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I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

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Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#41
post #5

Actually, all that stuff is why I don't like Evernote. It's so featureful, it means that its mobile clients are quite heavyweight and thus quite slow to boot. When I open my notes, I want them 5 seconds ago, looking right at the last notes I entered anywhere. I can wait for games and Netflix and whatnot to boot, but Notes need to be the snappiest freaking things on Earth. Evernote is not. I have to wait for it to ope…

I'm a big fan of Tap Log. Semi-structured notes and logging, lightning fast. Not free. Only tried on Android.

Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can save to your WebDAV using the standard file picker. Surely an app that exports to Dropbox also gives you a "Save As" dialog.

Except for every iOS app that integrates with Dropbox.

Very true, iOS doesn't give users control of their data. To me that's more of a reason to not use iOS rather than a reason not to use WebDAV.

Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#44

Are there any good self hosted alternatives?

When I worked exclusively on Windows, ConnectedText (http://www.connectedtext.com) was my favorite personal wiki app; it supports Python scripting, LaTeX, code highlighting, and inter-page linking.

Unfortunately, I don't do a lot of Windows development anymore and wish I could find a decent cross-platform alternative. RedNotebook (http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/) is similar, but not as powerful as ConnectedText.

For what it's worth, I also am a paying Evernote user. Love it, though I only use the web interface.

Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#45

Evernote + Dropbox means that I am basically device/OS/location agnostic for all my information needs, which given that I switch between 3-4 machines (all with different OSs) regularly is absolutely crucial. That said, some PAINFULLY obvious things which would be hugely benficial for adoption; - LaTex support built in - Markdown (either in every note, or allowing you to add 'markdown' boxes, if just for writing code)…

This also means that all the information you collect is readily available in unencrypted form to any agency that might want to bulk-process it. You're essentially storing your information on postcards. That said, it might be a fair compromise for many of us.

Evernote has another problem: their Mac app was never "smooth enough". There was always something off about it, when compared to apps like Yojimbo. And these things really matter for apps that you use a lot.

Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#46

Are there any good self hosted alternatives?

I'm happy with ZIM Desktop Wiki (http://zim-wiki.org/) and you can sync it's text files via Dropbox - bit of a raw solution I guess because there's no Android client - but text files are easy to parse in lots of interesting ways (e.g. I grep tasks marked as @phone and Dropbox them to my cellphone)

Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#47

I think Evernote is most important as a showcase of how much we have transcended file systems. Mobile devices have abandoned them, and through cross-platform apps like Evernote, this notion finds its way back to the desktop. Back in the day, we'd just make folders on hard disk for "thought projects", adding text files, bookmark files (!), photos, possibly word documents. For ordering, there are file name conventions,…

Hey, I've been trying to think about this problem myself. If you've got some thoughts about this id love to hear them, so I can possibly look at integrating them into elementary OS, perhaps? My email is in my profile if you've got time at all :)

Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#48
post #6

Am I the only one that read the article article as having a distinct Astroturfing feel about it ?

That was my thinking too. Who sits down and writes a lengthy blog post about a piece of software that they like to use? How boring! It's like someone sitting down to write a blog post about why they like Pepsi instead of Coke.

Welcome to lifehacker.com

Re: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing

#49
post #36

Are there any good self hosted alternatives?

Probably more important an issue than the resource hogginess and slowness of evernote, which has already been mentioned here, it seems self-hosted alternatives (I see someone mentioned WebDav) are very important. We used to have the luxury to think any notes we took were not interesting to third parties and couldn't be used against us or our contacts and our service providers might not be backdoor-ed. But we can't de…

OwnCloud had (don't know f they work with 5 yet) extensions that builds off DAV and let's you host your own stuff, as well as expose APIs for client apps. I'm hoping it takes off a bit more for that reason!
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