Evernote

Are you collaborating on a project and need to give feedback to your partner? Let Skitch for Mac help you get the point across. Our app for visual communication lets you get everyone on the same page by providing feedback, comments and direction using arrows, shapes, and text. Try this:

• Take a screenshot of the slides or web page that you’re working on by clicking the Snap button on the upper right hand corner of your Skitch window and selecting the area you want to capture.
• Use the buttons on the left hand side of the window to annotate the image. Use an arrow to show where you want something moved, add text, and circle a picture you want to replace. Whatever you’re trying to say, Skitch can help you say it with fewer words.
• Share your edits using Evernote or by clicking the share button in the bottom left hand corner. You can also send a unique URL to the person you’re working with, so they’ll have easy access to your feedback.

Did you know that May is National Home Improvement month? It’s a great time to think about ways to spruce up your home and garden, so we thought we’d ask an expert to share some tips for ways that Evernote helps her keep track of inspiration and organize projects.

Bio

Jeanine Hays is the Creative Director & Founder of AphroChic, a home decor and design brand that includes a popular blog and shop that sells textiles and home accessories. A policy attorney, Jeanine founded AphroChic three years ago as an interior design blog, and quickly expanded into a business that allowed her to create designs of her own. Jeanine has a weekly feature on color and textiles on HGTV’s interior design blog, Design Happens. She has also participated as an online guest judge for the 2010 season of HGTV’s Design Star, and is a featured blogger for Houzz. After being introduced to Evernote by a home owner she was working with, Jeanine became hooked on using the tool for everything from planning her travels to coordinating with her team, and working on her book.

Jeanine’s Stylish Tips for Home Projects

Above: capture inspiration on the Web, using the Evernote Web Clipper. Select tags and notebooks. All of your web clips automatically sync across all of your devices.

I am a huge fan of Evernote. As a textile designer, blogger, and soon-to-be author it’s extremely important for me to be as organized as possible, and Evernote helps me to stay organized at all times. Part of my job is focused on styling. I’ve been styling several interiors for our home decor book, and use Evernote to stay on top of the numerous projects that have to be done for each interior. Evernote is fantastic for:

1. Keeping track of a list of different projects. Our team spent time shooting and styling interiors in Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, and Philadelphia. I created a separate notebook for each interior, and then collected a list of items I wanted to bring into each room in the space. Whether a pillow, a new piece of lighting, or flowers, it was all neatly collected in my Evernote notebook.
2. Evernote is also great way to communicate with others who are involved in your home decor project. For me, it was my styling team. I needed to easily be able to send them the items I was thinking of using in a particular interior. It can be just as handy when sending ideas for your next renovation project to your significant other, designer, and even your contractor. [Evernote Tip: share notes via email or add them to a Shared Notebook, then invite individuals to view what you've shared.]
3. The sync function is also integral to any interior project you’re working on. You can keep track of ideas on your computer, and voila, the project you’re working on is ready and synced on your iPhone. This is fantastic when you’re on a purchasing trip, and need to access your notes quickly. [Learn how Sync works]
4. The great thing about Evernote for interiors projects is that you can keep absolutely everything on file — measurements, store and contact information, vendor names, and even color palettes. It can all be kept and organized to help you achieve your project goals easily. [Learn how to capture multiple types of media in a single note]

Just getting started with Evernote? Check out our Getting Started Guide.

Want more inspiration for ways you can use Evernote for home decorating? Check out how home and design blogger Erin Souder uses Evernote for decorating her home.

Do you have tips to share for ways you’re using Evernote for styling and sprucing up your home? Share them in the comments!

Bio

Heather Williamson is a horticulturist responsible for taking care of 800 plants on the lot of a major Hollywood studio. Heather helps to make sure that the physical property looks beautiful at all times and manages her day-to-day activities with Skitch and Evernote.

I use Evernote, Everywhere

• Mac
• Windows
• Android phone
• Skitch for Android

I use Evernote for…

As as a member of a 6-person gardening team, I am tasked with helping keep our facility beautiful and conducive to doing business. My responsibilities extend from our 63 acre lot to executive offices. Before Skitch and Evernote, it was very challenging to keep track of all of our plants: Which ones were healthy? Which ones needed treatment? Which ones have I ordered? Which ones need to be replaced? Together, Skitch and Evernote allow me to stay on top of everything.

It’s amazing how many times I get asked, “How often should I water my plants?” and I’m glad when people ask, because it means they want to have success at growing plants. Gardening is the number one recreational activity in America, and whether you’re a professional like me, or an enthusiast, you can use Skitch and Evernote to help you keep track of your plants, their names, where you purchased them, your garden planning, layout and its seasonal progress, and in-home arrangements.

