Evernote is a program designed to help you keep track of information, no matter where you are.
Information is captured into notes. These notes can be clips of web pages using the Evernote bookmarklet, photos emailed from a cell phone, or even a note transcribed from a phone call using Jott. It can even pull text out of images or recognize handwriting on a Tablet PC.
Once you have the notes in Evernote, you can sort them into notebooks, tag them, and search for them using the program’s built-in search engine. In the windows client, at least, the search is very fast, filtering out all the non-matching notes and highlighting the search term on the remaining notes, even in images.
What makes this program particularly appealing is that by default Evernote syncs all this information to a web server, which means that you can access your notes from any computer. In addition to the web version of Evernote, there’s a mobile version of the site for when you’re away from your computer, and both a Mac and a Windows client for faster access to your notes when you’re at home.
If you don’t want some sensitive information to be synced to the server, you can set up a local notebook to store that information on only one computer. And on the other end of the spectrum, you can set up public notebooks that anyone else can see.
Evernote has been around for a long time. It began as a Windows-only piece of software that (regrettably) took its design cues from Windows Media Player 9. This new version of the software vastly simplifies the interface and makes the software an absolute joy to use.
Evernote is currently in private beta and (at the moment) is free. I’ve got a handful of invitations available if you contact me using the link at the top of the page.