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Hello Connect

Evernote Hello for Android now comes with an innovative way to instantly meet a group of people. It’s called Hello Connect and it uses audio tones to identify other nearby Hello users and join everyone together. Have everyone in your group tap the main screen plus button, then choose Use Hello Connect. Once connected, you’ll have everyone’s photos, contact info and any other information that they have in their Hello profiles.

If you’re in a loud environment or would prefer not to use the audio tones, you can always switch to manual mode and tell everyone around you the four digit Hello Connect code. Everyone punches in the code on their phones, and you’re connected.

Hello Connect is available on both Android and iPhone, and will work across devices.

Facebook

Evernote Hello lets you sign into your LinkedIn and (now) Facebook accounts. We recommend that you do this. It’ll make completing your profile faster and also pull in information about the people you meet as soon as you enter their email address.

To connect to Facebook and LinkedIn, tap the Hello icon in the top left corner of the app, then select Social Networks.

Sync with Google Contacts

To make it easier to keep your contacts up-to-date, Evernote Hello now lets you choose to save all the people you meet to your Google Contacts. This will ensure that you’ll be able to easily connect with everyone at any time.

And more

In addition to everything above, this update also adds a redesigned layout for Hello Notes in Evernote and lots of stability improvements. Let us know what you think.

• Name: John Walker
• Profession: Independent Insurance Adjuster
• Location: Everett, WA
• Website: www.frontieradjusters.com, www.claimsnorthwest.com
• Twitter: @jawanova

Bio

John is a freelance insurance adjuster in the Seattle area. A longtime Evernote user, he recently started incorporating Skitch into his workflow to help him achieve his productivity goals in an industry notorious for paperwork. John shares how he uses Evernote and Skitch to streamline his business.

I use Evernote, Everywhere..

• Android Tablet
• Android smartphone
• Windows Desktop

I use Evernote + Skitch for…

Seamlessly managing freelance client work

As an independent adjuster, I work with several different insurance companies at any given time and take on a number of appraisal jobs from each one. This generates an enormous amount of files that I need to track and Evernote has helped me to keep it all straight. Every time I get a new assignment file, I create a notebook with the  file’s number and title. Then, I place a note in the notebook with a checklist of each of the components that I need to complete to close the file. Managing my client work has never been easier; I just search within all my open files and see what still needs to be done.

Documenting damage on the go

Skitch has completely changed the way I document claims. I typically cover auto appraisals and property damage, so I needed to take photos or draw up floor plans to show where the damage was incurred, what was the extent of it, etc. I used to make hand drawings with notes and often would get home and realize that I couldn’t read my own handwriting. Once I started using Skitch, I could easily create a basic floor plan using shapes, arrows and text to indicate dimensions, the location of damage, or take notes on anything else that would help me make an accurate estimate. I could also snap pictures in Skitch and add arrows and text directly to them so I never forget the important details.

Skitch and Evernote also allow me to be completely mobile with my business and pick up freelance work wherever I’m needed. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, there has been an enormous influx of assignments as people start to survey the damage to their homes and property. Because Evernote and Skitch travel with me everywhere on all my devices, I was able to head straight to New York and get started on assessing claims right away. When I’m more efficiently mobile with Evernote and Skitch, I can help people begin to get their lives back in order more quickly.

Going paperless

Before I started using Evernote and Skitch, I would lug around about 17-25 pages of claims documents, a hard copy of the insurance policy, and any handwritten notes I took about each assignment. At any given time, I was carrying several hundred pages with me. Now, I only bring my Android Tablet and store all this material in Evernote. I can easily search for any resources I need, as well as capture any new information about a case in Evernote or Skitch while I’m in the field. With Evernote and Skitch, I’ve been able to go about 99% paperless and have given my printer a much deserved rest.