Evernote for staying organized

• I organize all of my projects in Evernote. I have a few notebooks in my Evernote account and I keep all of my notes organized with tags such as ‘potted plants’ or ‘to-do.’  I have a running checklist of everything that needs to get done in my areas of responsibility, and am constantly adding to-dos to my master task list and checking off the completed ones (when I’m done with a task, I move it down toward the bottom of the list, so I can see all of the tasks which still need to get done at the top). I also have notes for all of the plants that I work with so I know exactly when one has been treated, if it has had issues, if it has been replaced with another plant, etc.
• Evernote is my visual frame of reference, my project manager and my binder. Instead of having to carry a paper notepad everywhere as I used to do, taking notes and then searching to find those notes later, Evernote allows me to have quick access to my notes while out in the field, and allows me to be more effective and proactive in my activities. Evernote has made it easy for me to focus on the things that are important, like finding a better way to deal with an issue we’re having or being more creative.
• My paper trail is in Evernote. I scan in any documents that I think I might potentially need into Evernote. If my boss asks me to save a piece of paper, I know exactly where to find it. I forward important email correspondences into Evernote, too. If someone asks, “What is the name of this plant disease we were talking about and what do we do about it?” I can look at the email I sent to a world-class expert, our exchange, and research I’ve conducted, all in one place. I’m able to find an answer immediately.
• I can solve problems with Evernote. I use an extensive tagging system in my Evernote account, which lets me organize my research on a variety of different issues related to plants including pest issues, diseases, design and maintenance. Recently, we needed to figure out a way to keep fruit from possibly falling on cars. It didn’t take long for me to look through my Evernote account to access the information on exactly how to cut the fruit from the trees, while keeping them healthy and free of disease.

• I keep gardening inspiration in Evernote. I’m often inspired by things I see online and out in the real world, and Evernote lets me capture my ideas wherever I am. If I see an interesting gardening article online, I use the Web Clipper to add it to my Gardening notebook. If I’m on a garden visit, I take pictures of various and interesting plants and designs. This helps me when I’m asked to design something; I can simply look through my gardening ideas and can pull up anything I’d like to reference and immediately share it with someone or use it as a seed idea for a new design. I also clip or take pictures of items I need (like replacement blades, new tools to try, plant food, novel bud vases, etc.).

Skitch for planning arrangements, keeping tabs on plant health, and more

• Skitch helps me create office arrangements. Part of my job requires me to style executives’ offices with plants. As I’m touring an office, I use Skitch to plan out what types of plants I’ll order and how I’ll arrange them. I snap photos of bare office areas with Skitch and use my finger to quickly sketch a likeness of a plant, to scale in areas I think could be beautified with foliage and show it to a customer as we confer. I’ll jot down notes about what type of plants would look good in each particular space, based on lighting conditions and the size of the area being worked with and also note relative plant sizes. When I’m back at my desk, I can pull up my visual reference, along with my notes, and know exactly what I need to order. The annotated images also serve as my guides when I’m ready for the plant delivery and installation process.
• I use Skitch and Evernote to keep tabs on plant health. When I treat plants, I take pictures of what they looked like before treatment, so that I can monitor how they respond to it. I note the type of treatment, date, and condition of the plants so I have both visual and text references. If an issue is new to me (for example, if I find a pest on a plant that I don’t recognize), I draw an arrow on the image of the plant so that I can quickly spot it next time I see it. From there, I can research the issue further and link the research to the note by using tags and placing it in a specific notebook.

• I use Skitch to draw attention to places, concepts and ideas I might want to revisit. Skitch is a great visual reminder to revisit my ideas. For example, I’ll point out aspects of arrangements I see at nurseries and might want to recreate, or point to locations I should revisit. Once these annotated images are in my Gardening notebook in Evernote, I can quickly scan through them whenever I need some inspiration.

Skitch helps me brainstorm ideas for our yearly community volunteer project

Our studio gives back to the community every year in the form of a large volunteer project. This year, we’re working with a local elementary school and helping them improve their garden. I’m using Skitch to brainstorm the layout of their garden to help myself get organized while on a job.

Since this is a volunteer project, the group is broken up into teams, and a team captain could be a studio executive or an intern. Evernote gives key people an opportunity to participate in the learning process and have the chance to be successful at what might be a new task to them. I’ll snap photos of different plants and annotate them with Skitch to point out which are weeds and which are desirable plants. I’ll also snap photos of large areas and annotate them to show how they should be planted. For example, I’ll point out that grass should be planted near a rock because it makes for a nicer design. All of these notes can be shared with team captains, as well as anyone at the school, so they can easily reference the planting placement recommendations. In addition, it’s a great visual reference of the “before and after” effect that the project has made.

How are you using Skitch for gardening? Please share in the comments!

The All New Evernote 4.0 for Android
Completely redesigned and packed with new features and settings, Evernote 4.0 for Android is the most powerful Evernote for Android, ever. Learn more.

Let’s Get Cooking: The First Evernote Cook-Along with Home Cooking Ambassador
Join Home Cooking Ambassador Lauren Atkins for our first-ever Evernote Cook-Along. Get cooking.

With a Lot of Help from Our Friends
There’s a small “CEO Club” that’s helping to build Evernote. Find out who they are.

Trunk Spotlight: FileThis Fetch for Automatically Sending Bills and Statements to Evernote
Electronically send paper bills to your Evernote account using FileThis Fetch, and make your paperless dreams a reality. Find out how to get started.

Quick Tip Friday: Capture Multiple Types of Media in Single Note
Did you know that you could capture text, audio, images, and files in a single note? Learn how.

Did you know that you can put lots of different stuff into a single note?
Try it. Create a New Note, then:

• Type text
• Add a few checkboxes
• Record some audio
• Drag in a file or two (documents, PDFs, presentations, spreadsheets)
• Snap an image

Combining different pieces of content into a note lets you keep all of your thoughts and research in a single visual place. Having everything consolidated makes it easy for you to process the information.

