Tag Archives: Evernote

Evernote has Limited-Time Offer for Eligible Students

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Evernote logoThe new school year is just a few weeks away, so it is no surprise that the back-to-school sales and deals are starting to appear. Evernote has a limited-time offer for eligible students. Those that qualify will receive 75% off a full year of Evernote Premium.

As always, there is some “fine print” to be aware of. The offer is available only for new and Basic Evernote users in the United States or United Kingdom who verify eligibility with a valid .edu or .ac.uk email address by September 30, 2016. The offer is not available for those who have already used their school email address for this offer before.

It is worth noting that after the promotional period ends, those who took advantage of this offer will find that their subscription will automatically renew on an annual basis at the normal price. A year should give a student enough time to figure out if they like Evernote Premium enough to start paying for it.

Evernote says: “Forgetting sucks. Capture everything you need to know and keep it with you wherever you go.” It points out that students can use Evernote to collect class notes, web pages, handouts, articles, projects, and portfolios all together in their “productivity happy place”.

Evernote Making Changes to Free Tier and Payment Plans

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Evernote logoPopular productivity and note-taking/sharing app Evernote announced it will be making changes to the different tiers the company has offered to its users. The biggest changes will impact those who use Evernote’s free Basic tier. The company has also said it will be raising prices for its two paid tiers for new subscribers, but won’t be raising rates on existing customers right away.

Changes to Evernote’s Basic (free) tier:

On Basic, you can access notes on up to two devices, such as a computer and phone, two computers, or a phone and a tablet, as well as on the web, so you can continue to take your notes with you throughout your day. Passcode lock on the mobile app, formerly a paid feature, is now available on Basic as well.

Previous to this update, Evernote Basic users could access their notes on more than two devices, so this could be an impactful change for many users.

Evernote’s middle tier, Evernote Plus, will now be priced at $3.99/month or $34.99/year:

To stay in sync across all your devices, consider Evernote Plus. You’ll also enjoy the ability to take notebooks offline on a mobile device, so your notes will be with you wherever you go, even when there’s no Internet connection. You can forward emails into Evernote and keep them alongside related notes, complete with attachments, and 1 GB of upload space each month means you can keep all your projects together.

Evernote’s top tier, Evernote Premium, will now cost $7.99/month or $69.99/year:

Get the full power of Evernote with Evernote Premium, a set of tools designed to help you go paperless and take ideas into action across all your devices. Find text buried inside Office docs. Annotate PDFs. Discover connections between notes, turn business cards into phone contacts, or present your work with one click. Premium includes 10 GB of monthly upload space, and you have all the benefits of Plus and Basic, too.

The post that documents the changes to Evernote’s plans states that the company is making these changes to help enhance and improve its services. Evernote has become a valuable tool for a lot of people, and I’m sure many will continue to use it, despite these changes. But the limitations put on the Basic account may find some free-tier users looking for alternatives.

Evernote Adds Google Drive Integration

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Evernote logoThere are so many cloud-based tools these days the options are nearly limitless. That’s great for consumers. But it can be a challenge for users of these services to keep things organized, especially when their data is spread across multiple platforms. Fortunately, many of these services offer public APIs that make it possible for them to work together. Resourceful developers have taken advantage of this ability, and the latest example comes from productivity app Evernote, which is adding Google Drive integration:

More and more in our cloud-centric, mobile world, the secret to productivity lies in linking great services together. Every day, Evernote customers create millions of notes that contain links pasted from Google Drive, and they asked for a better way to connect the ideas they keep in Evernote with actions they take in Google Drive. Today, we’re proud to announce that Evernote and Google Drive now work better together, making it easier than ever to capture, organize, and collaborate on whatever is on your mind.

Here’s how it works:

All the files you keep in Drive are now easier to access in Evernote. Now, instead of seeing only URL links, anyone can browse anything created or stored in Google Drive right in Evernote notebooks. With this integration, Evernote customers can add any file in Drive to their notes without leaving Evernote. And any changes to files in Google Drive will dynamically update in Evernote.

Google Drive integration for Evernote is currently in beta mode and is available to Google Chrome and Android device users. Other platforms will follow over time.

Evernote Launches Community Leader and Consultant Programs

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Evernote logoThere comes a time in the life of any moderately successful platform when that platform becomes big enough and popular enough that cottage industries begin to crop up around it. The most common representative of this phenomenon is the consultant; someone who claims to have enough expertise on that platform that they should be paid for their advice. Most of the time, the rise of the consultant is an organic and independent movement where the platform has no direct hand in the consulting process. But productivity app Evernote is taking a different approach. This week, the service announced its new program for Community Leaders and Consultants:

If you’d like to learn more about Evernote from expert users or professional consultants, we have two new programs designed to connect you to them.