Running my business with my wife 

My wife and I work together on my freelance business — she handles my invoicing and billing — and we’ve found a clever way to manage our accounts with Evernote. As I begin work on each component of an assignment, I use Evernote for Windows Desktop’s date/time stamp shortcut to add a finish timestamp to each checkbox. Then, my wife checks off each item as she enters it into the billing system. This way, she can show my clients exactly when I finished each part of the assignment, and she can put together my invoices in no time. Evernote has also helped us manage the business remotely; because everything is in Evernote, she can access my case files and bill my clients even if she’s out of town.

Evernote for Everything Else…

Evernote has been great for keeping track of larger household expenses like hiring contract workers.  I recently had an arborist come out to our house to do some work and I took notes about which trees he worked on, as well as the costs associated with his work. When I store information like this in Evernote, I have a permanent record of everything we’ve had work done on.  Then, when I want to compare prices, determine what I’ve had done recently, or remember the name of a contract worker I’ve used in the past it’s as easy as typing in the Search Bar.

I also use Evernote as a sort of journal — it’s a special place for me to keep track of my thoughts. I take note of interesting things I hear at church, inspirational quotes, or anything else on my mind.  It’s nice to know that I’m able to look back on my notes, and it’s also important to me that they’re private and secure. Evernote provides a safe place to create and store all these special memories.

Get Evernote for Android »

Premium feature: Easier Offline Notebooks

Offline Notebooks is one of our most popular Premium features. It lets you download as many notebooks as you like directly to your phone or tablet, allowing you to access your notes and any attachments quickly, whether you’re on safari or in a submarine. With this update, we took all the hassle out of taking notebooks offline by letting you select multiple notebooks at once.

To do this, go to your notebook list and tap on one of the following:

• Android phone: tap the download icon in the bottom Action Bar
• Android tablet: tap the three dots in the top right corner, then tap Offline Notebooks

You’ll now be taken to the multi-select view. Tap the notebooks that you’d like to keep for offline access. Once you’re done, tap the check mark in the top left of the screen. Your notebooks will begin downloading in the background.

Evernote Premium: There are lots of other great reasons to consider Evernote Premium, including 1GB of monthly uploads, faster support, PDF search, and more. Upgrade your account today.

Simplified Note Editor Toolbar

The Note Editor toolbar on Android got a lot cleaner with this update. We took out everything that wasn’t actually related to editing and put it into the Action Bars along the top of the note. Use the toolbar to style your text and to organize it with bullets, lists and checkboxes. You can even hide the toolbar by tapping on the arrow.

We moved things like adding attachments and audio recordings into the big “+” in the Action Bar. If you’d like to add tags or choose a notebook, simply tap on the three dots.

Android Tablets: Smarter Action Bars

Android Tablet users now get context aware Action Bar options. You’ll notice that the actions in the bar change depending on which panel is currently open. For example, if you’re in the Notebook List, an arrow will appear beneath Notebooks. Tap the Action Bar label to show a menu of sorting and grouping options. The same is true for Tags and All Notes views.

The New Grid Widget

Evernote has a separate widget app available from Google Play that lets you create new notes right from your device’s desktop. The new Grid Widget is designed to fit perfectly on any sized screen.

After downloading the widget app, tap and hold on your device’s desktop. Next, choose the Evernote Grid Widget. Select the note types and functions that you’d like the widget to display. The widget will now appear on your screen. To re-size the widget, tap and hold it until you see a frame appear. Drag the frame to match the dimensions you want.

More to come

As always, there are lots of additional improvements under the hood that make the app faster and more reliable. We hope you like the newest Evernote for Android. We have lots more to come.

Get Evernote for Android »

Get Evernote for Android from Google Play »

The New Tablet Interface

In this update, we’ve made the tablet interface much easier to use:

The New Home Screen
When you launch the app, you’ll be greeted with a sleek new home screen. Tap to create a new note or jump directly into your notebook, tags and place views.

Swipe!
We’ve added a number of swipe interactions that dramatically improve navigation through the app. From the home screen, tap on Notebooks and a notebook panel slides in. You can also swipe the note list to make it full-screen, swipe it in the opposite direction to bring back the left panel.

