Evernote

Bio

Krisstina Wise owns a residential real estate brokerage in Austin, Texas called The GoodLife Team. Her company is a nationally-recognized thought leader for their approach to using technology and social media in running their business. See how Krisstina and her team of 26 employees use Evernote for everything from sharing client notes to moving a sale forward. Krisstina joins our Ambassador Program as the new Real Estate Ambassador and will also be hosting a webinar this Thursday, February 23rd. More details, below.

I use Evernote, Everywhere

• Mac
• iPad
• iPhone

I use Evernote for…

Evernote has completely changed my life. I used to carry a notebook and pen with me everywhere I went, but have now completely transitioned to having my entire life in Evernote. It’s one of the 5 core tools that I use to operate my life and my business. At The GoodLife Team, every employee uses Evernote across a number of different devices. It’s been about six months since all of our agents started using Evernote and it has already become an invaluable and fundamental tool.

Above: a buyer’s notebook and snapshot of client tour with attached audio interview, imported PDF of MLS records of the property tour and client notes.

Here are a few ways that Evernote can be every realtor’s power tool.

1. Create a notebook for every single customer. All of our agents have a notebook for every single customer they work with. With Evernote, it’s easy to store all types of information including notes on maps, recorded seller interviews (captured with Evernote’s audio feature), photos of houses, and PDF MLS sheets of houses that customers like. Agents can send everything to customers right out of Evernote.
2. Start the buying process before getting back to the office. Once a buyer has chosen a house to purchase, the agent can move their file to the admin staff before stepping foot back into the office. Using Shared Notebooks, agents can communicate with admin staff, sharing all of their documentation so that multiple people can work on one client file at the same time and move it along in the buying process faster than ever. [Learn about sharing from Evernote]
3. Make a habit of saving everything to Evernote. Making a habit of saving everything to Evernote is the first step to knowing exactly where you’ll be able to find information at a moment’s notice. Our agents save all of their house photos, client interviews, PDFs, and notes to Evernote. As a paperless company, we use Evernote to manage our customer files and easily capture, access and share information on the go. [Learn how to go paperless from Paperless Lifestyle Ambassador Jamie Rubin]
4. Make use of mobile devices and Trunk integrations. On the sales side, everyone on our team works on computers and iPads, so it’s easy to get work done at the office and on site. When you’re in a mobile profession, it’s vital to have tools that can help you be productive, even when you’re not at your desk. In addition to utilizing mobile devices, we use Evernote-integrated Trunk apps to help us get more done. [Evernote Tip: Apps like RightSignature allow you to capture a digital signature and save it back into Evernote for easy access and for customer records.]
5. Train your staff. We do training with our agents every Thursday. We sit down with our entire team and take them through a step-by-step program of how to maximize Evernote. Evernote is a really flexible tool, so we’re able to show team members some best practices and then allow them to create their own workflow version that fits their work style.
6. Share with multiple team members. Whether you’re a buyer or seller-side agent, you can use Evernote to communicate with colleagues and customers. Share individual notes by emailing them straight from your Evernote account or create a Shared Notebook and grant access to select individuals. Premium Evernote users can modify Shared Notebooks, making edits to documents and saving them back into Evernote, adding additional info (like house photos or signatures), and making sure everyone is in lock step throughout the buying and selling process. [Learn about sharing from Evernote]

Evernote as my personal productivity tool

In addition to using Evernote in every aspect of my work, I find it to be an extremely valuable personal tool. I have a professional and personal notebook with multiple Notebook Stacks underneath. My personal notebook helps me manage all of my activities in one place.

1. I create checklists on all different things, ranging from work to-dos to grocery lists. [Learn how to create a checklist]
2. I clip everything into Evernote using the Evernote Web Clipper. We were recently interviewing some folks, so I asked interviewees to send their resumes to my Evernote account so that I could review them all in one place and refer back to them prior to and during the interviews.
3. I save documents and share lots of files with my team members. [Learn how to attach files to a note]
4. I have a wireless keyboard, which, together with Evernote on my iPhone, allows me to type notes even if I’m in a meeting at Starbucks. When I’m back at my computer, they’re all there for me in my Evernote account.
5. My personal notebook includes recipes, my training program for my workouts, my kids’ activities and checklists. My husband and I also share notebooks to manage household things. For example, if I start a grocery list, he can finish it and we both have it on our iPhones if one of us goes to the store. [8 Great Ways Couples Can Use Shared Notebooks]

Frankly, I don’t know how I kept it all together before Evernote. I know that everything that is important to me is in Evernote, so I know exactly where to find it. This practice of saving everything to Evernote saves me so much time that I used to spend wondering where something is.

Register for the GoodLife Team webinar on using Evernote everyday

Join Krisstina and Michael McClure, CEO of Verified Agent, this Thursday, February 23rd at 11:00am CST for an informative training session covering the basics of Evernote and ways to use it as a realtor.

Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/908731746

Join Krisstina in the Real Estate discussion forum.

Are you a realtor using Evernote? Share your tips in the comments below.

Just over a month ago, we launched Skitch for iPad, the amazingly fun and useful way to visually communicate using your tablet. Today, we have a great update (1.0.3) that includes a new shape tool, parental controls, more language support and lots of stability improvements. We also have some tips to share.

Get Skitch for iPad »

Rounded corner rectangles
There’s now a fourth shape tool at your disposal: the rounded-corner rectangle! Tap on the tool and start making squares and rectangles to your heart’s content.

Parental controls
Skitch for iPad is great for easily communicating your ideas with colleagues and teammates. It’s also a fun, kid-friendly app, perfect for sketching and marking up images. In this update, we added several parental control options that allow users to disable the browser, location and photo features. To access the parental controls, tap on the “i” on the homescreen, then tap on the Restrictions tab.

More languages
We’ve added support for more than ten new languages. Now, Skitch users all over the world can start communicating and getting things done with the help of shapes and arrows.

Stability improvements
You’ll notice that the latest update is faster and more reliable thanks to numerous bug fixes and improvements.

