebook pending on how I have the default options set up in Evernote itself.  I can then move it to any notebook I like and tag it with one or as many tags as I prefer to make finding it in the future a breeze.

For magazine and print material, I simply put them on my Canon PIXMA MX870 multi-function printer and create PDFs of the material.  I save the file to my archives drive and then simply drag and drop it into Evernote, the notebook I want it in, and apply tags.

Currently, I have a default ‘Scott’ notebook which holds generic information I use such as a simple to-do list, goals, etc.  I still use Remember the Milk for my every day ‘to-do list’ function, but Evernote could certainly work in that capacity as well as you can create check box lists if you’d like.

Sample names of my notebooks:

• Android
• Automobiles
• Evernote
• Google
• Husted Visuals
• iRacing
• Lightroom Tips & Techniques
• Photography
• Photoshop Techniques
• Recipes
• The Racing Historian
• Windows

With Evernote, you cannot make sub-notebooks.  So you really need to rely on your tags for organizing notes within each notebook.  So I have created a structure based on very good advice I read in an article.

Sample tag structure that I use:

• !iRacing
  • !General Information
  • !Setups
• !Photography
  • !Astrophotography
  • !Automobiles
  • !Business
  • !Green Screen
  • !Legal
  • !Olympus
    • !E-3
    • !E-500
    • !Lens
  • !Printing
• !Photoshop
  • !Layers
  • !Masks
  • !Text

I think you can get the idea of how I have the structure created from the above.  Then, when I want to find a notebook, I simply select the tags I’m looking for and voila – there they are.

With the above system, I now have access to all this abundance of information on my desktop at home, any computer I have access to the Internet on by simply logging into Evernote.com, or I can access it on my Droid smartphone with the Evernote app.  Also something else that is noteworthy.  If you want to use Evernote locally, but don’t feel comfortable with the information being online, you can select whether or not a notebook and/or item is kept locally on Evernote, or uploaded online when you sync your desktop to Evernote.com.  So if you are concerned with the privacy of your information, you can protect it by simply not having it sync up when you sync your other material.  If you are extremely paranoid, you don’t have to sync it up online at all if you don’t want to.

For me, Evernote is a “killer” app that is very useful.   The ‘free’ version of Evernote allows you up to 40MB of monthly bandwidth.  But it also limits the number of supported file formats.  You can view the differences between the free version and the $5 monthly (or $45 yearly) Premium plan by visiting their website.