Improved Note List Design
We redesigned the Note List to make it easier to browse and read than ever before. We changed the shape of the note thumbnails and improved the text contrast in the titles.

Places
Whenever it can, Evernote saves the location associated with the notes you take. From the home screen, tap on Places to see your notes as pins on a map.

Tablet List View

You asked and we listened. Evernote for Android Tablets now has List View, a compact note list that shows you basic information about the note in a single list including title, tags, text snippets, attachments, and the date. The attachments icon also shows the number of attachments in the note. This view displays everything you need at a glance.

Updates for All Android Users

This update also includes a number of improvements for both mobile and tablet Android users.

Sublists
You can now add additional levels to your bulleted and numbered lists. To do this, either create a list or tap into an existing one. You’ll notice indentation arrows appear in the formatting bar. Tap these arrows to indent the line further.

Improved slideshows
When viewing a note, tap on an image and you’ll be taken into slideshow view. In this update, we made the slideshow view faster and more reliable.

A Better Evernote

With each update, we strive to make it easier for you to save, find and relive all of your memories. We hope you like what you see. Let us know what you think.

Bio

Jason Frasca & Steve McDonald are expert private investigators at Davis Investigations, Inc., a company that specializes in video surveillance and investigations related to insurance, medical malpractice, personal injury fraud, and divorce. The company has turned Evernote into their case manager. Read on to see how they used Evernote’s open data format to build additional functionality to help them manage 600 legacy cases and 200 open cases.

We use Evernote, Everywhere:

Employees are often out in the field with their mobile devices. In the office, they primarily use Macs and some log into their Evernote accounts from home, on their PCs.

• Mac
• iPad
• Android Tablet
• Android phone
• Windows

We use Evernote for…

Our whole company uses Evernote. We all have Premium accounts and sharing is absolutely critical for our work. We primarily use Evernote as our centralized case management system. We have 2408 notes in the system. Imagine how many manilla folders it would take to house our entire case file, which lives virtually.

When we first started using Evernote as a company, we realized that we could customize it to our unique needs (much like the way 3rd party developers have done with a breadth of integrated Trunk applications). We used Evernote’s open data format to create our own custom interface for the .enex format, allowing us to work with Evernote even MORE efficiently.

Using the Evernote data format to customize Evernote to our liking

When we realized that Evernote notes can be exported as .enex files, we saw an opportunity to use a text editor to make changes across multiple notes at once. From there, we went on to build a full featured application that can manipulate a blank case template file and generate all of the notes necessary to open a new case with much of the information already filled in. This templated approach to creating new case files has saved us an immeasurable amount of time in the document-generation process.

Evernote for case file management

Every person in the company has a Premium account and we use Shared Notebooks when we capture information, create new cases, and need to access information related to any given case. Transitioning from our old case management system was easy; we used the Evernote Web Clipper to move all of our case files into Evernote. Here’s a look at how we keep our case files organized in Evernote:

• Universal Index for every case. We have one Shared Notebook that serves as a universal index of every case. We use Note Links to navigate to the head note of each individual case. [Learn more about sharing in Evernote]
• Shared Notebooks for all cases. We have another Shared Notebook that contains all of the cases. There are 12 notes per case and the bulk of our case files live in this second, shared notebook.
• Tagging cases. We tag each case with the year, client, and file number. Each case has 2-6 tags. The title of each note has a an associated file number as well.
• Notes to remember people. Every case we open includes a note on the person we are investigating. This includes their physical description, location, car, etc.
• Client correspondence. Client correspondence is also saved in Evernote, so we always have a record of it. We have one tag that keeps it all together in one neat pile.
• File storage. We store documents in Evernote, too. It’s easy to attach them to any note and always be able to access them when we need them.
• Video storage. Since we do video surveillance, we have a lot of video saved in Evernote. Videos are saved to notes associated with each individual file.