The big added bonus: All of the resources you collect are accessible from any computer and mobile device that you use, without you having to manually transfer anything!

Things to keep in mind
Both Free and Premium users can attach any file type to a note. The maximum single note size for Free users is 25 MB. Premium users get a higher, 50MB, limit.

Have you tried this? What are some creative ways you’ve combined different forms of media in a single note?

If you’re considering going paperless, or already working your way towards a paperless lifestyle, you may just be trying to figure out how to electronically send paper bills to your Evernote account, where you can find, organize, prioritize and archive them later. Today, we’re going to tell you about a service that lets you do just that, in a very simple and streamlined fashion. It’s called FileThis Fetch.

Skip the paper, login reminders, scanning and sorting

You might already be scanning your paper bills and statements. With FileThis Fetch, you can actually have monthly bills and statements sent directly to your Evernote account. No logging into your various accounts, no more scanning, and no more paper. More importantly, with the FileThis Fetch/Evernote integration, you’ll be able to view and access all of your statements and bills for fast and easy reference anywhere you have Evernote installed.

Evernote Productivity Ambassador, Joshua Zerkel, a FileThis Fetch user explains, “Even once you’ve decided to go paperless, taking the time to go to each vendor’s site and download your e-bills and e-statements can be a real pain. FileThis Fetch solves this last-mile problem for you, and lets you decide where your statements and bills should live. One less thing for you to do.”

Account Setup

Setting up your account is simple:

1. After creating your FileThis Fetch account, choose Evernote as the destination.
2. Choose the institution from which you want to start retrieving documents from the “Add a New Connection” list. Note: the service works best if your accounts are set to paperless. If your institution is not listed, you can submit it as a request. FileThis Fetch is continuously adding new institutions.
3. Input your login credentials (which stay encrypted), let the app connect to the institution, and watch your statements start coming into Evernote.
4. FileThis Fetch will create a Stack in your Evernote account, and a notebook for each institution you select, so your bills will stay organized, without a lot of work on your part.

Once in your Evernote account, statements are searchable, meaning you won’t need to log into various online accounts to find a specific month’s bill, or line item. Simply use the Evernote search bar to find what you’re looking for. Eliminating the need to log into your bank accounts, and various services you’re connected to might just mean you’ll look at those statements more often, and more closely.

Start using FileThis Fetch for $2/month.

Remember that $70 million round of funding we announced way back a week and a half ago? A crazy amount of stuff has happened since then, but I wanted to go back to the topic of the funding announcement and add a cool new detail: there’s a small “CEO Club” that’s helping to build Evernote.

In addition to the VCs and professional investors who participated, we set aside 10% of the round for a small group of founders and CEOs who have been my friends, mentors and main sources of inspiration ever since I moved to Silicon Valley five years ago. I’m deeply honored that these six great entrepreneurs accepted our invitation to invest in Evernote and help us build a hundred year startup:

• Marc Benioff, Founder and CEO of Salesforce.com
• Jerry Yang, Founder and CEO of Yahoo
• Hiroshi Mikitani, Founder and CEO of Rakuten
• Sky Dayton, Founder and CEO of Earthlink, eCompanies, Boingo and Helio
• Loïc Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic and LeWeb
• Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of Reddit and Hipmunk

Each of these people managed to build companies from scratch that succeeded in changing the world and, in many cases, are still changing it.

Marc was my main inspiration for thinking about the cloud and was one of the first people to turn me on to the magic of Japan. Jerry built one of the first, great Internet companies and gave me invaluable advice for keeping the culture of a team intact through rapid growth. Mikitani-san is the strongest thinker I’ve ever met on what it means to be a truly international company; a company that doesn’t just sell everywhere, but builds everywhere as well. Sky is the textbook serial entrepreneur, a great simplifier of complexity, and once helped me meet an important New Year’s Resolution. Loïc is a true statesman, a genius at spotting talent and one of the first people to really give Evernote a boost. Alexis is the leading authority on making information overload fun, adorable corporate mascots and how to make products beloved by Stephen Colbert.

When I think about what these people have created, I am reminded that Evernote is just at the very start of our journey. We’re 1% done and have a colossal amount of work ahead. All of our accomplishments over the past five years are just a drop in the bucket and we aren’t really sure of what we’re doing. This is humbling and slightly scary.

And then I remember that until they managed to build world-changing, multi-billion-dollar public companies out of nothing, they’d never done it before either.

And that’s an encouraging thought.

Major operating system updates are a great opportunity for us to rethink our apps. That’s exactly what happened when Google released the Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. Today, we’re excited to unveil the completely redesigned Evernote 4.0 for Android. It’s more than just a new look, it’s the most powerful Evernote for Android, ever.

Get Evernote for Android

The All-New Look of Evernote for Android

Whether it’s a completely makeover or a simple touch-up, every single screen of the app have been redesigned to be easier to use, faster and more intuitive.

The new Home Screen
The new home screen is completely different from anything we’ve done before. The screen combines note creation options with buttons that take you directly into notebooks, tags and places (more on that later).

What makes the new home screen great, is how easy it is to use and how fast you can jump to it—swipe right or tap the elephant and you’re back.

