I’ve been meaning to review Evernote for a while now. This morning, someone on Twitter asked me how Evernote compared with the new and improved  Springpad, which I reviewed last night. So, I guess now is as good a time as any to tackle Evernote.

Evernote is  similar to Springpad in that it lets you create online notebooks to save and organize web clips, images, documents, etc.  Like Springpad, it’s quite flexible, and users have come up with some amazingly helpful and practical applications for it.

Evernote has a bookmarklet, so you can clip text and images from web pages quickly and easily. You can also email documents and pictures to Evernote ( a feature Springpad lacks, although you can upload documents and pictures and even embed videos from the Springpad website. )

Items are organized in Evernote via tags, content and attributes.  You can search content and filter by tags to find stuff you’ve saved. Evernote’s ace in the hole is its image recognition, which is capable of reading both handwritten and printed text. So, you can take a picture of a document (or a whiteboard from a meeting) and find it later by searching for relevant pieces of text.  I can’t emphasize enough how awesome and useful that is!

Also, you can upload pictures to Evernote and search your notes on the go on with Evernote apps for the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre. So,  Evernote is a convenient way to take and review notes on the run, especially combined with the aforementioned text recognition capabilities. (Note: you can also send stuff  to Evernote  from any phone with a camera and MMS capabilities, even if you don’t have mobile web-just send a picture to your personal Evernote email address).

Evernote also has a desktop app for offline access, which Springpad lacks.

So, which app is better? Honestly, I think it depends on what you are looking for. Evernote has better mobile capabilities for the phones mentioned above and a desktop app. Plus, the text recognition feature makes it super easy to store/organize documents and pictures. If you have a decent camera phone, all you have to do to archive a document is point, shoot and send.

However, Springpad’s apps  make it a little bit easier to interact with your data. For example, with Evernote you can clip, upload and organize recipes, just like you can on Springpad. You also have the added advantage of being able to scan a recipe in from a cookbook and have the text inside be  searchable.

But, Springpad has a Weekly Meal Planner app that lets you schedule meals and generate a shopping list automatically.  Evernote doesn’t. Of course, you can make a list yourself or pull up individual recipes in the grocery store on your phone-it’s just a little easier and faster to plan it out using Springpad.

Evernote also lets you set up to-do lists but doesn’t give you reminders. With Springpad, you can arrange to be sent reminders via email or text.

Springpad also has more social features than Evernote.  There’s no easy way to share your Evernote items via Twitter and Facebook, although you can make entire notebooks public. With Springpad, you can easily share items on Twitter and Facebook and you can search your friend’s stuff to  get recommendations from people you trust.

Both apps are extremely useful, but Evernote is probably better for busy people who spend a lot of time away from the house and/or  need to organize large amounts of documents and pictures.

Which do you think would be more useful for you?

Our Rating of Evernote

Tags: Productivity

Categories:web