Skitch tips

Use the marquee tool
One of the great things about Skitch is everything you draw and annotate can be selected independently and then moved around, scaled, re-colored, or deleted. To use the marquee, select the finger tool and drag across the screen to create a marquee rectangle. All items inside the rectangle will be selected. To deselect, or select a different group of objects, drag a new marquee.

Move text around
Once you’ve typed something, you can reposition the text by switching to the finger tool. Simply tap the text and drag it around.

Be sure to check out Skitch for Mac, too.

Get Skitch for iPad »

As more teachers and students adopt new technologies, including Evernote, they’re looking for useful resources to help them along the way. We’re excited to introduce them to Evernote for Schools, our new microsite devoted to helping those in the education community use Evernote more effectively.

Evernote Encourages a Lifetime of Learning

Teachers and administrators who are looking to start their students on a path of lifelong learning can find a collection of resources at Evernote for Schools including education-related case studies, videos, and a discussion forum for connecting and sharing tips and ideas for using Evernote in a school setting. Students can use Evernote to organize all their content (notes, projects, worksheets, lists and more) on all the computers, phones and tablets they use, at school and at home. Evernote allows students to build on their learning year after year by carrying their work with them from school to school, without the heavy load of  backpacks and binders.

Evernote Premium For Schools

Looking to bring the Evernote experience to your school? Our new offering is the easiest (most cost-effective) way to put Evernote Premium accounts in the hands of everyone at your school. Evernote Premium for Schools offers all our features, services and benefits bundled together at a special education rate. It’s perfect for groups of teachers, classrooms, whole schools or entire districts. Learn More

Evernote at the Florida Educational Conference

We recently had the pleasure of connecting with educators face-to-face at the Florida Educational Conference (FETC) where Carlos Fernandez, an Instructional Technology Coordinator for Leon County Schools in Florida, shared his top tips for using Evernote at school. Carlos reached out to us prior to the conference to let us know he was already presenting a workshop on Evernote. After talking with him we were so impressed with all the ideas he had, we asked him to lead our Learning Lab. During the Learning Lab Carlos was able to connect with fellow teachers and administrators, present some of his favorite Evernote use cases and help others get started and incorporating Evernote into their schools.

Check out the slides from Carlos’s (standing room only) presentation: Evernote in Education

Stay Connected

There are many ways to connect with the Evernote for Education community. Here are some ways to tap into the community.

• Join the Evernote for Schools Discussion Forum
  Want to learn how to use Evernote in a 1:1 program? How about the best way to organize all your lesson plans? The Evernote For Schools Discussion Forum is the place to share and learn tips and tricks, best practices and more.
• Follow us on Twitter
  The @evernoteschools Twitter account is dedicated to sharing all the great ways people are using Evernote at schools. Follow us here for tips and tricks, latest blog posts, case studies, upcoming events and activities.
• Talking about Evernote? Let us know.
  If you’re giving a presentation about Evernote at a conference, leading workshop, webinar or just spreading the word at your school, we’d love to hear about it. Visit the site and fill out the form here.
• Check out our events
  See what conferences Evernote will be attending and presenting at next:  Upcoming Events
• Join our Webinar
  Sign up for our webinar: 11 ways to use Evernote in your Classroom (February 15th, 10pm PT)

We have lots of upcoming Evernote for Schools activities. Check back often for new content, videos, case studies and more.

Bio

Matt Madden is a cartoonist whose works have been published by small and large publishers. Matt also teaches comics at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and gives talks around the country and abroad. He and his wife Jessica Abel (also a cartoonist) are series editors of the Best American Comics (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and their second textbook on comics, Mastering Comics (:01 First Second Books) will be out in May. Evernote is Matt’s go-to tool for conceptualizing and creating his comics, as well as his teaching assistant.

Before Evernote, I had sketchbooks, manilla folders and boxes where I kept all of my notes and sketches. Now, I have a centralized place to collect all of my ideas, drawings, and more. Here’s a glimpse into how I organize my creative life in Evernote:

• Everything I care about goes into Evernote. 90% of what comes into Evernote is related to comics. I save story ideas, reviews, blog posts, random thoughts about artists I like, comics I’ve downloaded or clipped off the Internet, etc. into Evernote.
• I save jpegs of my work in Evernote for easy reference. In Evernote, these images almost look like a slideshow version of any given comic. It’s a great way to have easy access to works-in-progress.
• I still sketch on paper, but I save my sketches digitally. I scan or take pictures of notes and doodles from various sketchbooks and save them all to Evernote so that they’re centralized and accessible to me anywhere.
• I’m diligent about tagging my notes. One thing I use tags for is to catalog notes using more esoteric or abstract categories. I have tags like “memories,” “observations,” or “notions” that help me keep track of all the random creative material I come across every day.
• I review my Evernote weekly. Every week, I go through my Evernote account to clean up recent notes, add tags, assign notes to notebooks, etc. I have a few tags that help me here, such as “read/review,” “reminders,” and “temporary.”
• I have a notebook called Matt Projects ACTIVE. This is where I keep all my notes about short-term and long-term plans for creating and publishing comics. These notes include sketches and status reports on comics-in-progress, lists of books I want to collect and publish, older books I want to reprint in coming years, as well as notes from meetings with my agent and publishers.

I’d love to go through all my old sketchbooks and scan or take snapshots of all of my useable materials so that I can always go to Evernote to see what stories I could re-use and drawings that haven’t been utilized yet.

Since my wife and I often work on projects together, we use Evernote to collaborate. For example, we are the series editors of the annual Best American Comics, and the job involves tracking down and reading every comic published in the U.S. and Canada, every year. We have a Shared Notebook where we can both make notes on things we’ve heard about. There are lots of top 10 lists that come out every year, and we save them into this Shared Notebook. [Learn about sharing from Evernote]

I first started using Evernote as a convenient way to have notes for workshops that I teach. When I’m asked to give a workshop or lecture, I make a new note with a syllabus for that event. I can often look up related workshops I’ve done and adapt material I’ve already worked on. These days I use Evernote in a number of ways to help me manage my teaching work. I keep all of the syllabi from classes and also use Evernote to capture notes around things I’d like to do in the future.