Improved note and notebook list
The app’s note and notebooks lists got a major upgrade in this update. We redesigned the look of the note list to make it easier to browse content and to find what you’re looking for. For the notebook list, we brought together your personal notebooks and the ones that others have shared with you into a single view.

Action Bars
The latest update includes new contextual Action Bars that runs along the bottom of several screens. The bar shows options that relate to the screen that you’re on. For example, if you’re viewing a note, the Action Bar allows you to edit, share, tag, and perform other note-related actions. On the note list, tapping the Action Bar can launch a new note, search through notes, and change the sort order. Look for the Action Bar whenever you want to do more on the screen that you’re in.

Easy reading

We believe that the best interfaces are the ones that appear when you need them and become invisible when you don’t. That thinking led to our new note view. When reading a note, as you start scrolling, all navigation slides away, giving you a full-screen reading view. Then, when you need to edit, share or return to the note list, just tap the screen.

Swipe navigation

Horizontal swiping is now a major way to navigate through the app. When you’re viewing Notebooks, Tags, and Places, horizontal swiping moves you from one category to the next. If you’re in the home screen, a swipe to the left jumps you into the note list. Swipe back any time and you return to the home screen.

Places!

If you have “location services” enabled on your device, then Evernote assigns a place to each note you make. The new Places screen displays notes by creation location. Tap the map icon in the Action Bar to see your notes on a map.

New Settings

One of the other very visible interface features is the appearance of your username in the top left corner of the home screen. Tapping the username, shows your remaining monthly allowance and gives you access to additional settings.

Next to the username is a profile icon. This icon shows your account type: it’s a simple profile icon for Free users, and shiny crest if you’re Premium. In addition, at a glance, the icon shows you if you’re nearing your monthly allowance limit.

Much more…

As always, the visible things are only part of the story. There are lots of enhancements and fixes that will make your experience of using Evernote the best it’s ever been. Also, be sure to tap on the feature discovery lightbulb to see what’s new in this update and to get other useful tips.

After welcoming our Home Cooking Ambassador to the Ambassador Program, we naturally wanted to cook something. Since so many of you already use Evernote and Evernote Food to manage recipes and capture your cooking and eating experiences, we thought it would be fun for Lauren to lead a community cook-along event that lets us connect by sharing our experiences using Evernote and Evernote Food.

The First Evernote Cook-Along

For our first Evernote Cook-Along, Lauren has chosen a recipe that can be customized in a myriad of different ways. We’re making crepes! To participate, you can use Evernote and Evernote Food. Here’s how it’s going to work:

1. The Cook-Along will be happening on Saturday, May 19th. If you’re cooking along, RSVP to the event on Facebook. Leading up to the Cook-Along, and over the course of the event, post your favorite crepe recipes, ask Lauren questions, share kitchen tips, and Evernote-related tips.
2. Use the Evernote Web Clipper to clip Lauren’s basic crepe recipe to your Evernote account, so you can easily reference it while you’re in the kitchen.
3. Customize the crepe recipe however you like: make them sweet, make them savory. Top with sugar, butter, eggs, Nutella…whatever you like! Choose and purchase your ingredients ahead of the event.
4. On Saturday, May 19th, it’s time to get cooking! Bring whatever device you’re using to reference the recipe into your kitchen for easy access to your Evernote account. As you’re cooking, use Evernote Food (or Evernote on your mobile device) to capture snapshots of the process. Then, be sure to snap some photos of the finished product.
5. Share your creation to your Facebook page, Twitter, and your blog (if you have one!) anytime between May 19th and May 26th. Use the hashtag #evernotecookalong when sharing your notes.

To share your Meal from Evernote Food: Tap the arrow icon in the lower right-hand corner. Select Facebook or Twitter. Be sure to add the hashtag #evernotecookalong! All of your Evernote Food notes automatically sync to your Evernote account, so you have the opportunity to make them public. Select ‘Copy Share URL to Clipboard,’ then use this link to post to the Cook-Along Facebook page, your blog, and the Lifestyle Forum.

To share photos from your Evernote account: Select Post to Facebook, Post to Twitter, or Copy Share URL to Clipboard.

Win Prizes!

Over the course of the Cook-Along, we’ll select 5 random winners, who will all receive a bag of Evernote goodies including a t-shirt, tote bag, stickers, and more.

Let’s get cooking!

Want more ways to connect with Evernote Ambassadors? Visit our Ambassador Page and Lifestyle forum.

Have an idea for a community Evernote event? Share it in the comments!

Here’s a quick recap of blog posts you may have missed this week.

Evernote Acquires Penultimate
The beautifully simple handwriting app for iPad is now a part of the Evernote family. Learn more about this new addition.

The Evernote Trunk Conference is back!
Mark your calendars: on August 24th, the Evernote Trunk Conference makes its return to San Francisco. This year, expect developer and user sessions, as well as weekend events led by our Ambassadors! Get the details and RSVP.

Ben Zotto, Penultimate Founder, Says ‘The Future is Bright’
Penultimate founder Ben Zotto sounds off on what’s in store for Penultimate, now that it has joined the Evernote family. Read Ben’s thoughts.

Evernote for Mac Update: Card View, Word Count, New Save Features, and More
The new Evernote for Mac includes many user-requested new features and updates. Learn more and get it for your Mac today.