If you want to reach out to others who love using Evernote as much as you do, the Evernote Community Leader program is for you. Evernote Community Leaders work both online and offline to share knowledge and to provide great tips about how you can get more out of Evernote in your professional and daily life. Community Leaders host events, teach classes, lead online chats, and serve as spokespersons for the global Evernote community.

And:

Would you like a personal guide to help you get the most out of using Evernote in your life or work? Get in touch with an Evernote Certified Consultant, a specialist trained to give you personal guidance on using Evernote for maximum productivity. If you’re using Evernote on your own, a Certified Consultant can teach you the ins and outs of Evernote Premium. If you’re getting a team started with Evernote Business, an Evernote Certified Consultant can help you develop custom workflows tailored to your group, train all your team members, and create reference documents for you to use later.

To celebrate the launch of these new programs, Evernote is going on a world tour to help spread the word. To learn more about becoming either an Evernote Community Leader or Consultant, click here.

Catch Notes for iOS, Android, Web Closing Down

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Catch Notes Closing
Catch Notes Closing

Last year I reviewed Catch Notes, a way to not only take notes, but also tag and catalog those notes for quick reference. After a year and a half in production, Catch has decided to close the app.

The Evernote competitor had a small but good following to the app. It was available for both Android and iOS devices, along with a web interface. Catch had integration with Citrix Ready Worx Verified Program, amongst other partnerships. However, from their blog they wrote:

Catch has made the difficult decision to take the company in a different direction. As such, we will be terminating service next month. We value our users and have greatly enjoyed providing Catch to millions of people over the last several years, but it is time for us to move on.

Catch.com (formerly Snaptic) was founded in 2008 and had received $11.6 million in funding within the last 3 years.

If you are looking for an alternative to Catch, other notepad options include  OneNote, Simplenote or Springpad.

Evernote User Passwords have been Compromised

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Evernote logoUsers of Evernote were recently sent an email that said that the company had decided to implement a password reset. It required 50 million users to reset their passwords. Why? The answer is the usual one when a company urges users to change their passwords – Evernote got hacked over the weekend.

This explains the difficulties that my husband and I had when we went grocery shopping. He uses Evernote to create grocery lists (instead of writing it down on paper). Usually, this works really well. However, when we got to the store and he tried to open Evernote, it wasn’t functioning as he expected it to. Oh, no! Could hackers be reading our grocery lists? If so, then they must be awfully bored.

The email Evernote sent to its users says:

Evernote’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service.

It goes on to say that this is the reason why they are implementing a password reset. So, if you opened Evernote today, and wondered why it was asking you to reset your password, now you know. Evernote says that they have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed. It also says:

The investigation has shown, however, that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted).

There are helpful suggestions on the Evernote website (where the email it sent to users was posted) that give advice about how to create a more secure password. It also points out that you should not click on “reset password” requests in emails, and should instead go directly to the service itself to do that.

Hiku on Kickstarter

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Let’s say you’re a crack team at Palm who suddenly has nothing to do because HP decides to get out of the mobile device market. What do you do to follow up on the Treo, the Centro, WebOS and the TouchPad? You create Hiku, a pebble-sized gadget that “turns everyday grocery shopping into something modern, magical and fun” and fund it via Kickstarter.

What is Hiku? Basically, it’s a barcode scanner with built-in wifi that’s intended to send your shopping list to your mobile phone so that when you are in store, you can get everything that you need. And if you don’t have a box or tin handy to scan, you can talk to Hiku and tell it what you want.

Hiku Scanning

Hiku

Out of the box, it’s going to support iOS with Android coming along soon after launch. There’s also integration with Evernote and Remember the Milk. Check out some of the videos on Kickstarter or YouTube – they show what the Hiku can do and it is really cool. More advanced features include checking prices on the Net and showing where a product can be bought cheaply.

One of the cleverest things is how you program your wifi settings onto the Hiku. It uses Electric Imp‘s BlinkUp technology which uses light pulses to transmit information and the light pulses are generated by your smartphone. Amazing – there’s a video of the prototype working on YouTube.

I’m backing this project partly to support the ex-Palm guys, but mainly because it’s such a clever kitchen gadget. The Kickstarter funding round closes in about 2 days and they need another $24k-odd to hit the $80,000 target. $99 gets you on the list for a Hiku so if you are thinking of ordering one, get your pledge in now.