Evernote Development

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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jan 19, 2009 at 07:10 PM

A program no longer being developed, or a software company going out of business, are not the only perils for users.

For example, Evernote.

When EN’s developers launched EN3 it was to be a program for all platforms, plus the cloud.

EN3 dropped features from EN2. Users for whom those features were important have gone through a frustrating process of attempting to persuade the developers to add those features back.

An example is the question of sub notebooks.

Increasingly it became apparent there were fewer and fewer responses from EN in their heavily used user forum, especially around issues where ppl were adamant, such as sub notebooks.

Way back in 08 I voted with my feet, and moved over to http://www.surfulater.com, which had moved ahead very nicely since I had previously used it.

Today I thought I’d check the EN user forum to see if there has been any movement, especially given a heady statement made by the company about plans to focus attention once more on the desktop users of EN. I saw not much has changed since my last visit to the forum.

I sent the following post to the forum:

``I see the sub-notebook discussion is going on the same way it was several months ago when I last looked in on Evernote forum.

``I now use Surfulater, http://www.surfulater.com. It has notebooks, and tags, and a growing capability to handle metadata.

``It also manages to clip web pages with even greater accuracy than EN.

``And the developer replies to queries from users.

``From what I see the sub-notebook discussion is being ignored by EN.

``For saving to the web when that is actually important in my work I use Microsoft’s new, free program Thumbtack.

``If you all want to continue using EN, and want sub-notebooks, then express yourselves in forums outside of EN, such as http://www.outlinersoftware.com``

I have no confidence that desktop users of EN will ever be listened to the way they once were by the developers or that the program will fulfill the stated intention of refocusing on the desktop version of EN.

So…shift in corporate emphasis on future direction of software is also a risk we take as users, albeit a risk that is unavoidable.

Daly

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 19, 2009 at 07:37 PM

All good points, Daly. I think the lesson in all this is that one should never put out money for an application because of its promise, but only for what it does now. That is, assume that it will never be improved, then decide if you want to pay money for it. This is also why I would never “buy” software on a subscription basis. That’s just asking to be gut-punched down the road when the developer closes up shop and you can no longer use all of its features.

Steve Z.

Posted by Chris Thompson
Jan 19, 2009 at 08:02 PM

Surfulator desperately needs a new web site. It has only one screenshot, and I wouldn’t have known it had features like tagging if I wasn’t reading posts on this forum.

I agree about the risks of software “evolving”, though I think this is a particular risk with applications that have a heavy web component. Though some argue netbooks are meant to almost exclusively use software in the cloud, the irony is that netbooks also make it easier than ever to keep everything local and have it always available with you.

—Chris

Posted by dan7000
Jan 20, 2009 at 07:29 PM

FWIW, I have gotten very prompt, courteous and complete responses from EN developers on their forum.

For instance, last week I posted a question about a bug I was seeing. EN developers responded within 2 hours.
A while back, I posted a very critical comment about their failure to support hyperlinks to evernote notes, and EN developers responded courteously within 7 hours.
Most importantly, I have posted a few times about my desire to see embedded file storage in EN, and each time EN responded that they don’t post development timelines but they were working on it; last month they launched the feature and it works great.

So my experience has been great responsiveness to users - even implementing features that many users ask for. I’m sorry your experience hasn’t been the same.

Posted by dg
Jan 28, 2009 at 10:35 PM

I’m one of those disgruntled Evernote 2.? users who got jostled around by the transition to v3. I argued with them passionately for awhile, but quickly realized I was wasting my time.

Surprisingly to me, though, I’ve found a use for Evernote v3 that suits my needs and that’s quick web clips. I respect that Surfulator does it better, but I’m seldom in need of such accuracy…I’m just archiving random tidbits of web data that I may need to search/call up in the future and a local/cloud-based tagged storage of this info is much more useful than just reverting to google!

But I’ve not forgotten (forgiven?) that I had developed a personal information strategy built around Evernote 2’s hyper-linking, templates, and tag-intersection capability that is still all blown to smithereens at this time. I’ve been burned once and so I’m twice shy.

But honestly, the reason I’ve not assembled a new personal information strategy is the experience with Evernote 3’s cloud sync’ing. It’s so convenient for a person like me who rotates between 3 computers (2 at work and 1 at home) and a Windows Mobile smartphone (which I almost use more than the desktop computers!).

Synching across those multiple platforms has proven to be my key criteria for the future. But it raises a security concern that I’m not fully comfortably with yet. Note that a web only solution doesn’t work, as anyone who uses gmail finds when they get on an airplane.

Exchange/Outlook can sync across the cloud quite nicely and it’s fairly secure (most companies invoke security policies to provide some degree of protection from casual snooping)...so I’m willing to put stuff on it that warrants a _modest_ level of security.

Evernote 3 can sync across the multiple platforms I use seamlessly, but I don’t put any sensitive information on it…just information that’s already publicly available anyway (i.e., web clips). Still, I use a premium account which ensures data is sent over an SSL link.

So my dilemma now is that I want the functionality of Evernote 2, a security level equal to or greater than an Exchange server, yet the effortless cloud based sync’ing across multiple platforms provided by Exchange/Outlook and Evernote 3.

I haven’t found the holy grail yet :-) but Evernote 3 did change my view of what I need for the future.

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