At this point, 80-85% of our office work is done in Evernote. If we wanted to see all of the files from a certain client, we’d just have to start typing in their name (we wouldn’t even need to know their case number) and all of the notes associated with that case would pop up. Now, we can search back to 2005. That’s incredible.

Evernote in the field

A big part of our job involves being out in the field conducting and capturing video surveillance. When you’re in the field and it’s 5 a.m and you’re looking at your Android phone screen, you want to look in a specific area, get the details you need and then focus on the task at hand. You don’t want to be wandering around, searching for information. Here are a few other ways Evernote helps us in the field:

1. For capturing information on the go. Clients call all the time to give us new cases, but we’re not always at the computer to process a case. The other day, Jason was out in the field and he had a pen and paper on hand. He was able to jot down information the client shared, take a photo of it and send it to Steve. Back at the office, Steve was able to open the case. Now, not only do we have the formal case, but the original piece of paper saved in Evernote, too.
2. For collaboration. We always have two private investigators working on every case and Evernote allows everyone to be on the same page. If an update is made by one person, the other investigator is able to access it. It’s critical to be able to access notes as they’re being made.
3. For having access to thousands of notes on your mobile device. When you’re out in the field, you don’t have your computer with you, but you need to have immediate access to information. Having access to our entire case file and having it be completely searchable — in seconds — is invaluable.

User Tip

The Offline Notebook is a killer feature for mobile devices. When we’re on surveillance, we’re not always in an area where we have connectivity. We travel in a 150 mile radius on a daily basis and there’s not always a cell phone connection. With Offline Notebooks, we can access the case we’re working on, even if we’re ‘out of range.’

Evernote offers us a really fantastic tool that is super efficient and gives us everything we need to organize our entire company incredibly well. It’s also helping us move towards a paperless and incredibly mobile environment. Evernote has cut the time it takes us to open a new case in half.

*Names and places in screenshots have all been changed.

Bio:

Cory Voglesonger runs a product development team at Aaron’s, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), a furniture, electronics, appliances and computer sales and leasing company with 1,150 company-owned and 664 franchised stores across the United States and Canada. Evernote is his team’s core collaboration, organization and communication tool.

Evernote, everywhere:

At the office, employees primarily use Windows machines, but at home and on the go, they can log into their accounts from any device. When employees are on the road, they can log into their account from any number of computers and mobile devices.

• Windows (at the office)
• Mac
• iPhone
• Android
• Blackberry
• iPad
• Android Tablet
• Windows Phone 7

Using Evernote for a Huge Project: Company-Wide Point of Sale

My team is working on building a new point of sale for the company, a massive project with many moving parts, stakeholders, and points of entry.

I needed a tool that would help my team quickly and easily capture the incredible amount of information that we were dealing with, and be able to access it from any device.

Here’s why we chose Evernote, and how it helps us run a smooth operation:

• We needed a tool that would be ubiquitous
  My development team is distributed and is constantly sharing tons of information. People are on the road, in different locations, using different devices when they’re on the go. With Evernote, we can start a project at the office and pick up our workflow from any device whether we’re on the road, at home, or on a plane. Things are always moving forward.

• We needed a tool that would allow us to capture information in any format
  Before we started using Evernote as a team, we didn’t have a flexible and easy-to-use place to house information like meeting notes, whiteboard drawings and quick handwritten sketches and memos. There was no one-size-fits all solution. With Evernote, we can capture virtually any idea, concept, or note –even if it’s written on a napkin during a lunch meeting!  Everything that comes up over the life cycle of the project is saved into a shared Evernote folder, accessible by anyone in the company. [Learn how to attach files to your notes]

• We needed a tool that would make it easy to find information
  Evernote has become a central knowledge base for the Aaron’s national call center and our business users, so having the ability to search through a lot of information and quickly find what anyone might be looking for is vital. Evernote’s search feature allows both members of the call center and business users to quickly search for answers to questions as they come up, instead of sifting through buried folders in a rigid system. Not to mention, Evernote helps my team and I organize our own incoming correspondences, attend to different projects throughout the day. With other programs, the information you’re looking for might be there, but it’s buried in a folder structure.

