EverNote 3 Series - So What?

Introduction - What EverNote 3 is all about

Since it came out last year, EverNote 3 has successfully redefined what note taking applications should be. Now, we all expect them to:

- Offer document access from everywhere: Web browser (IE, FF, Safari), Mobile Phones (WAP), Smartphones (with dedicated applications like the ones for the Apple iPhone or Microsoft's Windows Mobile), Desktops (MacOS and Windows).

- Seamlessly integrate with modern communication tools like taking photographs and uploading them.

- Offer rich document editing capabilities.

- Have built-in search capabilities, including in images.

- Support tagging.

- Support file attachments.

- Offer controlled document sharing (a very recent addition).

- All of this for free (well, most of the features are free but the full monty will set you back 45$ a year and add bigger storage capabilities and SSL).

Having defined the above incredibly rich features set, they have defined their own market and they are way beyond the followers pack. It is very difficult to compete with them I guess. I think today they have more than a million subscribers (not saying all of them are paying customers of course, but I guess their VC funding helps here as well).

Short History

What you might not know is that EverNote is no recent company. And their flagship product is no recent either. At some point in time, there was an EverNote 1.0, then 1.1, then 2.0, etc... At that time, it was a rich Windows application only. And they had a small, but fervent customer base. These versions are no longer available.

At that time, I felt that the company was having a hard time delivering on promises (like having smartphone client applications or a better note editor) while enlarging the customer base which, as everyone knows, is the only way for a company to keep growing. It just looked like a niche player with no real future actually.

So they changed of direction and probably, the power went from some hands to some others and as I hinted above, external money helped define a new strategy.

But, from what I can read here and there, most of their ancient customers are a bit lost with the change of direction the company took. It looks like most advanced features have been dropped, and no one in the company is listening to them.

So what is actually missing then?

Quite a lot actually (remember though that this is *my* opinion):

- Still no decent unified note editor. The web version vs the Mac version vs the Windows version, etc... Not any one of them is good actually, or consistent with the others. The worst is probably on the Mac where you have (for example) to select the wrong font to have the right one applied. OMG.

- Inter-notes linking. This is probably the most required feature they miss. Without it, no wiki-style notes linking. Without it, you are completely unable to link your notes together. Boy, that's a huge hole.

- iPhone version has bells & whistles. But it doesn't have editing capabilities! It can only edit 'text' notes. But real text that is, meaning not even a color or bold or ... nothing. Plain ascii. Wow.

- Tags organization is missing one huge feature: hierarchy. They had that in their previous version. Imagine you select a tag: the UI then lists all the documents tagged by it. Say for example "Project A". You have all documents tagged "Project A" listed. Okay, but these documents have other tags as well. For example, you can have some tags for your colleagues on these meeting minutes notes. So inside "Project A", you also have "Meeting Minutes" and "Larry" and "Cathy". That's a whole new way of having your notes organized and once you start digging into that, you understand it's quite powerful.

Other Issues

I know a lot of people prefer having their laptop with them - they don't trust anyone for storing their documents over the Internet (and maybe for good reasons as we saw recently some big players having server problems). And then, once you are with your laptop, you have all the power you need for editing or organizing your work.

I also know some corporate clients of mine are blocking access to Web Applications like Google Docs and EverNote. They mind about the security of their documents and knowledge and IP and honestly they can't be blamed for that. Maybe EverNote is considering something to address these concerns (if not, then that's a missed opportunity) but not as of now anyway.

Conclusion?

If you are looking for easy (real easy) and efficient (real efficient) internet-based document sharing and ubiquitous access, then look no further. EverNote 3 is what you're looking for.

But beware the limitations and liabilities.

Update as at 8.23

Evernote have recently released a new version of the Mac client, which almost brings it on par to the Windows one. Which means that most painful text editing / formating issues are gone. At last!