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Evernote and "The Wall Street Journal"
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Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 30, 2014 at 10:59 PM
Chris Murtland wrote:
>Here are all the places my Workflowy data lives - automatically:
>
>1. workflowy.com
>2. text file in Dropbox
>3. local text file on my machine’s Dropbox folder
>4. copy of the local text file on my local network storage
>5. Gmail (using the daily email option, which includes everything that
>changed the previous day)
>6. Evernote.com server (email auto-forwarded from Gmail)
>7. local Evernote client
The Chrome app (which also works offline) is yet another option.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Dec 1, 2014 at 12:26 AM
Franz, first time I set up Evernote on my Nexus, including to synchronize, I discovered that I couldn’t open anything because all that had downloaded was the list of items. I went into settings and found I needed to specifcally require EN to download all content.
I was pissed, though relieved I could do that. Would have been nice if EN had told me that in the first place.
Daly
Franz Grieser wrote:
Paul.
>
>That’s exactly why I have been using Evernote. And exactly why I think
>about dropping Evernote: Last week, I went to a seminar in the mountains
>- no internet there. So I took along my iPad with a huge Evernote
>database - I had synced before leaving, and I have a Premium account.
>When I was in the mountains, EN wouldn’t open any of my notes. Always
>the same error message: Switch offline operation on, or else you cannot
>access this note. But this message also appeared after I switched
>offline operation on (and off and on). And it appeared also when trying
>to open notes I had been able to open on the iPad without internet
>connection before.
>
>So, my trust in EN dramatically dropped.
>
>:-(
>
>
>Paul Korm wrote:
>>I don’t have particular concerns about what Evernote is (“lifestyle” or
>>whatever)—that’s a timewaster.
>>
>>IMO, what’s always important to mull over and discuss here and
>elsewhere
>>is “what happens next”. By this I mean I believe it is important to
>>always have an exit plan from any cloud. I tolerate Evernote because
>>the desktop client is still pretty good (despite v6 glitches) and its
>>easy to unplug it from the Evernote cloud and have my data safe and
>>triple-backed-up here in my local network and my private offsite. I
>>don’t get this from Workflowy and its peers and would thus never use
>it.
>>
>>
>>My rule of thumb is: if I can unplug from a cloud service and still
>have
>>my data, then I’ll tolerate the cloud service otherwise I won’t touch
>it
>>for anything more than curiosity. I can unplug Dropbox, OneDrive and
>>the like so I’m good with that. I can’t unplug Trello, and its peers,
>>so they’re dead to me.
>>
>>(Products mentioned here just for illustration.)
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 1, 2014 at 08:22 AM
Thanks Daly. But that was not the problem (not this time, I had also stumbled over that problem 2 years ago).
This time I had already downloaded the content of the notes to my iPad. The notes were there but EN wouldn’t let me open them.
Posted by jamesofford
Dec 1, 2014 at 12:48 PM
An interesting discussion in many respects.
The University at which I work provides me with 50 gig of Box space. I also have 25 gig of space of my own on Box, 25 gig on Onedrive, and 15 gig on Copy and Google drive. My space on Dropbox is pretty small, I think I have 2.5 gig there. Most of the stuff that I have in the cloud is on Box. I have stuff in these cloud drives, but it isn’t stored there for use, nor is it backed up there. It is stored there so I can transfer it.
On the issue of data in the cloud-I don’t trust any of my data to the cloud alone. I store all of the data that I need to have access to locally. If a piece of software requires that I store data in the cloud for access, I don’t use it. (With a couple of exceptions, see below.)Given the cost of hard disks these days(even SSDs), storage is phenomenally cheap. I have no particular philosophical differences with the cloud, but I come from an era when networks were not as ubiquitous or as reliable as they are now, and became used to keeping things locally. I back up to a network attached storage device, but that is the only place that my data are found that is not my computer. The data that are on the tablet are transferred through a cloud-usually Box-but they live on the tablet while I work on them.
I also do most of my work on a MacBook Pro. I haven’t had a real desktop computer for years. First a series of Windows laptops at work(Lenovos. Loved those.). My personal machine has been a MacBook or MacBook Pro for the last 10 years or so. With a laptop and a big harddrive, it’s easy to carry your data with you. No real need for the cloud. I prefer having software that uses local data because I can work on it whenever and where ever I like. No network access needed. I have good network access at work and good network access at home. And in these days of nearly ubiquitous wifi I can connect many other places. But the nice thing is that I can disconnect from the webbie-web, and still do productive work. I don’t rely on internet access.
For me, the utility of the cloud is not so much as a place to keep stuff to be worked on, but more of a convenient place to put stuff so I can transfer it to my tablet from my computer, or the other way around. I also use the cloud to distribute files to others. That way I don’t choke up their email inboxes with lots of stuff.
I do have a couple of pieces of software that require the cloud. One is Notesuite, another is Onenote. For these pieces of software the utility of the cloud is that data can be transferred from my computer to the tablet and back. I also have calendaring software that syncs through the cloud. But the authoritative version of all these data is on my local hard drive.
On the issue of “lifestyle” software-I don’t use Facebook, or Twitter or any of those platforms. Not so much because I dislike them, mostly because I don’t see a use for them. I don’t think that anyone else is so interested in my life and what I am doing that I need to send tweets to them. With regard to Facebook, I call, write, or email my friends. I have no use for Facebook. .
I moved from the PC to the Mac a few years ago. There were a couple of reasons for that. One is that I prefer trusting to an industrial strength operating system that has been around for a while(I refer here to Unix, the underpinnings of the Mac). The other reason was Devonthink. I use Devonthink for nearly all of my important information storage. I bought Devonthink Pro Office several years ago. It is still my mainstay. I have tried other software(Initially Together and Eaglefiler. Also Evernote. Onenote has a different place in what I do.)Devonthink can’t be beat. For Devonthink, all of the data live locally.
Like the rest of us CRIMPers, I try other things as they come along. But one of my main criteria for the usefulness of software is whether the software is dependent on storing data in the cloud. If so, it goes lower on my list. I have never much liked Evernote. Not so much because of where it stores its data, but more of the way it works. I had a copy on my laptop but never used it. Last week I deleted it.
One other thing-as a working scientist I need to have access to the scientific literature. I use specialized software to keep track of that(Currently Papers 2.7)Again, those data live locally. The newest version of Papers (vers 3.X)stores libraries in the cloud. I upgraded to vers 3.0, but dropped back to 2.X because of the requirement for keeping data in the cloud.
Jim
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 1, 2014 at 02:35 PM
jamesofford wrote:
>I have no particular philosophical differences with
>the cloud, but I come from an era when networks were not as ubiquitous
>or as reliable as they are now, and became used to keeping things
>locally. I back up to a network attached storage device, but that is the
>only place that my data are found that is not my computer.
From a practical point of view, I think one should not trust either cloud or local storage exclusively and therefore one needs to use both (unless of course you have some top secret stuff, in which case never use the cloud). Both have the capacity to fail.
To me it seems to be a generational issue. The older one gets, the more one has seen large corporations (or even governments)—and especially start-ups and one-man bands—fail, so one can’t blindly believe that data in the cloud will always be safe (in the sense of technically available). Any business can go bankrupt (OK, maybe except banks, but that’s a different story ;)