Evernote for iOS Update: Redesigned Screens, Improved Usability, New Settings, and More
It was a big week for product updates; Evernote for iOS includes redesigned note screens, improved editing, new ways to save attachments from your Evernote account and more. See what’s new and download.

Evernote Launches Separate Chinese Service
We launched a completely separate Chinese Service called Yinxiang Biji (印象笔记) to give our users in China a great Evernote experience. Read more about it.

We’re excited to announce our second annual Evernote Trunk Conference. This year, it’s taking place in San Francisco on August 24th. Reserve your spot today »

The goal of ETC is to bring together the global community of Evernote developers, users, and partners for a single day of great talks, sessions, and workshops. It’s an opportunity to exchange ideas, expand your Evernote knowledge, and build lasting connections with fellow users and developers.

Focused on you

We want to make ETC a great experience for the entire community, so we’re planning dedicated, separate tracks for developer and users. You’ll get to hear from members of the Evernote team, developers, Trunk partners, Evernote Ambassadors, and many more. Our complete conference agenda will be available very soon.

More than a conference. It’s a destination.

Last year, hundreds of people came to San Francisco for our one-day conference. This year, we decided to make ETC a memorable weekend. In addition to the conference, we’re working with our Ambassadors and team members to build a schedule of Evernote-themed activities, ranging from walking tours around San Francisco to Evernote boot camps.

DEVCUP

A couple of weeks ago we kicked off Devcup, our annual developer competition. Your great Evernote integration idea can win you a piece of $100,000 in prizes. Winners will be announced at ETC. For more information, visit the Devcup site.

Join us

Don’t miss this opportunity to join fellow Evernote enthusiasts, members of the developer community, partners, and Evernote employees from around the world to learn, get inspired, and geek out over all things Evernote.

• When: Friday, August 24th 2012
• Where: San Francisco Design Center – 635 8th Street, San Francisco, CA
• Price: $100
• RSVP now »

Don’t forget to let your friends know that you’ll be attending ETC on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

See you there!

Today, Evernote unveiled its new, completely separate, Chinese service called Yinxiang Biji (印象笔记) to give our users in China a great Evernote experience. The name means Memory Notes or Impression Notes. As a happy coincidence, the second character, 象, means elephant. The previously existing Evernote service is not affected and will continue to run separately.

We’ve been hard at work on this for months: building a great team in Beijing, engineering new products, and setting up our new data centers. Minutes ago, we flipped the switch.

Here’s what it’s all about, why we did it, and what it means for you.

Why launch a separate service in China?

Our goal is to improve the lives of everyone around the world by giving them a second brain and a perfect memory. Our user base in China is growing quickly; with over a million users, it’s already our third largest country and at the current rate it’ll soon top Japan to move into second place. We’re really pleased with this, but, frankly, using Evernote in China hasn’t been a great experience.

The most common request we get from our Chinese users is to make Evernote faster, more reliable and better integrated with the rest of the Chinese Internet. Due to poor network connectivity between the US and China, there’s only one way to definitively fix the problem: have a separate service in China. That’s what we built.

In addition to dramatically improving the Chinese user experience, Yinxiang Biji also offers a number of other benefits:

• The new Yinxiang Biji API will make it much easier for Chinese developers to build great apps and integrations. Once built, developers will be able to choose whether to have their apps work with Yinxiang Biji, Evernote, or both.
• The service will work with Chinese partners and payment methods to match Chinese Internet expectations.
• Yinxiang Biji will provide Chinese-language customer support based in China.

Evernote and Yinxiang Biji will be developed in parallel and share much of the code-base and features. Initially, Yinxiang Biji will not have support for sharing and social features until we complete the integration with Chinese social networking companies (Evernote’s current sharing and social features don’t work well in China anyway and are rarely used). All of our own major apps will be updated to know how to log in to either service.

What does this mean for our users inside China?

People in China now have the choice to create an account on Yinxiang Biji. Existing Evernote users may copy some or all of their notes and notebooks to a new account on the Chinese service, which will give these users all the speed and reliability advantages of the local service. Instructions on copying data to Yinxiang Biji are available here. The existing Evernote service will continue to work exactly as before, of course.

What does this mean for our users outside of China?

Absolutely nothing. Evernote and Yinxiang Biji are completely separate services with no connection to one another. Evernote data will not be stored on Yinxiang Biji servers, and vice-versa. Even though the two services are distinct, we think that over time the global community of Evernote users will benefit from great apps and integrations developed for Yinxiang Biji and configured to work with Evernote.

What about data privacy?

We will always strive to preserve the privacy of your data. Our three laws of data protection apply to both Yinxiang Biji and the Evernote Service:

• Your data is yours
• Your data is protected
• Your data is portable

You can read a longer explanation of our three laws here, but the short version is that we will not share your data with any partners, analyze or data-mine it for the purposes of serving ads or other “big data” monetization schemes, or put up any obstacles to you getting your data out at any time.

This still leaves the question of government access. The laws and practices controlling data stored on servers in China are evolving rapidly and Yinxiang Biji will comply with Chinese regulations applicable to the service. This means users of Yinxiang Biji should be aware that Chinese authorities may have the right to access their data according to current regulations.

The existing Evernote service will continue to operate out of servers located in California under the protection of US privacy laws.