• We needed a tool that didn’t have a pre-determined structure
  With Evernote, we can easily drop information into shared notebooks, without having to spend time figuring out a folder structure. For Aaron’s employees, Evernote is about getting information down and being able to share it across development teams, without having to immediately organize it.

• We needed a tool that would allow us to share information
  My team is constantly sharing information. In Evernote, updates can be made quickly, so we always have access to the latest information. In the past, we’ve struggled to seamlessly share information with many different team members across the organization—particularly our national call center. [Learn how to start sharing]

Getting Everyone on Board

When we chose to use Evernote as a team, I created a Sponsored Group, giving every member of my team a Premium account. I didn’t have to worry about convincing people to convert to using new devices because it was ‘Mac-only.’ Evernote is available for virtually any device, so anyone on my team could use it. I pay for everyone’s account (discounted for groups) on one single bill. When new members join the team, I simply add them to the group, and they’re immediately able to access all team discussions, brainstorms, documents, snapshots and sketches. [Learn more about Sponsored Groups and how to get started.]

Making business decisions with the help of Evernote

Having a place to store all kinds of information—from snapshots of whiteboard discussions to files and voice memos—gives team members an easy way to save and share information that would otherwise have to be saved to different programs, files and computers. The ability to have any type of content saved in one place gives my team a holistic view of major projects and collaborations, and often helps build clarity around specific implementations.

We’ll often come up with solutions and make decisions by pulling up any number of notes associated with a specific date or aspect of a project.

Get Skitch now! Available for free for Android and Mac »

A simpler way to get your point across

We fell in love with Skitch because it’s the easiest way to communicate everything from a simple action to a complex idea using quick annotations, screenshots and basic shapes. The best part is that using Skitch is really fun and in the process you’re getting your point across with fewer words, emails and meetings.

Skitch on your Mac

Draw Attention: Say you’re working on a new website with your team. Your designer sent you a mockup and you have some comments and suggestions. With Skitch, you can circle the part that needs to be changed and point an arrow to the area where you’d like the element moved. Add some instructional text before dragging the file into an email or into a shared notebook in Evernote. No need for a bunch of back and forth, figuring out how to save your file or hold painful conference calls where you’re all staring at four different screenshots and trying to figure out what’s going on where. Same applies for that mailbox you’re building.

Teach someone something: Explaining a new concept to someone takes a lot longer than just showing them. In the past, there was the issue of figuring out how to actually demonstrate it, how to save it, send it, and then wait for the other person to go through the same steps. With Skitch, you can walk someone through a process — a home repair, table arrangement at a wedding, or a knitting join — in the most direct way possible. For example, to show someone how to arrange a table setting, take a photo of it and annotate with text (“fork goes on the left, knife on the right’”). Keep your tutorials handy by also saving them into your Evernote account.

Key Features, at a Glance

• Screenshot anything: Click the Snap button to capture a shot of a document, a webpage, something that inspires you, or just about anything else.
• Drag files into other apps: Hold down the Drag Me tab and pull the file into Evernote, email, a presentation, document, your desktop, a folder in Finder, or any ‘Choose your file’ window that pops up.
• Save files in different formats: Select your preferred file format from a pull-down menu next to the Drag Me tab.
• Resize an image: Find the edge of the image and pull it inward or outward. Or, click on ‘Resize’ in the lower left-hand corner and enter in your preferred dimensions.
  
• Share: There are a few ways to share your creations. You can drag the annotated image into email or shared Evernote notebooks. Or, you can sign into Skitch with your Evernote ID and share via the Skitch site.

Skitch on your Android phone and tablet

Remember something you like: See a piece of furniture you like and want to remember the type of wood it’s made of? Snap a photo of it with Skitch on Android and type or use your finger to write on the image. Save it to your Evernote account by tapping the elephant icon in the app. You’ll never have that, ‘What is this?’ moment again.