• I save articles by writers that have influenced me, podcasts, and general ideas for doing different kinds of creative projects.
• I show Evernote to my students as a way to organizes ideas and story notes. I teach undergrad and adult education classes and I’ve noticed that my students are always really interested in learning more about my process.
• I have a Shared Notebook with my drawing students. I copy weekly assignments, videos and various articles to it so that all of my students are able to access them. [Learn about sharing from Evernote]
• I travel a lot for workshops and speaking engagements, so I email notes to my Evernote account to review on the plane. [Learn how to email to Evernote]

Among my creative work, teaching and personal life (Evernote is our family’s recipe archive), Evernote has truly become an indispensable part of my life.

A month ago, we announced Chad Williams as our Fitness Ambassador and now he’d like to help all of our users get more fit. Chad is here to get you in shape, and keep you motivated, along with other Evernote users (not to mention, some challenge-ready Evernote employees!). We’re calling it the 30 Day Challenge and it starts on Wednesday, February 15th. Are you ready?

Join the 30 Day Challenge led by Chad Williams, Evernote Fitness Ambassador

As a health and fitness mentor, Chad helps his clients achieve their fitness and nutritional goals. With the help of Evernote, he’s going to lead you in a challenge to get into better shape and change some of your bad eating habits.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

1. Choose any combination of the four challenges presented below.
2. Create a notebook called ’30 Day Fitness Challenge,” or something more motivational, like “30 Days to a new Kasey.” Don’t forget to replace Kasey with your name.
3. Every day you complete a challenge, take note of it in your challenge notebook. Take photos to track before and afters, and maybe even clip some motivational articles to help you along. [see Chad's tips for ways to use Evernote to track your progress]
4. Join the Fitness discussion forum to share your experience, tips, talk with other users participating in the challenge, and connect with Chad. Remember, having group support helps you to stay motivated!

Ready? Onward!

4 Challenge Options

Choose any combination of two.

2 Fitness Challenges:

• 100 sit ups per day. This can be done in one chunk or spread out through the day. You have the option to scale this down to 50. Pick a number and commit!
• 100 stairs per day. You can split this up throughout the day, or reduce the total number, but again, pick a set number and stick to it.

2 Nutritional Challenges:

• Water only. Do not consume any other fluids besides water for the next 30 days. If that’s too challenging, you can also choose to only omit alcohol and soda.
• No sugar. This one might seem simple at first, until you realize how many things contain sugar. Chad usually allows people to define what this means for them (ie: no sweets and candy, but fruit and sauces are okay).

It’s a Twitter Party!

Chad will be hosting a Twitter party on Thursday, March 15th from 6-7 pm PST (9-10 pm ET) to discuss your accomplishments, what worked and what didn’t, and how you can continue using Evernote to track your fitness goals. We’ll be offering some sweet prizes as well. To join:

1. Create your Twitter account, login via Twitter.com or your Twitter client.
2. Follow @evernotelife and @anthrophysique
3. Follow the hashtag #evernotelife
4. Ask questions, chat with fellow challenge participants, and discuss ways you could be using Evernote to stay fit and healthy.

Spread the word and let others know you’ll be joining by tweeting:

I’m participating in the @anthrophysique + @evernotelife Fitness Challenge and Twitter party on 3/15 @ 9 pm EST. Join us! #evernotelife

They grow up so fast… Just a little over a month ago, we launched Evernote Hello for iPhone, the app that’s designed to help you remember people the way your brain does—visually, chronologically and contextually. Today, we’re releasing the app’s first major update (1.1)!

Get Evernote Hello from the iTunes AppStore

We’ve been listening closely to the community, learning what they like and what they don’t about our initial release. For this update, we focused on one very big thing:

• Making every action and interaction in the app faster, easier and more natural

We’re excited about the result. There are over 10 major improvements in this update. Plus, we have a new app icon. Let’s take a look.

Evernote Hello 1.1

We put a lot of work into making our first update to Evernote Hello a major evolution of the app. The most visible change of all is our new app icon. We hope you like our happy little pushpin. The story of the icon’s evolution will be a blog post for another day.

Adding new people with ease
When you tap on the plus (+), you’ll notice that we now offer you three options for capturing information. You can either pass the phone to the person you are meeting, create their profile yourself or pull from the phone’s address book (more on that, below). We’ve streamlined the process based on the option that you select.

Choose contacts from your address book
Continuing in the spirit of making the app faster and easier to use, you can now add people into Evernote Hello right from your address book. When you tap the big plus button, choose the Add from Contacts option. Tapping this option brings up your address book. Select a name and all the information that’s associated with the contact will fill in a new profile. If something is missing, such as a photo, you can quickly snap one.

Search
On the top of the home screen, there is a new magnifying glass button. Tap it to search through your Evernote Hello history by names of people, the places your were, calendar events, email, and more. And that’s not all. The search also looks for matches in your address book, so that you can easily add a person as described above, right from the search list. Just tap on a name and a new profile appears.

Contact Links
We’ve now explained how to get someone from your contacts into Evernote Hello. The other way works, too. Go to a profile and tap on the green “i” next to the person’s name. Then, tap on the address book icon. You’ll be able to either create a new contact or add the information to an existing contact. In either case, Evernote Hello will add a field to the contact information called a Contact Link. The Contact Link connects your address book to the Evernote Hello profile, allowing you to tap on the link and jump from your contact list directly into Evernote Hello. Please note: Contact Links are only created when a contact is added from Evernote Hello to the address book.

Intelligent name detection
Name order differs depending on country, culture and language. In English, the given name comes first, followed by the family name. In many Asian countries, it’s the other way around. Evernote Hello now uses your location and the input language to figure out how the name should be laid out. This is particularly useful if you’re importing an individual from Evernote Hello into your phone’s address book.

Calendar tiles
To make it easier to visually scan the mosaic, we’ve added Calendar Tiles throughout the mosaic to designate chronological breaks. This way, you can swipe through and easily identify when encounters occurred.

Other goodies

There are also a bunch of other improvements worth noting…

• Full-screen photos: Tap on any profile photo to view it in full-screen mode.
• Choose from Camera Roll: When adding your profile photo, you can either take a new one, or choose an image from your Camera Roll.
• Phone number smarts: As you type a phone number, the app will figure out the appropriate formatting based on your location.
• New settings layout: We’ve completely redesigned the Settings that appear when you swipe down on any screen of the app.
• Log out of the app: There’s a new Logout button under the gear option in Settings.
• New language support: Evernote Hello is now available in 17 additional languages.