Our big adventure

Doing business in China is notoriously hard for western companies. We understand this and we understand that we don’t have all the answers. We thought about taking the easy road and ignoring China altogether, but that approach just isn’t Evernote-y. In a perfect world, great companies with roots in Silicon Valley should be able to succeed in China and great companies with roots in Beijing should be able to succeed in San Francisco. Most importantly, global products designed and developed through the cross-pollination of the world’s top centers of entrepreneurship and innovation will be better than products built in a vacuum.

We don’t live in a perfect world, but through hard work, innovation, optimism and transparency, we think we can nudge it along a little.

I’m really excited about this launch.

If you have questions, please ask them in the comments.

Today, Evernote for Mac gets a pretty great update (v 3.1) full of new features, redesigned screens and stability improvements. We’ve added a completely new Card View, word and character counts for notes, easier attachment export, and much more. Let’s take a look:

Get Evernote for Mac

The New Card View

We replaced our thumbnail view with a completely new Card View. The design of this view will be familiar to Evernote for iPad users and those that have tried using Evernote for Mac in fullscreen mode.

There are several reasons to love Card View. First, you get much more information about the content of the note at a glance. If your note contains only text, then you’ll see the first couple of sentences in the card. If it’s just an image, then the card will present a well-formatted thumbnail.

The Card View action bar
At the top of the Card View, there are several useful options. At left, you can select a sorting method. In the middle, choose from one of two card sizes. On the right, choose to hide the note pane and expand Card View. You should definitely try that last one. Hide the note pane and also hide the left notebook panel using the Favorites Bar. The result: a full app window of note cards, which is a great new way to browse your notes.

Word and character count!

You asked for it, and here it is. Evernote for Mac now has word and character count totals for each note. To view the counts, tap on the “i” in the top right corner of a note. The numbers are displayed in the Size section. To view the counts quickly, try the CMD+Shift+I keyboard shortcut.

Redesigned account info screen

We spruced up the account info screen inside the app to make it easier to read important information, such as your remaining monthly allowance (60MB for Free users and 1GB for Premium). Also, Free users can now upgrade to Premium by clicking a new upgrade button in the account info screen.

Save all attachments

Dragging something out of a note onto your desktop is simple enough when you only want one file, but what if you want to export all the files and attachments in a note? Now, we have the answer. Click on a note, or select multiple notes, then right click and choose Save Attachments. You’ll be asked to choose a destination folder. That’s all. Every file, image, PDF, and audio clip are now in that folder. This is just one of the many ways that we make it easy for you get your content out of Evernote.

Better printing

You’ve asked us to add more context to notes that you print and, in this update, we did. In the print settings, click on Show Details. Next, click the checkbox labeled Print Headers. Now, your notes will print with all their header information, including title, dates, tags, and notebook.

Date and time stamp

We’ve added a couple of useful keyboard shortcuts that let you add a quick date and time into the body of a note as you type.

• For date: Press CMD+Shift+D
• For time: Press CMD+Shift+Option+D

These shortcuts are great if you’re taking accurate meeting minutes or trying to associate your lecture audio recording with the notes you’ve taken. If you’d like to change the date formatting, you can set it in the new Formatting tab in Evernote Settings.

And much more…

In addition to all of these great new capabilities, we also improved bullets and numbered lists, made result highlighting in PDFs more accurate, and fixed tons of other issues. You’ll find the app is more stable and reliable than ever. We hope you like our latest version of Evernote for Mac. Let us know what you think in the comments.

This has been quite a week already, and it’s only Tuesday! Today, we have a major update for iOS 5 that includes redesigned note screens, improved editing, better checkboxes, new attachment options, and more. Let’s take a look.

Get Evernote for iOS »

iOS 5 iPhone: Major note editor upgrade and redesign for iOS 5

The first thing iPhone users will notice is the completely redesigned note editor. We’ve spent the past few months exploring ways to make the interface more intuitive and easier to use, and we’re very excited about the result.

Attachments on top
All of the attachment options now run along the top of the note editor, so you can add a photo or audio recording with fewer taps.

Intuitive text styling
The text styling options are now accessible from a new tab that appears above the keyboard. When you tap on the styling tab, the keyboard is replaced with formatting options. This way you can place the cursor where you want, set the style, then flip back to the keyboard to keep typing.

Redesigned note info
Tapping the “i” in the top right corner of the note brings up the newly redesigned note info screen. Here you can quickly set the notebook, add tags and see the location of the note on a map.

iOS 5 iPhone: Better checkboxes

Making lists in Evernote is really straightforward. Create a checkbox from the formatting tab, and off you go. With this update, we made checkboxes more intuitive, and more useful to the super checkbox users out there. First, when you’re in a checkbox list and create a new line, Evernote will automatically add a checkbox to that line. Additionally, we now allow you to indent your checkboxes, great if you’re making lists within lists.

Improved attachments

Above, we mentioned the new location of the attachment options in the note editor, but that’s not all we changed. We improved how these functions work, too.

New recorder
The audio recorder has been beautifully redesigned. Now, when you tap the microphone icon, the entire top bar transforms into the recorder, showing you audio levels and recording time. When you’re finished recording, tap Done.

Your recording will appear in the body of the note. You can even play it back right away to make sure you like what you captured. If you don’t, simply delete the audio and record again.

Photo Stream
If you use iCloud to sync your images between your devices, then you have a Photo Stream group in your photo library. The new Evernote update allows you to attach these images to your notes.

