Top 15 Features Offered by Evernote for Adding More "Wow!" to Your Life

So you've heard about this amazing tool to help you "remember everything", but you're simply not sure how it could really impact your life? Well, there are a plethora of features that make using Evernote truly awesome for entrepreneurs, C-level executives, busy professionals, small business managers and the like. Here are just a few examples of its amazing features:

1. While the most basic note in your Evernote database will consist merely of only typed text, each note can be much more complex, having options for including stored documents, recorded audio or video, captured photographs, web clippings and tasks with reminders. Solely your creativity can limit your options for notes to be included in your database.

2. Evernote users can create an unlimited number of notebooks in which to organize their notes, containing an unlimited number of notes in each notebook. Then, notebooks can be combined into what's known as stacked notebooks, providing limitless options for organizing all of one's saved content.

3. Tags allow one more level of filtering to find exactly what you need when you need that specific information. While no note requires a tag, such categories can be helpful when grouping notes from different notebooks or if you'll be searching for a note by a term not included in that note's contents.

4. Speaking of searching for any given note, it is Evernote's search capabilities that truly separate this tool from its competition. The search feature combs through not only notes' titles and the notebooks' names in which those notes are stored, but it also seeks a match in all typed or photographed text in each note's body as well as in any associated tags or URLs from which content was clipped.

5. Sharing notebooks supports collaboration as users can manage projects with team members in different places or communicate information with clients while not working in a face-to-face or side-by-side scenario.

6. Likewise, users are able to share individual notes via a link on Facebook, a link on Twitter, in an email or saved as a URL copied to a computer's clipboard.

7. Evernote offers a multitude of methods for creating notes... Every account is assigned its own email address, and each email sent to it creates a new note. Content can be clipped from various different web browsers as each clipping creates a new note. And content tweeted to @myEN subsequently creates a note, too.

8. As one's database grows, the convenience of easily editing notes' content allows each user's Evernote account to evolve with that individual's needs.

9. To enhance the ease of editing, Evernote added the Skitch feature so users can add annotations to any notes that contain images, which includes options for arrows, stamps, text, shape overlays, highlighting and more.

10. Furthermore, users are able to merge social media connections and related notes based off any interactions with those individuals in scans of business cards or manually uploaded contacts via Evernote's acquisition of Hello.

11. As reminders can be attached to each note, including an alert based off any specified date and time, Evernote allows for task and project management.

12. Evernote's ubiquity empowers users with the capacity of accessing the same information everywhere at the same time as it syncs "real time" between all devices on which the user has included the tool.

13. Via its "trunk", Evernote integrates with TONS of different partners.

14. Based off its desire to be "the permanent, trusted and ubiquitous place for all memories", Evernote holds fast to three rules: your date is yours, your data is protected and your data is portable.

15. While there are enhancements available for a small fee in the Premium version or for enterprise users in the Business version, most functionality offered by Evernote is included for free, which might be the best feature of all.

Want to learn more, including step-by-step instructions on setting up and best utilizing your account? You're in luck... A new offering of Emily's "Using Evernote to Remember Everything - Evernote Basics" workshop has been added at 3-5pm TOMORROW, and you can learn more or register now at http://evernotebasics.eventbrite.com. We look forward to seeing you there!

Confused By Options For Document Storing, Sharing & Syncing?

As new technology is created, there are more and more options, and it can be very overwhelming... I mean, have you seen all the cloud options for storing and sharing data?!? Wow! The key, though, is how each tech option makes your life easier, more organized and more productive. Read on for a little clarification about various available tools and what differentiates them...

Notes-Keeping Options:

Although Yojimbo and Growly Notes are Mac-only while OneNote caters to the needs of PC users, Evernote works in both the Mac and PC realms, making it easy to organize all information in one, reliable solution. Plus, whereas there is a fee to use any form of either Yojimbo or OneNote, there is a fairly robust option for Evernote that is absolutely FREE... Such a beautiful word, eh? With each of these tools, you can store text, images, PDFs, checklists and more, organized with tags, by labels or in groupings / notebooks and easily searchable. Access your Evernote or OneNote account via the Internet, on your computer's desktop or on your smartphone and access your Yojimbo or Growly Notes account anywhere data is synced through MobileMe.