We’re really excited to bring you this major update. These changes make the app a pleasure to use whether you’re at work or meeting someone new at a coffee shop. Give it a shot and let us know what you think.

Get Evernote Hello from the iTunes AppStore

Today, we released an update to Evernote for iOS (4.1.8) that comes full of great additions and improvements. We enhanced our note editing capabilities, added smart note titles, made sharing easier, and much more. Let’s take a look.

Get Evernote for iOS

Predictive Note Titles

Gone are the days of Untitled Notes. Now, when you create a new note and save it without giving the note a title, the app will assign a contextual title using calendar events, your location, note contents, and other information. You’ll see our predictive title as soon as you create the note. If you would prefer to change the title, just tap into the title area and start typing. As a result of this new feature, all of your new notes will have an informative title.

Easier Notebook Sharing

We felt that notebook sharing was too difficult to find in the previous version of Evernote, so we made it more easily accessible. To share a notebook, go to your notebook list and tap on the notebook you want to share. Next, tap on the new share icon in the top right of the screen. Much easier.

Better Editing, Copying, Pasting, and More

This update includes major improvements to the note editing capabilities on iPhone and iPad, particularly in iOS 5. First, you’ll notice that editing is significantly faster, especially for long notes. We resolved many issues related to new lines and we do a much better job of preserving styles when you copy something from a note and paste it into another note or into another app.

Stacks

Notebook Stacks, our visual notebook organization, have been a part of Evernote for iPhone for a little while, but enabling them wasn’t easy. In this update, we made Stacks the default view for the notebook list. If you prefer a stack-less view, tap on the “i” in the top left of the Notebook screen to switch to a different view.

And more…

In addition to improved stability and lots of bug fixes, this update also includes faster and more reliable synchronization. Also, we completely redesigned the login and registration experience. We have lots more to come. Let us know what you think of our latest update.

You use Evernote to capture and remember a lot of things that are relevant to you. Some of what you have in your Evernote account is also relevant to your significant other. With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we came up with eight tips for using Evernote to inspire one another, communicate better and get things done together.

Join Phil Libin (CEO, Evernote), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital) and Gary Little (Morgenthaler Ventures) for a conversation with Wade Roush of Xconomy about what it means to build a 100-year company.

In a valley where the latest tech fads rule and venture funds often last a decade or less, how do you even begin to think about making your startup last into the 22nd century?

Register today to get the discounted rate »

The event will take place in Mountain View, California on February 7th.

Last night, Evernote won the Best Mobile App Crunchie Award. We’re honored.

Tremendous thanks to you, our amazing users and fans, for your continued support.

Thank you!

Today’s Evernote for Mac update (3.0.6) comes with a bunch of nice enhancements to checklists, tables and more. Plus, we’ve included a beautiful redesign of our note panel. Let’s take a look.

Get Evernote for Mac »

Redesigned note panel

In this update, we completely redesigned the note panel. The goals of the redesign were clarity and simplification. You’ll notice that the new layout is much more space-efficient. For example, we moved information about the note into the “i” button. We also made note sharing options much more prominent with the new, big share arrow.

In addition to saving space, the new layout is also easier to understand and use. The icons have all been updated, and we now treat dropdowns in a new, cleaner way.

Additionally, we added some intelligence into the headers. When you’re browsing through your notes, we show the date created and updated in the note header area. As soon as you start editing the note, the date fades away and becomes the formatting bar. If you want to edit the date, click on the “i.”

Easier checklists

Creating checklists has never been easier. Now, the app will continue your checklist when you move to a new line. Start your checklist by clicking the checkbox icon in the format bar or by pressing CMD+SHIFT+T. After typing in your first item, hit return. The next line will also contain a checkbox. Hit return again without entering any text and the checkbox will disappear.

View multiple notes when in fullscreen mode

When you’re in full screen mode on OS X Lion, you can now double click on as many notes as you like and view each in its own window, all while Evernote remains in full screen in the background.

Better tables

Tables also get an upgrade in this release. Now you can add or remove rows and columns in existing tables. To do this, right click on the table and select Tables from the menu.

And lots more

As always, in addition to the things you see, there are a ton of improvements under the hood. We have lots more to come. Enjoy.

Get Evernote for Mac »

The Evernote for Android app is packed with great features, many of which you know and some that you may not be aware of. In the latest update (3.5.1), we’ve added a feature discovery menu at the top of the home screen. The goal of this menu is to showcase some of new and existing features, ensuring that you get the most out of the app. Get Evernote for Android »

Behind the Lightbulb

Tap on the lightbulb icon and then choose an item from the menu. You’ll be taken to a screen that explains where to find, and how to use, a bunch of useful features—from creating a checklist to using Skitch to exploring new features.

New items and those that you haven’t tried appear at the top of the list. Once you view an item, it moves to the end. Check the lightbulb after every release to see what’s new. It’s a fun way to explore and learn more about Evernote. Take a look.

Get Evernote for Android »

For those of you who use Evernote’s audio feature to record notes, you’ll find today’s Trunk Spotlight to be very exciting. Quicktate can actually turn lengthy voice notes into text that you can easily search for and access anywhere you have Evernote installed.

An introduction to Quicktate

Unlike some transcription services, Quicktate does not use voice recognition technology but rather, employs its own team of pre-screened professionals that transcribe voice recordings. Because your audio notes are transcribed by a real human being, the accuracy of the transcription is remarkably high, and the turnaround is surprisingly quick.

Quicktate transcribes both long and short voice notes. A 60 minute voice note recorded in Evernote can be transcribed in about 4-6 hours. This means that if you attended a meeting in the morning and recorded it using the audio feature in Evernote, you’d get the transcription before the end of the day. A 30 second voice note can be transcribed in minutes.

How it works

To start using Quicktate, first create an account. As part of setting up your account, you’ll be asked to authorize Quicktate to access your Evernote account. After you’ve linked your accounts, anytime you create an audio recording in Evernote, the recording will be sent to Quicktate for transcription, and the transcribed text will go straight back into the original note in your Evernote account.

