Three huge things happened this week: (1) we released our Service API today, (2) we introduced scripting support to our Mac and Windows clients, and (3) we enabled XML import/export of your notes and notebooks from the desktop clients. What does all this mean? In short, more freedom –the freedom to use the service and clients in exciting, new ways. Let’s take it step-by-step.
Service API
Launching the Service API means that third party developers can now do all sorts of innovative things with Evernote. Want to create a new Evernote client? Go for it. Want to hook Evernote into your favorite calendaring or to-do app? Knock yourself out. Of course trust and security are important, that’s why you will always be asked to explicitly authorize any third-party access to your account. And once you’ve authorized them, then let the good times roll.
Here’s an example of an upcoming integration: Say you’re a Salesforce.com user. You’re keeping track of all your activities and customer interactions, but transferring your meeting notes and business cards is a real drag. An Evernote integration called Note Wizard will soon make this annoyance a thing of the past. Easily link your Evernote notes with your Salesforce.com account. The integration takes advantage of our text recognition, so, among other things, you can turn business card photos into searchable contacts. Track development progress on the Note Wizard blog.
Ok, so maybe you’re not a traveling salesmen, but just think about all the great possibilities when you mash up our amazing technology with your (other) favorite applications. Rock Band integration? That’s just crazy enough to work.
Go to the Evernote API page
Mac and Windows Scripting
Ever wanted to turn Evernote into a Rube Goldberg-like event? Now you can. Scripting allows you to automate various processes, as well as integrate Evernote with other scriptable applications. Interested in pulling an RSS feed into Evernote? Now you can. Want all document scans to automatically become an Evernote note in a specific notebook. Not a problem. The possibilities are endless.
Go to the Evernote for Developers page
Import + Export = Data Portability
Both Evernote for Mac and Evernote for Windows are now in the import/export business. You can export and import notes and notebooks from Evernote for Windows to Evernote for Mac and vice versa. The file is a well-defined XML, which means that your Evernote data is completely portable. This also means that developers can build tools to import notes from various applications into Evernote.
Download the latest Mac and Windows clients.
This is a major step forward for Evernote and we’re incredibly excited to see what all of you create. So, please tell us what you’re doing with the API here in the comments, on Twitter, on Friendfeed, or just about anywhere else. Have fun.
50 Comments
Sergio
Thanks for all this new features. Just a question: this is the only planned method of exporting notes? How to interpret the generated XML, for example to converting it to HTML?
Thanks a lot.
Dave Engberg
Sergio -
The desktop clients already include ways to export to other formats. Our XML export format is more rich than HTML … you can’t have an encrypted password or an audio recording in an HTML document. So we wanted a format that could handle all of our content without losing any information.
Thanks
Justin
I’d love to see audio notes in the next version, PLEASE….
Dave Ladner
I signed up to the Premium plan in order to be able to upload multiple pictures in one upload. Since the new mobile client came out, I am unable to do this. Will this be corrected? If not, I will be leaving…
crashsystems
Congrats, and thanks for releasing your API! I hope this leads to a native Linux client in the near future.
Marcus
Very cool. Evernote has become an integral part of my workflow and it’s awesome to see you guys embracing openness.
Doug
love the updates and use the app all the time – but, when are we going to see a Blackberry app?
Dennis
Absolutely wonderful news. One of the things that has been keeping me a teeny bit ambivalent of using Evernote full-time is not having access to the raw data. This post puts those worries to rest and also gives me a way to use Evernote at work (we have a heinous firewall blocking access to most sites that allow posting sensitive information). Thank you for an open/portable xml format!!!
Kudos to the fantastic dev team (the mac client is just beautiful!) which is being driven by intelligent leadership up top. Thank you!!!
–Dennis
JP Werlin
Way to go Evernote crew – hats off to you in keeping the product evolving and open. A critical component of the SaaS world is data portability.
Seeing as we both have APIs, maybe we should put something together. I see you are doing something with the 800 lb. gorilla in the CRM market, but you should also work with those who share your philosophy, ahem, like us.
From one company to another, congrats again and keep up the great work. We love your product here.
PS
Thanks so much for adding export to the Mac client, it was the only thing stopping me from using Evernote. It even exports audio in the XML document, amazing!
Alexei
I imagine there will be a bunch of third party tools appearing soon … any plans to put up a site where people can submit and search for them?
Ernie Soffronoff
Yay, this made my old hack to scrape content from NetNewsWire to Evernote via the web scraper a whole lot easier! You now can just say:
– Clips active web tab from NetNewsWire to Evernote
– (c) 2008 Ernie Soffronoff
– ernie.s@gmail.com
tell application “NetNewsWire”
set urlsList to URLs of tabs
set ixCurrentTab to index of selected tab
set titleList to titles of tabs
end tell
tell application “Evernote”
create note from url (item (ixCurrentTab + 1) of urlsList) title (item (ixCurrentTab + 1) of titleList)
end tell
Sébastien
Great news, thanks!!
Let’s have some fun with the API :p
Jeff Hammerbacher
Can we have tabbed editing windows in the mac client? I am frequently working on two notes at once, and the process of switching back and forth is pretty painful.
Pak Tam
Nice. Thanks.
Pak Tam
vinod
Exciting! Hope to see a proper offline client for iPhone by someone now. Shall definitely payup for that much needed feature. Thank you.
