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Evernote 4
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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 15, 2010 at 02:50 PM
Is anyone using EN 4?
I think it is faster in its Windows version.
However, given that it is an information program, and therefore more than a clipper of steroids which can be used on just about any known platform (a good thing for those who need it), I hope the developers begin to focus on info management more than they have.
For example, tags and highlighting.
The tagging capability is less than it was with version 2.
And highlighting of text seems to have been yet again bypassed.
My hope is that at some future point - sooner rather than later - that Neville, developer of Surfulater, can give Surfulater a cloud capability.
Even if Surfulater does not work on other platforms, I suspect there is a significant number of Windows users who would support a cloud version - enough to make it worthwhile.
Neville has shown more sensitivity than EN’s developers to the need for post-clip information management tools, and though there is not a column option ( a favorite feature of mine), he has provided a way to deal with metadata which is effective. As well, Surfulater has a tagging process which allows for searches for items with both tag A and tag B. It is done very smartly.
Daly
Posted by Cady
Nov 15, 2010 at 06:09 PM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Is anyone using EN 4?
>
>I think it is faster in its Windows version.
>
>However, given
>that it is an information program, and therefore more than a clipper of steroids which
>can be used on just about any known platform (a good thing for those who need it), I hope
>the developers begin to focus on info management more than they have.
>
>For example,
>tags and highlighting.
>
>The tagging capability is less than it was with version 2.
>
>
>And highlighting of text seems to have been yet again bypassed.
>
>My hope is that at
>some future point - sooner rather than later - that Neville, developer of Surfulater,
>can give Surfulater a cloud capability.
>
>Even if Surfulater does not work on other
>platforms, I suspect there is a significant number of Windows users who would support
>a cloud version - enough to make it worthwhile.
>
>Neville has shown more sensitivity
>than EN’s developers to the need for post-clip information management tools, and
>though there is not a column option ( a favorite feature of mine), he has provided a way
>to deal with metadata which is effective. As well, Surfulater has a tagging process
>which allows for searches for items with both tag A and tag B. It is done very
>smartly.
>
>Daly
Hi. I apologize for deviating from the main topic (EN 4).
Since Daly mentioned Surfulater, I just wanted to point out that I sorely miss Surfulater on my Mac. I miss the tags. I miss the cross-references… A while ago I even emailed Neville and shamelessly begged him to make a Mac version.
Currently I use Surfulater with Parallels (still on v. 5; I haven’t yet upgraded Parallels 6), but the lack of integration with other Mac apps makes the process cumbersome.
To this day, I haven’t found a proper Mac-equivalent to Surfulater. I clip web pages to DEVONthink Pro Office, but DTP, while an excellent solution to handling large amounts of data, just doesn’t “feel” like a Surfulater replacement…
Posted by dan7000
Nov 16, 2010 at 07:27 PM
I use EN 4 - it’s the primary software application in my workflow.
I think the issues raised in Daly’s email are mostly questions of taste. What fits with one person’s workflow might not fit with another person’s. For me, EN is the right program and is evolving in the right direction. Obviously, for others, that’s not as true. A few additional comments in-line below:
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Is anyone using EN 4?
>
>I think it is faster in its Windows version.
>
>However, given
>that it is an information program, and therefore more than a clipper of steroids which
>can be used on just about any known platform (a good thing for those who need it), I hope
>the developers begin to focus on info management more than they have.
Personally, I use EN for a lot more than just clipping. In fact, that’s why Surfulater—with its clipping focus—cannot replace EN for me. I use EN for 4 things, in this order:
1. fast note taking (meeting notes, ideas, reminders)
2. gathering information related to one topic of research for my work. This information generally comes from snippets of documents in PDF, Word, or Email form. Each snippet needs to be notated with topic information as well as bibliographic information and sometimes context.
3. first drafts of documents—this is often a bullet list or less structured outline of ideas, with reference to the information collected in #2, above.
4. web clipping
For me, nothing does the first 3 of these faster and easier than EN.
For notetaking, most programs like Ultrarecall and Surfulater force me to make lots of decisions about what type (or template) of note I’m taking—and where to store it (what notebook or category) before I can start typing—either that, or after I finish typing, I have to make lots of decisions before moving on. With EN, I click CTRL-ALT-N, start typing, maybe add a tag, and close the window. I never have to decide what folder to keep a note in, I never have to choose a template or fill out lots of complicated fields.
The ability to enter and find notes on my blackberry and my ipod are increasingly important aspects of my use of EN for notetaking. But they are not the main things that attract me to the program.