You can record an audio note in every version of Evernote. But if you’re on the go, you can also call (888) 222-NOTE and dictate your recording to Quicktate. They’ll transcribe your recording and create a new note in your Evernote account containing the results).

Why would I want to transcribe long-form audio?

There are plenty of reasons why you’d want to record and then transcribe a long audio note. Here are a few ideas:

• To capture and search everything discussed at a business meeting. There’s no better way to know what each person said at a meeting than to record and transcribe the entire meeting.
• To capture speeches and lectures. Whether you’re attending a class, or a conference, you can record a speaker and forget about having to feverishly take notes.
• To write your book. Ok, you might not be an author, but if you are writing a book, blog post, or article, you might want to speak some (or all) parts of it to capture nuanced dialogue and emotion.
• To record an important event. Whether you need to capture the scene of a car accident, or a business deal, dictating the events happening around you might be the easiest way to capture them. Transcribing these notes might be the easiest way to find and remember them later.

How would you use Quicktate and Evernote together? Tell us in the comments.

The Evernote API

Quicktate was able to do all this thanks to the open, free Evernote API. You can also create amazing Evernote-integrated apps and products. Take a look at our developer site for more information.

It’s been a few months since we announced our Ambassador Program, and since our launch, we’ve added a few new faces to the mix, including our Fitness Ambassador, Chad Williams, and Parenting Ambassador, Carley Knobloch. We hope that you’ve been able to gain some valuable insights from them on ways to use Evernote in a slew of different contexts.

Most of the tips that they share have, to date, been online, but we’re excited about some of them starting to take their teachings and experience offline. Case in point: Brandie Kajino, our Organization Ambassador, recently held a meetup in her hometown of Vancouver, Washington.

Users Teaching Users to Get More Out of Evernote

Brandie created a set of great tips for using Evernote, available for download below.

People of all backgrounds and levels of use (Free and Premium, die-hards and newbies) came to the meetup to learn about ways to get the most out of Evernote’s organizational features. You can read all about Brandie’s meetup on her blog.

A number of you have asked if an event can be held in your area and the answer is: YES! Anyone is welcome to hold a meetup. You can organize a meetup at your local coffee shop, park, or public space, using Meetup.com. We’ll also be working with our existing Ambassadors to hold local events around the country. Stay tuned.

New Ambassadors Coming Soon!

Our Ambassador Program keeps growing with great new ideas and people. To follow what our Ambassadors are up to, learn about ways to get the most out of Evernote, and share your tips, join the discussion. Follow @evernotelife on Twitter, where we share Ambassador tips, tweet about local Evernote events, tweetups, and more.

Whether you’re traveling, working from a coffee shop, or just sitting on the couch, sometimes it’s just easier to browse the web from your mobile device. If you’re using an Android device, then a great way to do your mobile browsing is with Dolphin Browser. Now, you can get add-ons for Skitch and Evernote that let you annotate webpages or save text to Evernote.

The Skitch Add-On

You can now seamlessly grab web content you’re viewing on Dolphin on your Android device and annotate it using Skitch. You can point something out on a page, draw on a map, make a quick reminder to yourself, then save it to Evernote or share with your friends. First, be sure to install Skitch. Next…

1. Download the Skitch Add-On for Dolphin.
2. When you come across web content you’d like to edit, swipe to the right to reveal the add-on bar and tap the Skitch icon.
3. The page instantly opens in Skitch, where you can add text, arrows, circles, free-hand lines and drawings. Next, save it or share it. It’s that simple!

Clipping Text from Webpages

In addition to allowing you to annotate web clips and screenshots using Skitch, you can now also clip text from the webpages you visit straight into your Evernote account. Capture articles, research, travel deals, and more. To do this:

1. Download the Evernote Add-On for Dolphin and authorize your account.
2. Whenever you come across text on any web page that you might want to remember, select it and tap the Evernote logo on the right side bar. The information you want to remember will be synced to your Evernote account.

The Evernote API

Dolphin was able to do all this thanks to the open, free Evernote API. You can also create amazing Evernote-integrated apps and products. Take a look at our developer site for more information.

Today’s Evernote for Windows update (4.5.3) is full of PDF-related improvements. So if you store PDFs in Evernote, this update will make you very happy. Everything about the way PDFs work in Evernote for Windows is better than ever.

Get Evernote for Windows »

The new PDF functionality lets you do things that weren’t possible before. Search results will be highlighted inside of PDFs, you can easily drag PDFs out of Evernote, and you can even copy text. Also, when you mouse over the PDF, you’ll notice a new toolbar. Here’s how it all works.

Search inside PDF
If you have a scanned document or a digital PDF in Evernote, then search results will be highlighted in yellow right inside the PDF. You can also use CTRL+F to search inside a specific note.

Drag PDFs out of Evernote
Besides allowing you to move from page to page of your PDF, the new PDF toolbar also lets you drag a PDF out of Evernote and into other apps, your desktop, or just about anywhere you like. To do this, click and drag the middle section of the toolbar, then drop the file.

Copy and paste
If your PDF contains text that can be selected, you can now copy that text and paste it into other programs right from the note pane.

PDFs are even better with Evernote Premium

One of the great features of Evernote Premium is that it automatically performs OCR on any scanned document PDFs in your account and makes them searchable. This feature is made all the more powerful now that search results are highlighted right inside the PDF. Learn more about Evernote Premium »

Today’s Evernote for Android update (3.5) includes a number of great improvements, including smart titles for notes, the ability to save as you edit, better layout and styling of image attachments, and more. Let’s take a look.

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Auto titles

There are times when you need to remember something on the go — a fast snapshot or a quick voice memo. Evernote is great for that. The problem was, how to find those notes later? In this update, we’ve come up with a great solution: auto-titles for untitled notes. Now, Evernote will create a title based on the content of the note and time that the note was created, making it much easier to find it later.

Improved image layout in notes

We’ve also made some improvements to how snapshots appear inside your notes. There is now padding around images, so if a note contains several images, they show up nicely spaced and easier to view. As always, if you tap on an image, you can view it in full-screen view. A long tap lets you annotate it in Skitch.

