Dozens of note-taking apps are available today for purchase; some are free, and many cost no more than $10.00. Since all apps have different features, it is important to be familiar with those on the market before choosing one.
The app Evernote (News - Alert), for example, is a note-taking tool that is capable of organizing a users’ digital life. It’s an easy-to-use, freeware program that can save everything that might be needed later: Users can input text, photos/images, media (voice/audio memos and clips) and more. It is designed to capture anything in multiple formats, explains the developer, Evernote Corporation.
Evernote is said to be “king of the note-taking applications”: it’s overtaking Microsoft’s OneNote, from a cost standpoint, and is said to be more robust, flexible and containing more options than Google (News - Alert) Keep, which does not have a tagging system or the ability to organize notes into their own categories.
The New York Times ranked Evernote as a ‘Top 10 Must-Have App.’ Fundamentally, the universal app (available for Android (News - Alert), iOS, and all other major mobile operating system platforms) provides a comprehensive single archive of a users’ digital life; it enables content to be inputted, forwarded, searched, shared or posted (to a social network site, such as Facebook (News - Alert)).
With Evernote, a user can create quick notes; can make an audio note (or a speech-to-text message) and insert it directly to a text note; can OCR PDFs so that they become full-text searchable; can embed files and write down comments in the same note and also add file attachments.
This digital note-capturer app lets users produce, print or save, store and organize all information in so called “notebooks,” that can be sorted for later access. Users can categorize the digital content using simple tags/keywords; these labels aid in searching and sorting for notes later. Even more, users can sync content with the Web and save notes to one’s Evernote.com account (stored in the cloud) for online synchronization, backup services and access from any computer or mobile device. Users can even e-mail noted content to other clients.
Digital note-taking makes good sense. Rather than having a desk littered with sticky notes or needing to use the traditional paper and pen to record information or having to save scrap of papers with the fear of misplacing them, Evernote will work as a multimedia notepad that can save time and increase productivity for its users. Nostalgic of sticky notes will be happy to know, however, that Evernote will work seamlessly with all Post-it Notes!
Evernote has become a very popular note-taking application and it’s now used by many also thanks to its low cost. The basic version is free and can be downloaded from the official website or via the Google Play or App Store on iTunes onto a computer and/or mobile device. A paid version is also available: Evernote Premium ($5/month or $45/annually) gives users additional features, like search within PDFs; more uploads (up to 1GB/month); share edit-access with other users; and the ability to add a PIN lock to the Evernote app. In addition, it allows the saving of one’s Evernote notebooks to a mobile device so that they can be accessed offline.
There are also additional apps that can help users get organized: Evernote Web Clipper, for example, is an app that helps users save Web page data directly into an Evernote notebook from inside the Chrome browser. This extension is able to extract and store content from a Web page or the entire page. Another new app is Evernote Business 2.0, which is ideal for those collecting business content in a personal notebook.
Edited by Cassandra Tucker