More control

The latest update also adds a couple of new settings that let you better control your Evernote experience.

Auto-titling settings
In Settings, you can now turn Note Auto-titling ON or OFF. Note Auto-titling is the feature that predicts a note title based on your location, calendar events or contents of the note. The feature is on by default, but if you prefer not to get title suggestions, then simply turn it off.

Save to Camera Roll
One more feature that you can now disable is automatically adding snapshots you make in Evernote to your Camera Roll. If you would prefer not having the same image in Evernote and in your Camera Roll, then disable the function and the app will only save the snapshot in Evernote.

And more…

In addition to all the visible changes described above, there are lots of improvements and fixes that make this version of Evernote even more reliable. There’s more to come.

Ben Zotto, the founder of Penultimate, a company that is now a part of the Evernote family, shares his thoughts on the future. This blog post originally appeared on the Cocoa Box blog.

I’m Ben, the creator of Penultimate, and today I’m proud to announce that Penultimate is becoming part of the Evernote family. Penultimate is the best and best-selling handwriting app for iPad. Evernote is a company whose mission is to help you “remember everything,” with a popular and powerful service for creating notes of all kinds and making them searchable and findable anywhere. They have a longstanding commitment to handwriting recognition — members of the core Evernote team have been building handwriting technology since the Apple Newton (really). Penultimate already offers basic Evernote integration, and tons of people are right now using Evernote’s recognition, search, and organization for their Penultimate notes.

Realizing that Evernote and Penultimate have such obviously complementary technologies, we’re teaming up. Evernote has acquired Penultimate, and I’ll be joining Evernote to help bring their significant resources to bear on making Penultimate better, faster. You’ll also start seeing Penultimate (finally!) on other devices, and we’ll be bringing great handwriting into other parts of Evernote.

Importantly, Penultimate is not going away: it remains an independent application, and will continue to espouse the virtues of ease of use, elegance, and “that special something” that have kept you coming back. But I also think you’ll be thrilled, and even surprised, by how much more the app will be able to do for you as we work together to improve it and connect more profoundly with Evernote’s capabilities.

Penultimate has come a long way since its launch as the original dedicated handwriting app for Apple’s first iPad two years ago. It now offers scores of powerful features within that same accessible and attractive design. It’s remained a top-selling app, and millions of people have showed us that they’re doing things with Penultimate we never imagined. I’ve been amazed and humbled by all of the passionate users I’ve encountered — you have offered your valuable feedback, support, and candid (!) critiques. Penultimate would not be what it is without you. I believe that this partnership makes a lot of sense, and Penultimate is only going to get better from here. Not just incrementally better, but WAY better, and quickly. I’m excited about the future of the app, and I sincerely hope that you will be too.

Cocoa Box’s Penultimate, the beautifully simple handwriting app for iPad, has been one of our favorites pretty much since it came out two years ago, so we’re very thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired the company and that Penultimate is now part of the Evernote family!

Penultimate is hugely popular. In fact, according to Apple, it’s the #4 best-selling paid iPad app of all time. When you have such a great product, the last thing you want to do is mess with it. That’s why Penultimate creator, Ben Zotto, is joining Evernote to head up future app development. Penultimate will stay a separate, elegant application and will get many much-requested Evernote-y improvements including full search and synchronization. Ben will also lead the effort to put handwriting and digital ink functionality into other Evernote products and platforms, so you’ll see handwriting cross-pollination popping up everywhere.

We couldn’t be more excited that Penultimate is joining Evernote. Our team has been working on handwriting recognition and digital ink forever and it feels like for the very first time, the experience of writing on a tablet is actually great. That’s what Penultimate has done. Now that we can add Evernote’s technology and expertise, it’s about to get a lot more powerful. Just wait till you see what we’ve got in store.

Penultimate is available for $0.99 from the iTunes App Store.

How a Registered Nurse Uses Evernote as a Portable Resources Binder and Teaching Tool
San Francisco registered nurse Laarni San Juan uses Evernote to store her work resources and carries around her digital ‘binder’ to access important reference materials on the go. Read her story.

A Faster, Leaner, Greener Evernote
We’ve made some updates to our service behind-the-scenes that effectively resulted in a 50% reduction in power consumption for new users. See how we made it happen.

Evernote Raises $70 Million Financing
A note from our CEO about our long-term goal to build a hundred year startup that can be everyone’s second brain. Read Phil’s note.

Quick Tip Friday: Simultaneous Search, A Better Way to Find Things
Search your Evernote account at the same time as your search engine to find things you might already have. Learn how you can start using this feature today.

When you’re looking for information in digital form, it’s likely you turn to two places: your favorite search engine and your Evernote account. One is for finding things you don’t already have and the other is for finding things you’ve captured, but may not remember. Simultaneous Search is a powerful feature that you can find in the Evernote Web Clippers for Chrome and Firefox that lets you search your Evernote account at the same time as your search engine.

Think of it this way: let’s say I’m looking for a cake recipe. As I’m doing my research using Google, Bing, or Yahoo, I can actually see the notes in my account which contain search terms like ‘cake,’ ‘chocolate,’ ‘layer cake,’ etc. Clicking on the notes found in my Evernote account in my search engine view takes me to my Evernote account on the Web, where I can see if I already have notes relevant to my search.