Save anytime

If you compose lengthy notes on your phone or tablet, then you’ll like our new Save feature. Tap the Save button in the note and a version will be saved to your device’s memory. No need to exit the note. When you’re finished, tap Done and the note will Sync.

And more…

This update is also full of bug fixes and reliability improvements. You’ll notice that notes save much more quickly. We have lots more to come. Stay tuned.

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Evernote Food is a great way to preserve all of your food memories—from dining out to cooking in. Oftentimes, your meals tell a story that you want to share with the world, so we redesigned our shared view to really highlight your experiences.

Your photos are now on a beautiful dark background, which really showcases the meal. Notes are placed at the top of the meal and captions are right below each image. Friends that receive your link can save the meal to their own Evernote accounts, see where the meal occurred and re-share it to their social networks.

Here’s an example of a shared meal that I created on a recent trip to the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

How to share a meal

There are two options for sharing a meal. You can either do it inside Evernote Food or from Evernote.

• From Evernote Food: Open the meal and tap on the share icon in the lower right. Choose a sharing option and you’re done.
• From Evernote: Open the meal and share it as you would any individual note.

More to come

We have lots more to come from Evernote Food, including new features and new platforms. Stay tuned.

Get Evernote Food from the iTunes App Store »

Bio

Daniel works at LexisNexis, where he consults with attorneys on how to be more productive and effective by using LexisNexis litigation software. He’s also an attorney and recently penned an e-book, which is for sale in the Evernote Trunk, about ways to use Evernote to be more productive.

I use Evernote, Everywhere:

• Windows (work)
• Windows & Mac (home)
• Android phone
• iPad

I use Evernote for Work

At LexisNexis, I oversee business relationships with 150 of the largest law firms in 8 states in the Southeast. I quickly found that managing this business was much more complex and challenging than practicing law, and I realized I needed a much better system to organize everything I do at work and responsibilities at home (I’m a dad to three children).

Evernote changed everything for me. It shook the very essence of how I stay organized.

• Evernote is much more than a note-taking app. To me, it’s a life management tool. It allows me to organize everything that I do in my life — from my work, to my blog, to my e-book, and my life with my wife and kids.
• I use one notebook to remember everything except shared information. I have a couple of levels of organization. I use separate tags to break out my GTD methodology (such as contexts, things I need to do today, next actions, active projects, inactive projects, etc). I have a major category for tags, such as Home, Work, Clients, Reference, Stuff, etc., and then minor categories nested underneath, such as insurance, mortgage, doctors, and so forth. I use Notebook Stacks to stay organized as well. Anything that needs to be shared with clients, colleagues or family will go into a Shared Notebook inside of the Stack. To search, I look through my tags, or do a Saved Search. Some of my tags and Saved Searches are dragged to the awesome Favorites Bar!
• When compiling content for a client, I include a lot of information in one note. I’ll include contracts, literature pieces, Powerpoint presentations, and notes where I talked to the client on the phone. I’ll use Note Links to paste a link if the information resides in a separate note within Evernote. A real bonus is that Evernote auto-populates the date and time for me with a single shortcut every time I want to add new information in the note.

• When working on new business, I send all pertinent emails to Evernote. I review those and all relevant notes. When trying to understand next steps, everything is in one central location. [Learn how to email to Evernote]
• Note Links help keep me on track when I’m running around meetings. I think Note Links are the key to success in Evernote! I use them everywhere I can.  For example, when I’m traveling for work, I create a master note with my travel itinerary. In that master note, I include all of the times of where I need to be and when. My airline confirmation is a Note Link in this master note. On my last trip, I had a meeting with a law firm, where I hyperlinked the lawyer’s name to the agenda I created in Evernote for that lawyer, which talked about three things I wanted to accomplish in that meeting. Within that agenda was a Note Link to another note that embedded a video of a client testimonial I saved in Evernote that I wanted to show him. Because I’m a Premium user, I had saved the notes in an offline folder. When it came time to meet, I brought only my iPad, and only had to access that one note to know exactly what we would talk about. I didn’t have to go fiddling around folders, notebooks, or my work laptop. I had it all there in my iPad and all I had to do was click on that Note Link. It was “magical” and the client was really impressed with my organization and professionalism! [Learn how to use Note Links]
• I use Shared Notebooks with my team. This is where I can send other members of my team to benefit from finding existing information, rather than having to spend hours doing repetitive work. For example, I’m working on travel plans with a colleague. I’ve already done the research we need and put it into a Shared Notebook, along with our itinerary. Similarly, while I prepped for a presentation on electronic discovery for a law firm’s litigation team, I did research on LexisNexis to learn more about new case law and about the law firm, created the presentation based on what I found, and then put it all into a Shared Notebook, which I shared with the marketing and branding teams, as well as other colleagues. [Learn more about sharing from Evernote]

• I scan all of my expenses while I travel, to save time later. When I’m at a hotel, I’ll scan all of my receipts for the day. It makes my life so much easier at the end of the week, when I’m back from my trip and don’t have to worry about scanning.

Evernote for Managing Family Life, and Learning

I’ve found Evernote to be an invaluable tool to not only help manage my family trips, recipes, kids’ artwork, and progress reports, but to actually help my son learn.

How I use Peek to Help my Son with Math

My son’s school gives him these 25 question speed drills in math. I wanted to create a fun and engaging way to help him learn the answers to questions, so I decided to give Peek a try. I created a new notebook called ‘Jacob’s math questions’ and took 75 of his math questions and created 75 notes in that notebook. I opened the notebook up in Peek and Jacob has been loving it. It’s so engaging for him and fun to watch him. He gets so excited to lift the cover and see he got the answer right. Evernote has basically helped Jacob turn his math speed drills into something fun!

Get Evernote Peek

Audio Notes for Demonstrating Learning Progress

My son had a reading tutor over the summer and I wanted to track his progress. I turned to the audio note feature in Evernote to record him at the beginning of the summer reading his book. At the end of the summer, I recorded him reading the same exact book. It was not only amazing for me as a parent to hear the difference before and after, but even more amazing for Jacob! Now, Jacob even asks for me to record him in Evernote.

