Evernote Peek Gets Audio Clues, Linked Notebooks and More

Product updates | 26 Jul 201126 Jul 11 | By Andrew Sinkov

19 comments

Evernote Peek is a simple, fun and surprisingly addictive way to study your notes using the iPad 2 smart cover. Today, we’re excited to release our first update to Peek, and it makes the app even more enjoyable.

Get Evernote Peek from the App Store »

Audio clues

Say what? That’s right. Evernote Peek now supports audio clues. We’ve included 3 new notebooks to showcase the audio features: bird calls, French and Spanish phrases. Lift the cover and the audio will begin to play. Tap the play arrow to replay the audio. Lift up to see the answer. Close and repeat.

To make your own audio study materials, simply record an audio note in Evernote or attach a file to a note. Let your imagination run wild: test your ability to recognize musical notes or create a fun animal sounds notebook for your kids. The possibilities are endless.

Study Linked Notebooks

Now you can study notes made by other Evernote users. Any notebooks that others have shared with you will now appear in the Linked Notebooks tab. This is great for group study sessions and for teachers that want to share study materials with their classes.

Sort order

You can choose the order that clues are displayed: random order or by title and date. It’s up to you. Also, Peek lets you select the order in which notebooks appear in your list.

More cool stuff

We received a lot of great feedback on our first release, which we’ve applied to this update. Adding notebooks is easier and the interface is cleaner. This is still just the beginning for Peek. We have some big plans. Stay tuned.

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Trinity

So, does this mean that you’ll be updating the other iOS apps soon? I’m still waiting for parity between iPad and iPhone here…
- http://sterlingz.net Sterling Zumbrunn
  
  Absolutely right. And what about parity with Android? We’re still unable to access stacks and shared notebooks – two desperately needed features.
http://fiddlerstudios.com Tevya

How about something like this for android tablets? Sure they don’t have the cool cover, but maybe you could partner w/a manufacturing company.
- Bob
  
  Look just because you made a poor choice on your tablet purchase does not mean Evernote should waste valuable programming resources to please you. I am so sick of Android users complaining about programming not being available for them! You need to buy your hardware based on the software you will use, not buy the hardware and then whine about the software availability. Use some common sense.
  - http://robthecomputerguy.com Rob Reale
    
    How is that post from the jerk “Bob” above even allowed to remain on the Evernote blog?
    
    My 2 cents? Evernote is a leader in cross platform compatibility and I’m sure they will come up with an Android tablet app soon.
  - http://elektricforest.com dave
    
    @rob reale if he opened his eyes he would notice that we all do a fair bit of complaining around here, android and iOS
    
    and about the table choice? how were we ever suppose to know that something like evernote peek was going to come out before we bought a certain tablet? pffff
    i think hes just having a tough day
- http://www.trebout.com Eli Willner
  
  I too would like to see something like this on the Android tablet platform! Since that’s where most users are gravitating I don’t think developing software for Android is a waste of users – quite the contrary!
Tim Irvin

Sweet. Someone should make this work with “ANKI” which is a free flashcard program. There are thousands of “decks” that can be downloaded with ANKI. I use the one for “Biblical Greek” to help me with my studies of the language.
http://sterlingz.net Sterling Zumbrunn

When this app first came out, I was annoyed, because it was clear that this “hobby” would divert resources away from the main iOS apps. This update confirms my fears.

What are you guys thinking? Your core iOS products have a long ways to go, and you’ve stated many times that iPhone is your top mobile platform. Yet paying Premium customers are not able to access notebooks shared with them, a glaring lack of functionality that has now been delivered to most other key platforms including Android.

This app is perhaps useful to very small subset of Evernote users (those lucky enough to have an iPad 2, who need to study. I am one of those people, but I never use this app because it doesn’t provide any needed functionality for me). That you would update this novelty ahead of your core app is irritating beyond belief. As a paying customer, I find it downright offensive. How about putting this distraction aside and delivering the Premium features your paying customers need? We get it, the Smart Cover technology is cool. But we need parity on iOS with Mac, Windows and Android, and we needed it yesterday.
- Andrew Sinkov
  
  We’re working on a big iOS update, which will be available soon. Peek was created entirely be an external development team that was very familiar with building apps using our API. We did this to ensure that our core iOS team could focus on the coming update.
- Sharon Stevenson
  
  Come on, Sterling, give at least a nod to ingenuity which is not only useful for how many teachers (?), but also Mom’s and Dad’s who want to help their kids out in a pleasant, non-time wasting way. Kudos to both Apple for great design, and Evernote for even thinking of the flip-card possibility. Be grateful for American ingenuity!!
  - http://sterlingz.net Sterling Zumbrunn
    
    Andrew – thanks for the response, and I’m happy to hear the updates are on the way. We’ve been waiting a long time. I don’t suppose that external development team works for free? I still don’t see how this isn’t a diversion of resources.
    
    Sorry Sharon, but it’s a little difficult not to be irritated after waiting years for a simple PIN code in Evernote for iPhone to protect my life’s content that’s now stored there. Every one-man development shop out there has been able to implement this basic layer of protection in their apps, but Evernote says that they haven’t been able to do it because of more pressing priorities (like this app I suppose).
    
    Evernote peek is great for what it is. Kudos. But it’s hard as a paying customer to get excited when so many basic functions (rich text, as referenced below, shared notebooks, stacks to name just a few) are missing from the core iOS apps. That this app would be able to access shared notebooks when the flagship Evernote for iPad can not is mind boggling. I think allowing handwriting using a stylus would be a hundred times more useful to Evernote iPad users than Peek. Why can’t we see the needs of users addressed before the creation of apps in search of a problem to solve? I didn’t see users clamoring for a flash card app that integrated with their Evernote account, but I see a lot of popular feature requests going unanswered for months if not years.
    
    Look forward to the release of the next major iOS version so you can silence critics like me In all seriousness, keep up the good work on your core offerings. The improvements to the web version rock.
Odessa

This is wonderful! I’d imagine this could be used for people who are going through Speech Therapy as well! I would think that for people with traumatic brain injuries and or aphasia this could be a handy app to learn how to talk/read again.
chip

I sure hope the next version supports rich text. I see your Android app does. Cannot describe how frustrating it is to have all my formatted notes created on my PC reduced to plain text when editing on my iPad.

Chip
http://ferrouswheel.me Joel

I’m still patiently waiting for internote linking, 1.5 years later.
- http://ferrouswheel.me Joel
  
  Oops – don’t mind me, seems like this just recently got implemented. THANK YOU!
Ray

I don’t have a cover for my ipad2. I can’t get anything to work with Evernote peek. How about adding a feature like iBooks has where the swipe of a finger would fold back the page, This would allow everyone to use this valuable tool.
Hal German

I believe the Linked Notebooks option has great potential for use in sharing curriculum guides with teachers. I’d be very interested in knowing how (and how many) schools might be using Evernote for the purpose. I hope you’ll include more in future newsletter updates of any examples that come your way.
http://www.theprofitablevet.com Bret

Hey Evernote!! Great job with Peek. What a cool and simple little app. I just downloaded it and it works perfectly. Any hints on how to optimize graphics so that they display properly? Any tips on optimal pixel sizes, etc. Thanks and keep up the great work.

P.S. I love Evernote too!

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