Lz
I have been using Evernote for a month now and love the way I can sync between my Mac, phone (WM 5) and the Internet version. I have set it up based on GTD using tags to define action categories! This app is tremendous for GTD.
However, I also handwrite notes on my phone (quite often) , so being able to sync and read them on my Mac would be phenomenal. I know I can go to the web version and read them there, but I don’t always have access to the Internet. When will Ink support be part of the Mac app?
Thanks for an almost perfect application! It has helped my productivity in ways I couldn’t imagine.
Lz
Paul
I’d love to see a very simple Firefox add-on for Evernote that let’s you add/edit/delete basic notes – like the one for Google Notebook (http://bit.ly/HSfzy).
Prem
“Import of files from specific directory into evernote”
Hi, I would like to be able to designate a folder(s) where evernote monitors it for certain file types and when they are present, it adds them. This would be like a background task.
satch
This is just increible. Scripting and public API is what I’ve been waiting for. Congratulations for such brilliant work!
Gamov
kudos, kudos… For me too, it was the ONLY obstacle restraining me to fully embrace this wonderful tool!
Next would be an option to cache the notes on the iPhone, would be very useful!
Regards,
Gam.
Chris B
Does any of this make it easier or better for more than one user to use Evernote simultaneously? In previous versions things would get out of sync quickly if more than one user were editing docs or meta-data at the same time. Has this been fixed?
Matthew
Great news on the API. One thing I’d really like to see is the ability to automatically store/update bookmarks in Evernote, and synchronize multiple computers/handheld devices. If I can open up evernote, and in one single note or notebook see all of my bookmarks, that would be awesome.
radfaraf
Keep geting Failed check signature for Evernote_3.0.0.848_Hotfix_3.0.0.788.exe. It is downloading a 1KB file only.
Alessandra
which applications can read the xml file properly on a windows pc?
setidd
you guys are awesome. i love this software program, and i’m amazed at how quickly you guys are always rolling out new stuff. just a few weeks ago, i was wishing i could preview pdfs in the windows version and now i can. truly amazing. evernote is staying on my computer forever.
Chris
This is great news! If only I had the know-how to make use of it…
But if anyone’s short of an idea of how to use the API, I’ll offer one suggestion that I think would be fantastic: Print to Evernote. I’m a big fan of the browser integration for web clippings, and think it would be enormously useful to add notes from any application that offers printing capabilities.
Helge
Like Radfaraf, I keep getting
Failed check signature for ‘C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Temp\Evernote_3.0.0.848_Hotfix_3.0.0.788.exe.’ Error is: 0x800b0003
Ray
I never knew this system existed, I sent my wife after a flash drive with the most memory. When she came home and I started using this Cruzer system and the encryption features along with evernote makes the cruzer a must have for anyone on the go while keeping everything you want to keep with you, well this product and the features on it are superb I can’t wait for the 80GB cruzer so I can make the cruzer my whole computer and take it with me instead of my laptop so I can have all files and programs with me all the time giving me the ability to do any of my work anywhere, “JUST AWESOME”
Jamey
EXPORT… yes. It’s official, Evernote rules. I posted a fairly in-depth review of how I use it here: http://tinyurl.com/697e45
Troy Malone
Thanks to the Evernote Team! and thanks Phil, Andrew and Dave specifically…you guys rock and the API was easy to work with. (at least from my point of view:)
MarkG
SWEET!
How about some love for the Linux users out there…
Evernote Team…. thanks for the API.
Robin
Yeah! I alswo want a Linux version!
Tzip
Is there any way to block a private note in my iphone or even on my home Mac? With just me being able to open it?
Thanks !
Phil Libin
Tzip,
You can encrypt some or all of the contents of a note on the Mac and Windows version, then you’ll need to type in your decryption password to see it. The iPhone app will let you decrypt notes that you encrypted on Mac or Windows.
Nate
linux!
NoCraCk
Hopefully we will finally see a great Linux version now. However a Thunderbird extension would be even better!
JS
oh please linux please!
mjmam
Thanks for the api!!!
Linux version please!!!!
fubarbloke
Yes, Linus, please!
chickwing
How’s that collaboration feature coming along?
Mimzy
Linux linux linux linux please please please?
Timpetu Tiponi
Has anybody mentioned yet that a LINUX version of EN client would be great?!
Sandra R
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
Manu
Linux please !!!
Mike Thomas
Please add linux version or make the current windows version support hotkey clipping under WINE from linux programs.
Scott Rose
Sorry, but after all these years, and the import feature of Evernote still isn’t good enough for me to be able to BRING IN all 250 of my RTF notes that I already have accumulated in another software product.
Don’t you guys actually WANT people to migrate to your product? Don’t you WANT us to bring notes into your product and start using Evernote?
I go waaaay more in depth in my forum posting here: http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=15041
And, on a side note, Evernote STILL locks you in by not being able to export to any format that any other note-taking app can understand.
Sandra Gulland
I’m still perplexed. I have the newest Mac desktop version, but it seems to me that I can only export notes in .enex or HTML formats, or email. Am I missing something? I’d like the security of knowing that my entire database–now well over 1000 notes–can be easily preserved in another database.
Abhinav Gupta
NoteWizard is hidden and doesn’t seems to be working (http://notewizard.wordpress.com/)
If their is no evernote salesforce connector, we would like to develop one. Can you please confirm on that ?
Andrew Sinkov
For more information please take a look at our developer materials, and contact our partner relations team http://www.evernote.com/about/developer/