Why Evernote Is the Coolest Thing Ever

Recently I have started using Evernote, and it is by far, the coolest thing ever. In short, it turns the camera in your cell phone into an OCR capable scanner and then it helps you to organize all of your data. (plus it does web  clipping, twitter integration, blah, blah, and of course blah)

For example, lately I have been visiting LOTS of Doctors (including Kerry!!!!), it’s no biggy, everything is fine, I just had a bunch of crap hit me all at once. For example: sore jaw turned into cavity turned into root canal turned into a cap now I still need to see a periodontist. No big deal, its just a lot of visits. Little sore on my back turned big, had it biopsied, its no problem, but had to have it removed. Had a physical, Doctor said “Your cholesterol is high, take this twice a day.” Pregnant chick rear ended me.

SO, its tough to keep track of all of this, and EVERY Doctor says “what did the other Doctors say/do?” Like *I* have some clue. So, Evernote to the rescue. I installed the Evernote client on my cell phone (this will also work with any old digital camera, but the phone makes it easier) now I photograph everything and tag it for easy retrieval. For example I took a photo of my prescription and tagged it “medical, prescription”. Now I can find it by those tags, but the prescription also has the word “tablet” in it, so I can search by that as well because evernote does OCR on the image.

Yesterday my cute dentist (and she is) asked “are you an any meds?” I am, so she naturally asks “What are they?” As if I know. Sure the Doctor told me, but I don't recall the name, hell, I cant pronounce it, how do you expect me to remember it? So I whip out my phone, fire up evernote and search on “tablet” (I could also have searched on “cvs” or “daily”) and there is the high resolution photo of my prescription which includes the drug name, dosage, issuing Doctor, etc. Very nice.

When I go to the Doctor and he fills out one of those nice insurance forms that says what he did? Yeah, I take a picture of it with my phone. Now I can easily recall what he did.

This feature should also work handily on business cards. Create a new notebook called “business cards” and as you collect those cards scan them with your phone and optionally tag them. Now you can do a search based on the tags or on the content of the business card.

If a pregnant women rear ends you, take photo’s of the insurance documents. Now you have them with you all the time.

Evernote also tags stuff with the Lat/Lon where applicable which is pretty cool. AND it will also clip web pages. Look, its a great, FREE organizer with a web client, and clients for Mac, Windows, BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows  Mobile. The pay version is only $45 a year and gives you more upload capacity. When I get a job I will prolly upgrade, but for now the free version is fine.

Give it a try!