Options to Aid in Creating a Paperless System:

Both Shoeboxed and OfficeDrop offer mail-in scanning services, where you package your papers in pre-paid shipping for those companies' employees to coordinate scanning your documents into an organized, electronic format for you. However, if you prefer to scan your own documents for yourself, there are several other options... The Neat Company offers NeatReceipts as a portable option and NeatDesk as a desktop scanner, allowing you to scan your business cards, receipts and 8.5" x 11" documents into a digital filing system. Both Canon Document Scanners and Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanners offer mobile, personal, sheet-fed and network options to scan your documents. Although each self-scanning device integrates differently with collaborative solutions, like Evernote, the option for you may depend most on current pricing so it's recommended that you research online before buying.

File Collaboration, Sharing, Syncing and Back-up Options:

If you are looking for a tool that relies solely or primarily on you manually moving a document from your computer to the cloud or web-based solution, there are plenty of options available. A free account through Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage for life, but a paid account will increase your Dropbox storage capacity; any file can be shared from Dropbox via the appropriate URL. Windows Live SkyDrive is very similar but is limited to PCs and bumps the storage limit up to 25GB with a 50MB cap for each file. A free account through Ge.tt gives you quicker, real-time storing and sharing of files for 90-day intervals. Furthermore, MediaFire has no restrictions except that files be smaller than 200MB. A free account through Box.net gives you 5GB of storage with a 25MB cap for each file, including a collaboration "holtlink" for any shared files. And the very popular option of Google Docs can be found at Docs.Google.com to upload files from desktop, access them from anywhere and do real-time collaboration with others.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a tool that will move documents from your computer to the cloud automatically, the available options are a little different. With these options, you simply install the technology on your computer (PC or Mac) and, at different intervals when your computer is connected to the Internet, your selected data will automatically be encrypted and securely backed up to the cloud, allowing you to restore or remotely access as-needed later. In February of this year, Mozy replaced its unlimited backup plan with a tiered storage plan of 50GB or 125GB, allowing users to purchase additional storage in increments of 20GB each. If you are looking for an unlimited option, Carbonite offers such a solution for $59 a year while the unlimited solution from Crash Plan is $49.99 a year, but Crash Plan has smaller storage options for less money, too. And there's good news... In addition to the aforementioned manual option, Windows Live Mesh's SkyDrive also offers an automated sync for PCs, too!

Finally, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a web service that offers a customizable, pay-as-you-go option for storing in a cloud environment, allowing you to quickly scale capacity up or down and pay only for the capacity that you actually use. For details on this new and different option, I recommend visiting http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

Options Enabling Remote Access to Paperless System:

Now that you've created all these electronic documents, some will be accessible via Internet access through cloud technology; however, sometimes, you just want to work with them on your own computer. If you travel a good deal, options for accessing your own computer via the Internet from a remote location might be very helpful, and there are several options for accomplishing that goal. LogMeIn and GoToMyPc allow you to access, support and manage devices (including Windows-based PCs and iOS-based Macs) at any time from any location via a secure, Internet login. Or you can use Windows Live Mesh to work on your PC from another location, running programs or browsing PC files remotely. Finally, if you have an iPhone or iPad, use Mocha VNC to connect to your Windows PC or Mac OS X and see your files/programs exactly as you would sitting in front of your computer itself.

Smartphone Solutions for Working with Documents:

Although many of the aforementioned tools enable access from your smartphone, a growing number of people elect to work via smartphone, rather than focusing on use of desktop and laptop computers. Quickoffice Connect and Documents to Go - Office Suite are options to create, edit and share Microsoft Office documents on your iPhone, iPad, Android technology or Blackberry.

Do you utilize cloud technology and, if so, how do you upload data to "the cloud"? Are you backing up data automatically or adding it manually? Which tools do you prefer most? Please share in the Comments below.