| If I Only Had a Brain |
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| Written by Bob Sprankle | ||||
| Tuesday, 20 January 2009 00:00 | ||||
 One of the ironies in "The Wizard of Oz" is that each character ends up searching for that which he/she already has. So, when the Scarecrow is wishing he had a brain, he's missing the fact that he is clearly the smartest one in the bunch (excepting Dorothy of course... and maybe Toto, too). What he's really asking for is a second brain. I, too, want a brain: A second brain. The one I have is fine, for sure, but it has so much to do and is constantly being slowed down in its higher endeavors by the more mundane things like remembering to pick up milk, or to call the dentist and set up a cleaning, or change the laundry over. I've always wanted an "assistant" brain and now I have one that I simply cannot live without: Evernote.
In its basic form, you can use Evernote as a simple word processor. Even at this level, Evernote will rock your world because you can easily sync your work on other computers. Evernote comes in a variety of forms: desktop application (for Mac and PC), Web-based application, and even (wait for it...) phone application(!). So, if you write a document on one machine, you can sync it to be viewable/editable on another machine with the desktop application, or in a Web browser, or on your phone. But, wait! Evernote is oh, so much more! Evernote can handle much more than just text documents. You can put in photos, audio, screen snapshots, pdf files... and even more file formats if you upgrade to the premium account. And, you can add all this from a Web browser, the desktop client, your phone, or even your standard digital camera (with an add-on that I'll explain in a moment). Let's look at one scenario where Evernote will serve as your "extra brain." You're at a conference. You make contact with another educator and strike up a conversation that you both want to continue online when you return to your own home states. The educator doesn't have a business card. You could write down his/her email on a slip of paper, stuff it in your pocket, and forget about it forever because it ends up getting sucked into the Black Hole that lives in your dryer. Or... you have the new friend write down his/her name and email address on a piece of paper and the city where the conference is being held in (let's say "Boston"). You take a picture with your cell phone of him/her holding it. You send this to your Evernote account where it is safely stored. Months later, when you suddenly remember this contact and the promise you made of getting in contact with him/her, you go to your Evernote account to search for the picture. It's been so long that you no longer can remember the name of this person, but you do remember that you both met at a conference in Boston. Because you've been using your "extra brain" in abundance, there are thousands of files in your Evernote account that you would need to look through to find the file with the picture of the contact. Not a problem. You simply search for the word "Boston" and up comes the picture because Evernote has identified the word "Boston" in the photo that you took. Evernote can do this because it runs every file through its recognition technology which can even identify (neatly) handwritten words. No need to ever use paper again! Take pictures of business cards, books that are recommended, ideas scrawled on the back of a napkin, favorite menus, you name it! You can send pictures from your phone, your computer (PhotoBooth in Macintosh makes this really easy), and even your digital cameras if you buy an "Eye-Fi" wireless SD card for your camera (go here to see a video about this). Files can even be emailed to your Evernote account. Evernote has a mobile version of the your account to view files on your cell phone and has an iPhone application that makes it even easier to view and capture notes, pictures, or audio to send to your account. All data collected can be organized into notebooks, tagged, viewed in list or thumbnail view, can be encrypted with a password, and you can even publish notebooks to the web for others to see the data collected there. This would work great for capturing photos, for instance, publishing them to the public page, and using the Evernote widget to embed it directly onto your Web site. A free account gives users a monthly upload allowance of 40MB. Premium accounts are $5 a month ($45 for an entire year!) and give you a monthly allowance of 500MB, stronger encryption (SSL), priority image recognition, ability to synchronize accross different platforms, and Ad-removal from your published public pages. Evernote is "ever-ready" to serve you, sync for you, and capture and remember, freeing up your first brain with plenty of "hard drive space" for the more important things in life. Now, if only it could find my car keys. . .
POSTED ON HOTCHALK
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