Evernote for Everything Else

I use Evernote for everything related to organizing my family and capturing sentimental things that I might want to recall in the future. For example, I have a ScanSnap scanner which goes with me on all my travels. At home, I use it to scan in my kids’ artwork. To date, I have about 250 notes with artwork tagged with my kids’ names. They know their creations live in Evernote.

I’ve also tried to go paperless, so I scan in documents related to landscaping, pest control, everything for my dog, my kids’ progress reports, and more. [Visit our Paperless discussion]

Another great example of how I use Note Links is for planning family vacations. I was recently planning a family trip with my parents and they wanted to know where we were staying, what we’d be doing, and have directions to all of the places we’d be going. I pulled together all of the information that my wife had planned into an Evernote notebook and sent it off to them. I made it so much easier for my parents! The alternative is sending an email with multiple attachments or sending multiple emails, which can get totally overwhelming. My mom was blown away. [Learn more about sharing from Evernote]

Join the Parenting discussion and read about how our Parenting Ambassador, Carley, uses Evernote for Parenting.

Are you a father or an attorney? Share how you’re using Evernote in the comments.

You may recognize Chad Williams from the story he shared with us a few months ago. Chad is a personal trainer that started an online coaching business to help clients get in shape and stay motivated. Evernote plays an important role in helping his customers stay accountable and on track. Today, we’re excited to announce that Chad is joining our Ambassador Program as our new Fitness Ambassador. As many of us may have lofty fitness goals in 2012, Chad is sharing his tips for ways to use Evernote to help you get (or get back) into shape. Welcome, Chad!

It’s a new year, which often means time for resolutions for how to make this year different than the last. Unfortunately, many people fall short on accomplishing their resolutions each year. Usually this comes from not being clear in your goals, forgetting what they were, and not tracking your progress to see what’s working and what’s not. As a personal trainer, I’ve seen this happen all too often. Since I started using Evernote, I’ve figured out how I can help my clients stick to their fitness resolutions. I’ve compiled my top 10 tips for using Evernote to get you ahead of the game and finally reach your fitness goals this year.

Top 10 Ways to Stick to Your Fitness Resolutions This Year

1. Set your goals: make a checklist
   Clearly defining your goals is a big key to your success. We often say something like “lose weight” or maybe even “lose 20 pounds” but what’s missing is when that will happen. Leaving the door open on the goal makes it easy to then say, “I’ll start tomorrow.” Set a completion date for your goal and check off milestones as you complete them. [Learn how to create a checklist in Evernote]
2. Create workout logs
   Exercise is usually at the top of the list of New Year’s resolutions that people make. Be clear with what you plan to do and how often, but then make sure you log workouts to track your progress. By logging your workouts, you’ll have a better understanding of the progress you’re making.
3. Maintain your meal plans
   Diet is another big New Year’s resolution. Planning ahead is the key to success when it comes to watching what you eat. Use Evernote to plan your meals each week or even each month. When your meals are planned, you can be more organized and more likely to stick to your plan. You can also make a grocery checklist based on upcoming meals. [Learn how to create a checklist in Evernote]
4. Create a recipe resource
   Make sure you stick to your diet plan by creating a recipe resource. Having access to all of your favorite recipes in one location means that you’ll make smarter eating choices in the new year.
5. Keep track of what you’re eating
   Now that you’ve planned your meals and have recipes organized, keep a log of what you’re actually eating. Use Evernote Food to capture your chef skills at home or dining out experiences to build a resource of what foods you truly enjoy. Evernote Food can also be a great place for keeping your favourite recipes. [Learn more about Evernote Food]
6. Monitor your sleep schedule
   When it comes to health, sleep is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of staying well. Do you know how long you sleep each night? Create a simple log of your sleep patterns in Evernote, recording the number of hours you sleep each night. You’ll probably start to see a trend and you’ll also figure out the amount of sleep you need for optimal performance in your day.
   
7. Keep track of measurements
   Monthly measurements of inches, weight, body fat percentage and accompanying body photos are an important aspect of tracking your success. If you see improvements, you’ll stay motivated. If you don’t, you’ll be reminded that it’s time to change something in your approach.
   
   
8. Capture inspiration and ideas from the web
   You probably browse the web for workout ideas, recipes, and inspirational quotes or photos. Use the Evernote Web Clipper to instantly capture anything you like into your Evernote account. [Learn more about how to clip content using the Web Clipper]
9. Share your results
   Sharing your progress with another person is a key element of staying on track. Share your logs or measurement notes with a close friend or family member to keep you accountable to someone who cares about you. Share individual notes via email, or put all of your result-related notes into a Shared Notebook. [Learn about sharing from Evernote]
10. Challenge yourself, with a buddy in tow
    Monthly or quarterly challenges are another way to keep you pushing forward. Create an exercise challenge and then invite others to participate. You can create a Shared Notebook with the challenge and then have a place for each person to check in daily or weekly. Working with others is a very powerful tool for keeping yourself challenged. [Learn about sharing from Evernote]

How will you use Evernote to achieve your fitness goals this year?

Bio

Kym Huynh is the founder of WeTeachMe, a company that lets people connect offline to teach each other everything from languages, to crafts and business. WeTeachMe operates on two levels: by connecting everyday people who want to learn new things with teachers around their area, and connecting teachers with a pool of students passionate about their topic. All the learning takes place in the real world where the sense of smell, touch and sight play an integral role in the learning process.

We use Evernote, Everywhere:

• iPhone
• Mac

We use Evernote for…

WeTeachMe aims to democratize education by giving everyone with a passion the ability to teach something to an engaged and willing audience. We’re an international team of five (we have folks in Australia, Greece, Ireland and China) and we all use Evernote.