For collecting research, EN’s simplicity is again its strength. I can put 10 clips in one note, or have 1 clip per note. I basically use it just like notepad, but with rich text. Again, there is no need to figure out lots of complicated extra fields before I start researching and typing in citations.
All of this only works because of EN’s fast searching, which I discuss below.
>
>For example,
>tags and highlighting.
>
>The tagging capability is less than it was with version 2.
I hated the UI of EN v.2 so much that I never had a chance to be familiar with the tagging, so I can’t comment on this. I do like EN’s focus on tagging as the primary method of information management. For me, tags and fast searching are the right way to handle exponentially-growing amounts of information.
Fast searching is one of the primary things that makes EN useful. In Windows v 4, search speed has finally gotten back to—or faster than—what it was in v 3.1. Being able to find a note or clipping instantaneously based on any remembered snippet of its contents is something many apps promise, but few deliver. EN does this for text and for images, using its own OCR engine. It’s is so good at this that some folks in the EN forums copy all their emails from Outlook into EN just so they are more searchable.
>
>
>And highlighting of text seems to have been yet again bypassed.
This is an example of a difference in taste. I have never cared about highlighting information in electronic documents. Highlights are not useful to me because they are not distinguishable or searchable. I.e., if I highlight 50 phrases in a document, I can’t easily find the one highlighted phrase I care about without navigating through all 50 highlights.
This is a much-requested feature, so apparently it’s useful to some people, though.
>
>My hope is that at
>some future point - sooner rather than later - that Neville, developer of Surfulater,
>can give Surfulater a cloud capability.
>
>Even if Surfulater does not work on other
>platforms, I suspect there is a significant number of Windows users who would support
>a cloud version - enough to make it worthwhile.
>
>Neville has shown more sensitivity
>than EN’s developers to the need for post-clip information management tools, and
>though there is not a column option ( a favorite feature of mine), he has provided a way
>to deal with metadata which is effective. As well, Surfulater has a tagging process
>which allows for searches for items with both tag A and tag B. It is done very
>smartly.
EN can do any searches for any boolean combinations of tags. I’m not sure what “column option” is?
Again, this may be a matter of taste, but I think EN’s developers are probably the most responsive and communicative of any software developers I’ve ever encountered - indeed, that is their strength. If you check out the forums or the EN blog, you’ll find that some employees seem to spend their entire day interacting with users regarding EN feature ideas and plans.
Regarding “the need for post-clip information management tools,” EN has been very responsive to ideas and questions regarding the design and use of the tagging interface, which is “post-clip.” They also have greatly improved intra- and inter- note search, which is also “post-clip.” They have also, after considerable criticism in the forums, started to roll out heirarchical notebooks, a decision that I think detracts from the focus on tags, but that shows responsiveness to user demands. I agree, however, that EN does not focus on how to organize your information - the whole concept is that if search and tagging are fast and easy enough, then you shouldn’t have to spend hours re-organizing your data. That concept is what appeals to me, but obviously there are other applications for those who want more organizational capability.
>
>Daly
Posted by dan7000
Nov 16, 2010 at 07:33 PM
Oops - I realized 3 more things I use EN for:
5. storing reference information (medical records, bill payments, license plate numbers, etc) - either in text or in attached files
6. capturing emails that contain important information—including important file attachments—since I find that Outlook search is way too slow, so I don’t rely on Outlook for storing information I might need in the future.
7. general file storage - although this is evolving from dropbox to evernote, and I’m not sure where I stand on it yet.
Posted by Rael Bauer
Nov 18, 2010 at 11:39 AM
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your post. I found your work-flow description and reasons for choosing EN to be enlightening..
However..question:
I used EN a while back (around the time of 3.0), mostly for odds and ends. As time went by, I found the more I put into it, the more difficult it became to actually “know where anything is..”. A single tag would include more and more stuff (notes), and become more and more vague…and less useful at containing a specific set of information.
So do you then spend a lot of time (or considerable amount of time) adding numerous tags to each note? And then again, when searching for a note or group of notes you have to create a search query of all relevant tags to get back that information. (I guess EN does allow to save search queries…maybe that is then important for you).
Although a hierarchical tree has it’s drawbacks..it seems (to me) to be the more natural way to group data together. Essentially simply adding a note in a specific place, by context, is like adding all the tags you would otherwise need to add. And then also, finding a group of related information is also simple. When you go to one note, you immediately see related information. With my experience of tags, you seem to lose that.
As said, I was working mainly with bits and pieces of data, so these points didn’t matter as much, but if you are using EN for groups of serious information, I’m wondering how you get by??
Thanks
Rael
http://www.bauerapps.com