Open Enrollment To Evernote Beta April 24 Only

[Ed Hansberry]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blog.evernote.com/2008/04/24/thanks-a-million/' target='_blank'>http://blog.evernote.com/2008/04/24...anks-a-million/</a><br /><br /></div><p>Over three and a half years ago, I first <a target="_blank" href="http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/showthread.php?t=63413">posted about the Evernote program</a>, excited about the prospect of having a rich note taking application on the device. I've been involved in various betas and some false starts over the years, and have been consistently running and enjoying the desktop client. The mobile client still isn't where it needs to be in my opinion, but what they currently have in place is usable in many circumstances.</p><p><em>&quot;The new Evernote closed beta is about two months old and we've just passed an important milestone: our first one million notes! During this time, we've made lots of improvements to the service and we'll be announcing a few more big things in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.&quot;</em></p><img border="0" alt="" src="http://www.ehansberry.com/ppct/2008/20080424-evernotebeta.gif" /><p>They are also opening up the registration for the beta today between the hours of 6am to 9pm Pacific Time, so as of this posting, you have almost 12 hours to sign up. I love what the folks at Evernote have done with the desktop client and have seen what they are capable of in some of the betas, even though they felt they were rough enough around the edges to hold off on releasing as final builds, so almost 4 years later, I am still excited about the product and looking forward to the coming months as they finalize the current beta and get it out the door. If you want to participate, head over to their site and join the beta, or just sign up and get your place in line to get an account if you aren't up to the task of doing a beta with them.</p>

[Phillip Dyson]

I just read the old thread. It will be interesting to find out how it matches up with OneNote now that its also in Windows Mobile. I don't use OneNote, but I have it installed. Desktop too.

I currently use PhatPad and PhatNotes. Although I admit Phatpad usage is rare. Perhaps I'll try out the EverNote beta.

[hezahonker]

Thanks for the headsup. I have my account and testing away. The Mac version looks nice and is running so far.

[paschott]

I've been using it for a while and like it. It beats OneNote to me because of the price. OneNote may have more features, but it costs to use. Evernote is free and it's really easy to sync a bunch of computers.

As for PPC/WM access, it's pretty poor. All access is done through PIE right now and the web interface just doesn't have great formatting capabilities that I've found. It's not quite as good as OneNote Mobile in that respect. However, OneNote Mobile is a disappointment. I used it briefly and just uninstalled it. No formatting, the sync capbilities are kind of a joke, etc. It just wasn't worth the time to mess with it. I do like PhatNotes, but would love to have the ability to sync without the need for a cable or ActiveSync. That's kind of where Evernote wins, in my opinion.

Anyway, the price is right to try it out. If you don't like it you can remove it.

-Pete

[beowolf]

http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/04/closed-evernote.html#comments

"Comments

On a brief glance, it appears that EverNote's Terms of Service give them the right to use your content for whatever they want in connection with the service.

This effectively means that if you, for example, post content to your account which is covered by an NDA (e.g., take notes on something which is governed by the terms of an NDA with a third party), you may be breaching that NDA. It also means that if you take notes on something which is owned by your employer, you may be breaching your agreement with your employer by giving EverNote rights to that material. Likewise, if it's your own business, you are giving up some of your proprietary rights by posting your info here.

In case you are interested in the details, or doubt what I am suggesting, they go out of their way in the terms of service to say that you retain the copyrights to what you post, but also say in Section 5 that "You agree that Evernote has the rights (i) to aggregate and syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Services through Evernote public notebooks and use that Content in connection with any of the Services"

Perhaps I am too quick to judge or have not thought this through fully (I may need more coffee), but I strongly suggest that you think very carefully before posting anything related to your employer or business or anyone else's IP to a service like this.

Posted by: JimAtLaw | April 24, 2008 at 12:26 PM"

[paschott]

I'm not sure that it's actually a deal-breaker. You can mark your notebooks public or private. A public notebook might be useful to share stuff with the world. A private notebook seems to imply that it is private and won't be aggregated. I may check their forums to see what they say.

As with any SaaS type app, you may still want to be careful, but it doesn't seem like they are out to aggregate anything in a non-public notebook.

See also this post on their blog:
http://blog.evernote.com/2008/04/15/evernote-privacy-and-security/

I realize it's not a perfect answer, but it gives me a little more of a sense of security about the whole thing.

[hamishmacdonald]

Too little too late, guys. I was really excited about this program, particularly when it was compared to the Newton's "toilet roll" notepad. But three years...

I'm now thoroughly addicted to OneNote. Now that I've got an HTC Shift and can do inking as well as synching my notes with my handheld, I *really* can't see why I'd bother switching and learning a new system.