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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

#281

Post by OBLIQUE_PILLAR »

distances wrote: post #201
asdfman123 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't read the article due to paywall, but why does a note-taking app need to be a unicorn in the first place? It just seems so excessive. Like couldn't 80% of the value of Evernote be written as a simple, intuitive piece of software that a middle-aged programmer in Boise could maintain in his free time?

While that may be a slight exaggeration, Wikipedia's numbers of 251-500 employees sounds quite massive. I'm not obviously privy to all things the company does but it makes one wonder.

The programmers who maintain MediaWiki, the programmers who write the backend and frontend of Wikipedia, and the people who run the organization that raises money to fund Wikipedia, are all seperate organizations. Giving users the tools to view and edit Wikipedia in every language and on a variety of mobile devices is actually a lot of work.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#282

Post by mackrevinack »

xvector wrote: post #271
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…

How many of these companies will be around in 5 years? 10 years? I am looking forward to iOS 13 Reminders and Notes. At least then my notes will not be on a platform that will probably dissolve within then next decade.

Standard Notes might have a good chance of lasting that long. they seem very focused on the long term. can't remember the specifics now but I think there's a faq on their site where they explain their philosophy

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#283

Post by erobbins »

par wrote: post #92
olivermarks wrote: post #90

Instead of this 'long and winding road' wry style pr, the reality is EN spectacularly screwed up. They had the world at their feet but got in their own way. I still use it because incredibly there isn't anything better i'm aware of (I tried onenote but didn't like it) but for me EN is a case history of the incompetent side of valley hype

how did they spectacularly screw up? honestly asking.

Disclaimer: I worked there for 2 years

Phil Libin was more concerned about stroking his ego and turning the company into a lifestyle brand like apple than actually improving the product.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#284

Post by euler_angles »

Someone gave me one of the Evernote Moleskines once. It turned out that all the fancy features only worked on the iOS version of the Evernote app. That was not obvious to the kind person who bought it for me.

Left a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth as far as Evernote is concerned.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#285

Post by mackrevinack »

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…

a lot of what people wouldn't consider an outliner like Dynalist to be a replacement but i used to be a chronic Evernote user and somehow I am using only Dynalist now and nothing else.

it wasn't easy at first switching to something that didn't let you add images like Evernote does but the speed the at which you can jot down ideas in Dynalist made me forget about that problem

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#286

Post by _jal »

koverda wrote: post #265
lazyant wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Keep updated itself and deleted all my data, everywhere, just saying.

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 multiple versions of other people's crap that never goes away, etc.

I keep all my docs to myself and render-to-Google when something needs to be shared. Reminds me a bit of blogging, really, with crappier tools.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#288

Post by andrewl »

OBLIQUE_PILLAR wrote: post #281
distances wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that may be a slight exaggeration, Wikipedia's numbers of 251-500 employees sounds quite massive. I'm not obviously privy to all things the company does but it makes one wonder.

The programmers who maintain MediaWiki, the programmers who write the backend and frontend of Wikipedia, and the people who run the organization that raises money to fund Wikipedia, are all seperate organizations. Giving users the tools to view and edit Wikipedia in every language and on a variety of mobile devices is actually a lot of work.

The Evernote page in Wikipedia says that Evernote has 251-500 employees.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#289

Post by epynonymous »

_JasonE wrote: post #63

My wife and I tried using Evernote for keeping a running shopping list. Our options were: You can copy the shared note, but only that most recent version. Or, you can keep it as is but always have to navigate to the "work chat" and click on the note there (no way to add a shared note to your notes without copying it).

not trying to spam, but i created a shared action item tracking list myself, free to use, my particular use case was to track everything in our family from buying things to other tasks. i could also use this for work, only iphone.

https://getsdone.xyz

regarding evernote, i use this religiously, but mainly for personal note taking with sync across devices.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#290

Post by epynonymous »

polskibus wrote: post #109

I use Evernote to store mostly bookmarks, tag them, sometimes I take a note with it. I'm mostly reliant on the search by tag feature. I use Evernote on multiple devices that sync. What would HN crowd recommend as an Evernote replacement?

sounds like what you're doing is exactly what delicio.us was doing before they were bought out by yahoo, i'm curious also to know what hn users have for this. i use instapaper, but it's more of an archiver, not sure if it supports tagging
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