We’re shifting from being a startup to a business, and Evernote is helping us make the transition. Evernote was absolutely essential to the organization of WeTeachMe. We literally have hundreds of documents, images, sound files and notes floating around. The ability to have them all centralized in one location is absolutely invaluable. We use Evernote to:

• Record audio notes during the customer development process: With Evernote installed on our smartphones and computers, we’re able to record and store audio clips from our customer development process for later reference and discussion.
• Location scout: The lessons and workshops at WeTeachMe happen at a variety of different locations and our team is always on the lookout for possible venues. When a suitable one is found, we snap photos of it with Evernote. These snapshots have both the longitude and latitude captured, so we never forget where a potential venue is located.
• Set goals: We use the checkbox function in Evernote to keep track of goals that we have set. Long-term, short-term; we got them all covered. [Learn how to create a checklist in Evernote]
• Keep a historical archive: We save old copy from our website into separate notes for later reference. It also provides a chance for the WeTeachMe team to tweak the copy as needed.
• Capture snapshots of handwritten notes: Notes are often written by hand. Evernote’s ability to take snapshots is incredibly handy. What really impresses us is Evernote’s ability to search for text within the image snapshots, which saves the need for us to type the notes manually; a big productivity booster.

• Get things done on the go: Having the Evernote app installed on our mobile devices gives us the freedom to accomplish more on the go.
• Keep track of expenses: We scan all of of our coffee, food and company receipts into Evernote for accounting purposes.

• Create and store meeting notes: Prior to launch, we used Evernote to create and store our meeting notes. Having them searchable and arranged chronologically makes referring to past meetings to see what we discussed/decided upon an extremely easy process.
• Save time by creating template notes: We tend to write the same emails over and over again. To shave time off writing emails, we saved some of the more common emails that we send out into separate notes. Instant productivity!

All of our work is centralized around Evernote’s incredible organizational and search capabilities. Evernote has also provided a great historical record of everything prior to launch. Post launch, we’re continuing to use Evernote to capture miscellaneous notes, meeting minutes, ideas and as an archive for our continual customer development process.

Making your goals happen

Often, things said in meetings are forgotten. Being able to jump back in time to see that snapshot is incredibly invaluable. We never lose sight of the goal and we make sure we don’t deviate from our original mission. Evernote was, and is, absolutely instrumental in the productivity boost at WeTeachMe headquarters. Rather than spend time working inside the business, we can spend the extra hours working on the business.

In this episode, we talk about Evernote Clearly, Evernote Food, Evernote Hello, Skitch for iPad, and take a look back at the year that was.

Podcast MP3 | iTunes | Audio feed | Length: 61mins

Podcast #32 topics

• Inc Magazine Company of the Year [Read the article]
• Evernote Clearly [Related post]
• Evernote Food [Related post]
• Evernote Hello [Related post]
• Skitch for iPad [Related post]
• Twitter questions

Inc Magazine

The many faces of Phil Constantinou

The new app videos

Call me!

We’ve set up a voicemail box just for you. Call us and tell us how you use Evernote-–don’t forget to tell us your name and where you’re from. We’ll choose the best ones and play them in our podcast. Call +1 (347) 497-3572 and leave a message.

Any questions?

Have a question you’d like us to cover in a future podcast? Leave it in the comments section or send a tweet with the hashtag #EvernotePodcast.

Nice to iMeet You

These days, many of us have to attend conference calls and meetings in which the participants are spread out across a lot of different locations. Increasingly, we have less face-to-face interaction and more voice chats, which means that presentations aren’t as dynamic, it’s hard to get everyone on the same page, and the real value of collaboration is lost. That’s why we’re so excited about our new integration with iMeet.

When you sign up for iMeet, you create a virtual ‘room’ that you can ask up to 15 people to join. Enabling video means you’ll see everyone in your meeting in one place and interact as if you’re all sitting around the same conference table. With our new integration, you’ll be able to bring Evernote right into your room to capture more insightful information from your meeting.

Evernote + iMeet: More context around your meetings

In addition to enabling you to invite people into your own private meeting room, iMeet also lets you share files and your Evernote notes in a visual way with everyone in the room, fundamentally transforming the way that you’re used to exchanging information when meeting with someone via your computer.

If you make a habit of taking diligent meeting notes in Evernote or want to share your notes, you’ll love this integration.

Imagine if the Internet was like a Rube Goldberg machine; an event in one place caused a planned cascade of actions. Well, now there’s a way to make that a reality. A service called IFTTT (if this, then that), allows you to devise a simple automated flow that starts whenever a certain action occurs. The setup is easy, the possibilities are endless and it can make Evernote even more useful for you.

Create Tasks and Recipes with ifttt

Ifttt connects two services of your choice to create an automated flow called a recipe. Recipes consist of Triggers and resulting Actions. You can create your own recipe or use those created by other ifttt users. There’s a near-infinite number of ways to use ifttt. Here are some great Evernote-related recipes.

Using ifttt with Evernote

To get started, create an ifttt account. Next, decide what your first task will be (a world of possibilities!). In these recipes, a Trigger in Craigslist, Twitter, Gmail, Foursquare, and others will create a new note in your Evernote account.

Here are some of the ways you can use ifttt with Evernote:

1. Keep track of searches in Craigslist. Have every new posting that matches your search parameters sent to your Evernote account. [recipe]
2. Create a new note in Evernote for every Starred item in Gmail. Don’t miss important emails; send them straight to your Evernote account for followup or reference. [recipe]
3. Create a new note in Evernote every time you Star an article in Google Reader. Remember articles and blog posts from your Google Reader and access them from any device where you have Evernote installed. [recipe]
4. Save your Instagram photos to Evernote. Are you an avid Instagrammer? Use Instagram to create and share your beautiful photos, then ifttt will save a copy of the photo to your Evernote account for easy access. [recipe]
5. Archive your Tumblr posts in Evernote. Enable Tumblr to send new posts straight into Evernote to create a searchable archive of everything you publish. [recipe]
6. Send your Flickr photos to Evernote. Send all newly-published, public photos straight to your Evernote account. [recipe]
7. Create an archive of your Foursquare checkins in Evernote. Keep track of your activities about town to remember places you’ve recently visited and might want to return to. [recipe]
   
8. Send your favorited Tweets to a Favorite Tweets notebook. Anytime you favorite a tweet, automatically send it to an Evernote notebook where you’ll be able to keep track of your most valuable tweets. [recipe]

We see infinite possibilities for automating tasks with ifttt to make Evernote even more useful. Have you already created some recipes in ifttt that you’d like to share?