My Dad now has a smartphone.
Two weeks ago I joined him on a shopping trip to the Pavilions shopping centre and we bought him a new Samsung Galaxy Europa running the Android phone operating system.
Dad is big into his Christian faith, and organises and attends a weekly bible study. He asked me for advice on getting a new phone because, in the course of his studies, he wants to be able to take notes. He thought a phone might be handiest for that as he always carries it with him, and having always been pretty progressive regarding IT, he knew that it would save him from having to carry a notepad as well. It was also because he’s quite comfortable with using computers that I was quite confident that the leap from the relatively dumb Nokia he was using before.
That old Nokia might have been able to record text snippets or notes in some form, but I knew that it would be blown out of the water by what I was going to show him.
I decided to educate my father in the ways of Evernote.
About Evernote.
Evernote is an online service designed to help you “remember everything”. You type in notes, send photos, emails, screengrabs and attachments to it , and all your stuff is accessible by logging into the website, or the desktop application, and via iPhone and Android apps. If you wanted to confuse me by emailing my evernote address directly, here is what my notebook address might look like:
tonyhaddon.12cd1@m.evernote.com
Just send something to that and it might pop up in my notebook with attachments and all. But it won’t. This address has been changed – to protect my innocence.
However, here’s the clincher for me…
Evernote Can Read Text in Photos.
Yes, it can. This means that for all the photos you send it, from pictures taken with the phone to screengrabs from your desktop, Evernote dons its half-moon spectacles and gives it the once-over to see if there is any text in the image, and indexes that text for you. Layman’s terms? These images are now searchable by the text that they contain.
By simply searching for "stories" in Evernote, I get this image as one of my results.
…and that includes Dad’s bible-study notes. Here’s an example of a use case from my own experience: I read a book called Storytelling for User Experience a while back. When I came across a useful story or case study that I thought might be useful in future, I’d just photograph the page and send it to Evernote. If I want to go and be very explicit about it, I can tag and title the “note” as well, but even just by giving it to Evernote to read, searching for that content later just couldn’t be easier.
Use Cases.
Evernote provide a blog which regularly updates with new ways to use their software and de-paper your existence. Two fine examples are:
- Keeping all your receipts digitally. If you regularly need to process expenses, this could be very useful for you.
- Digitising and storing business cards after a networking session. I find this particularly useful myself.
Anyway, the important thing is, Dad’s happy. He’s got a couple of notes in already.