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Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

nytimes.com

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Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#321

Post by charlesdaniels »

tech_tuna wrote: post #312
charlesdaniels wrote: post #144

Lots of people here mentioned they are looking for Evernote replacements. Here is my experience with this: Joplin[1] seems to be the best in my view. It's cross-platform, has decent sync capabilities, plus a web clipper. I've been using this for a while and have liked it a lot so far. I used Quiver[2] for a while when I used to run macOS, but moved away from it because it was macOS specific. It also had some features…

I literally decided today to start using paper and pen for note-taking. I haven't even tried half of these apps but I'm tired of looking for the one true note taking app that won't annoy me.

I’ve been there a few times for sure. But searchability is hard to live without, and it’s hard to integrate links, code snippets, and images with dead tree based notes. A big part of this probably depends on what you’re taking notes about though.

It does seem like a problem that should have a solid, open source solution by now. Joplin is decent, but still lackin in a few areas.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#322

Post by tempestn »

chongli wrote: post #264
tempestn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can definitely solve problems that exist. I've been using it near religiously for the past 6-7 years as the home of my GTD system, as well as a general store for archived reference information, and the design of their product fits my needs perfectly . That said, the flexibility in use that's one of its main strengths is also one of its greatest challenges, since it can be very difficult to pick it up and get the m…

home of my GTD system That may be why. Lots of people don't have a GTD system. I, personally, can't see myself ever using one. Maybe I'm just way too low in conscientiousness but I find systems like that so oppressive that I get very unhappy and abandon them.

I've heard that point of view a lot, but it's definitely not me. In fact, if I had to pick one word to describe it, it'd probably be "liberating". I don't have to hold anything in my brain anymore, so when I'm relaxing, I can relax 100%. Don't have to worry about forgetting anything, because I know it's all in there. And when I'm ready to 'get something done', as it were, some things to do are right there. I love it. That said, it did take a while to get set up and used to.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#323

Post by nika1975 »

zenbob wrote: post #44
hirundo wrote: post #41

I'd like to leave Evernote (I moved to Linux, which they don't support, and their web app is insufficient). But for me the killer feature is doing OCR on PDFs and images you post and including it in search. I haven't found that elsewhere. Does anyone else do that?

OneNote has this: "OneNote can search typed text, handwritten notes, and words that appear in inserted images." https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Search-for-Notes-in... But it won't help your Linux support issue :(

Unfortunately search in images never works for me in OneNote. I have quite a few PDF documents with scanned contracts as images and none of them are found by OneNote or OneDrive search.The content in the images of the PDF files are immediately available in search results on my Google Drive.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#324

Post by dirtyaura »

Vvector wrote: post #313
L_Rahman wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100M in annual revenues isn't even much of a stretch. 1.6M knowledge workers paying an average $5 a month for their primary note taking app - apps on every platform: iOS, Android, iPad, Mac, Windows, ChromeOS, Linux, encrypted cloud sync, and integration with other apps - feels like a very plausible reality that gets the company to a $1B valuation.

Everyone has a different price point. But I feel $5/m is too much for a note taking app. For $7/m, I could get OneNote plus the entire office suite, and OneDrive.

If a personal productivity tool provides real value and costs $60 dollars per year, it is a no-brainer buy even from personal budget. Most higher income information workers earn that in an hour or two.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#325

Post by keenmaster »

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #306
azinman2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Notes isn’t quite the same product — can’t easily clip webpages, create annotations, tags, etc, but largely I don’t have as much a need for that anymore! I’m just worried about exporting my data before they go out of business, but to put into what? Is there any good, ideally open source, alternative that can accept Evernote as is?

I know a lot of people use One Note, might be worth considering. My use-case is not that heavy right now, so just it is just notes for me at the moment.

I was spooked away from OneNote. I mistakenly deleted an entire notebook on their iOS app with a single swipe and press. Bizarrely, the notebook was completely irrecoverable. Not only that, but the desktop version of OneNote, which previously had the same notebook, automatically synced the deletion. I laughed at how efficiently I was being screwed. This was a couple years ago. I reluctantly switched back to Evernote.

I’ve also had trouble with OneDrive. I like most Microsoft software, but MS needs to rework its schema for auto-save products. They’re seamless 99% of the time, but come with the black swan risk of catastrophic failure at the worst time. I’d rather just ctrl+s and email backup copies to myself.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#326

Post by mantas »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #300
etairaz wrote: post #78

Most people don't know this, but evernote was created maybe 15 years ago, as a desktop app ( https://lifehacker.com/download-of-the-day-evernote-2-0-wind... ). I used evernote before their version 3, which is the one everyone knows today. Evernote 2 was a brilliant note taking app, the first and best of its kind, and it cost a few dozen bucks, which I gladly paid... Then they shifted to the online version called Ever…

Turns out the "buy once forever" isn't a sustainable business model. And business' look for a sustainable business model, because it's literally a question of life and death for them.

Looking at how people are pissed at subscription apps, "pay forever" doesn't seem sustainable either.

If people ain't paying for newer release (as in old good charge-for-major-upgrades model), maybe that piece software can be considered "done" and it's time to go after another sector?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#327

Post by mantas »

_jal wrote: post #286
koverda wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Google docs to be so clunky and slow.

My company uses Google docs. Anything destined for for that pit of despair I write in vi and excel, and copy/paste or import. Docs is not quite awful, but nowhere close to nice to use. And "just search" as an organizing principle for docs from lots of people who aren't information nerds ends up leading to a bucket of ass. Newhires end up doing broken things because they found an outdated doc, you have to pick through…

I love how Google fanboys downvoted you to oblivion.

Come on people, when is sharing an opinion worth a downvote?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#328

Post by [deleted] »

slantaclaus wrote: post #314
erikpukinskis wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with it was that I typed things and Evernote would just delete them on sync.

It’s so weird I use Evernote precisely because it does not and has not ever lost any note I’ve ever written across dozens of devices over over 7 years

[deleted]

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#329

Post by erikpukinskis »

slantaclaus wrote: post #314
erikpukinskis wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with it was that I typed things and Evernote would just delete them on sync.

It’s so weird I use Evernote precisely because it does not and has not ever lost any note I’ve ever written across dozens of devices over over 7 years

It’s not that weird. Whatever the error rate, there will be a distribution of people who never encounter errors and some who get them often.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#330

Post by nitrogen »

enraged_camel wrote: post #315
idlewords wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evernote had a lot of odd tech bits in it, it wasn't just a CRUD app. At one point you could take a picture of a beer bottle and it would OCR the label for you automatically. I'm sympathetic to your argument (since that's how Pinboard competitors have died) but Evernote was a universe of its own.

And consider this: performing OCR on product labels is nothing like performing OCR on a neatly typed A4 paper that has been scanned. It is an enormously difficult feat that probably required at least a small team to accomplish.

Or a small army on mturk
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