To enable this feature:

• Download the Evernote Web Clipper for Chrome or Firefox. Enable Simultaneous Search.
• To use Simultaneous Search feature in Chrome, right click the Web Clipper icon, then select Options from the dropdown. From there, check the box next to “Use Simultaneous Search.” In Firefox, go to Tools > Add-ons from the Tools dropdown. Select Extensions, then, click the Preferences button and check the box next to “Use Simultaneous Search.”
• Anytime you are signed into Evernote on the Web, you’ll be able to use the Simultaneous Search feature to search your account simultaneously with the Web.

Have you tried this feature? If so, how are you using it?

I’m happy to announce that Evernote has just raised another $70 Million in private financing led by Meritech Capital and CBC Capital. You can see the official details here.

This financing brings us another small step closer to our long-term goal of building a hundred year startup that can be everyone’s second brain. As was true when we raised our previous round last July, we took this financing not because we need the money to fund operations, but because we see building our financial infrastructure to be a crucial component of remaining an innovative and durable company. We’ll use the money to ramp the speed of product improvements, expand internationally, and make future strategic acquisitions. Most importantly, we wanted to have the resources on hand to ensure that we don’t get distracted by anything for the next several years; whatever happens in the economy or the market, we can stay 100% focused on building the best products and providing the best user experience.

I am both proud and humbled (if you don’t think this combination is possible, try raising $70 million) that some of the world’s best late-stage investors have decided to help Evernote in our quest. Together with the exceptional guidance we’ve been getting all along from our existing investors — Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, Docomo Capital, and others — this new expertise will help us achieve our next level of success.

Of course, none of this could have been possible without the passion and support of our users. The entire Evernote team thanks you from the bottom of our hearts for finding us, sticking with us, and telling us — repeatedly and loudly — how to make Evernote great. We’re listening.

Our operations team works wonders. It’s thanks to them that Evernote can handle the tens of thousands of new daily users, the millions of synchronizing devices, and the petabytes of data that run though our service. Our CTO, Dave Engberg, wrote a post on our tech blog explaining a rethinking of Evernote’s service infrastructure, coupled with technologies that weren’t available to us when we launched, that make Evernote faster, more efficient and greener than ever.

The results of these changes allow us to consolidate hardware, house more users per server, and get more efficient use of our drives.

Besides making the service more responsive, these updates also resulted in a 50% reduction in per user power consumption for new users, which is pretty huge.

We tend to focus our attention on new features and functionality, so it’s great to share some of the things that are going on behind the scenes.

Get all the details on the changes here »

Bio

Laarni San Juan is a public health nurse. Her job involves educating low-income pregnant women and their families on everything from where they can access social services to how they breastfeed their child. Evernote has become her digital binder. Learn how she uses it at the office and out in the field.

Here’s a quick recap of blog posts you may have missed this week.

Announcing Our Second Annual Developer Competition: The Evernote Devcup!
$100k in prizes are up for grabs by developers who build the next great apps that let millions of users do more with Evernote. Learn more about how to get involved, attend one of our worldwide meetups, and exchange ideas with fellow developers. Learn more

Evernote for Songwriting: Song & Story
A songwriter who tells stories through song uses Evernote for managing his songwriting process and his business. Check out the song he wrote and produced for Evernote, and read his tips for using Evernote in the creative process. Read Aubrey’s story.

Skitch Update: Easier Sharing to Evernote
Skitch, our app for getting your point across with fewer words, now lets you send your annotated images and screenshots to Evernote faster than ever. Learn more about the update.

Say It With Fewer Words: How to Build a Custom Bike with Skitch (New Skitch Series)
In our new Skitch series, we explore how you can use the app to communicate visually, and save time writing all of those back and forth emails. Check it out.

Skitch lets you get your point across fast. In this new series, we’ll explore the different ways you can communicate visually instead of relying on lengthy emails.

Evernote product manager Jamie Hull is a cyclist. She was working with a Portland, Oregon-based bike manufacturer to build her perfect wooden bike. With Skitch, she was able to ask her questions and show what she wanted by grabbing images from the company’s website. The process took seconds. Imagine how long it would have taken without Skitch.

Jamie was able to confirm the names of her desired wood types (wenge? birch?), then point out which wood types would be used for each bike part. She grabbed the screenshots, added text and arrows using Skitch. Then, simply dragged the images into an email.

What’s your Skitch story? Please share it in the comments!

Skitch and Evernote have always worked well together on Mac and today’s update bring the two apps even closer. We’ve added two new capabilities in the latest update that make sending your annotations, images and sketches into Evernote more straightforward.

Get Skitch from the Mac App Store »

Choose your notebook

Ever since our last update, anything you share with Skitch can also be saved into your Evernote account. Now, you can choose which notebook those images are saved to. Here’s how it works:

• Click the gear icon in the top left corner of the Skitch window and choose Preferences
• In the Share tab make sure that your Evernote account is selected
• Click Choose… to pick your destination notebook

From then on, whatever you share from Skitch will also show up in the notebook you’ve chosen.

Click the elephant

We also updated the behavior of the little Evernote elephant in the Skitch window. Clicking it now sends your annotated image right into your Evernote account, directly to the default notebook or the one you defined using the steps above.

We’ll have lots more updates to share with you soon. Let us know what you think.

Get Skitch from the Mac App Store »