Eliminate words and get things done faster: Skitch lets you make a statement without using words. Snap a photo of an empty dog bowl and send it to your dog sitter to remind him to feed the dog. Need to mark something up on the go? Quickly annotate an existing image in your Evernote account using Skitch (just tap twice on the image in Evernote to open it in Skitch).

Key features, at a glance

• Annotate images on the go: Snap a new image by tapping the camera icon once you launch Skitch, or choose an existing image to edit by tapping the photo image on the home screen or in Evernote. From there, you can resize images by pinching in and out.
• Add Context: Tap on menu items like the pencil, arrow, finger and text icons. Select your color by tapping the color circle in the lower left-hand corner of the app. You can also draw a fresh sketch on a clean white canvas.
• Crop: The latest update to Skitch for Android lets you quickly crop an image you have saved in Evernote by tapping on it, opening it in Skitch and cropping away.

This is only a starting point. Play around with Skitch and you’ll discover many exciting ways to use it. And stay tuned, Skitch is coming to more platforms and devices soon. Get Skitch now! Available for free for Android and Mac »

Have you been using Skitch and Evernote together? We want to hear how. Tell us in the comments!

Bio

Ryan Kessler is a student from Southern California who will be starting college in the Fall. Evernote helped Ryan get organized his senior year of high school and raise his GPA from a 2.9 to a 4.4 (if you’re unfamiliar with these numbers, that’s really great!). Read on to find out how he did it.

I use Evernote, Everywhere:

• Android (phone and Tablet)
• Windows
• Web Clipper (Chrome)

I love…

• The Droidscan app for scanning all of my docs using my phone
• Nozbe for giving calendar context to my Evernote notes
• tarpipe for publishing content to my various social streams with one single action

I use Evernote for…

My senior year of high school, I took 5 high school courses, 4 college classes and worked part-time, so I needed to find a tool that would help me stay organized and focused on whatever task I needed to complete. Evernote completely changed my workflow.

1. Evernote for staying focused

A big part of being a high school student is being able to switch modes extremely quickly. Within a few hours, you have to go from physics to history. Evernote lets me do this seamlessly.

I have a Notebook Stack of notebooks for various activities, including school and work. When I’m at work, I open my Work Notebook Stack and know that I won’t have any distractions because I wouldn’t see all of my extra-curricular stuff mixed into work stuff. [An introduction to Notebook Stacks]

2. Evernote for getting organized

My freshman and sophomore year, I was very disorganized. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t managing my time well, it was that I couldn’t find the things I wanted when I needed them. I used to spend hours just sorting through my schoolwork to find one assignment. Once I started using Evernote, life became a lot more organized:

• I got into a routine of sorting everything into Evernote as soon as I got it so I could instantly access it when I needed it. I attribute my GPA boost largely to my new-found ability to find everything quickly, from any device I was working on.
• Once I get stuff in Evernote, I organize it. I have a tagging system to separate out tasks and projects.
• I scan paper documents using Droidscan, which is a fantastic app I found in the Evernote Trunk.
• I draft reports right in Evernote, where my research is close at hand.

3. Evernote for lightening my load and connecting all of my devices

I started using Evernote so much, I stopped thinking about it. I even started scanning textbook sections I needed that day in class so I’d have them on my phone. It got to the point where I would go to school with only my journal and my phone.

A lot of students bring their laptops to class because they think they need to carry around their files. With Evernote, I never had to lug around my laptop. Our school would rent out laptops from the library, so if I needed to print anything, I’d just stick it into Evernote in the morning, pop by the library at the end of the day, pull up Evernote on the Web and use the school printer. I never think of having a thumb drive anymore.

With Evernote, I can see everything I have to do, want to do, and already done. I never have to think ‘Oh, shoot, I left something in my locker!’ Maybe I forgot my phone in my locker, but because everything in Evernote syncs across every device I own (not to mention the Web), I know it’s still there and I could access it from my desktop at home, the school laptop in the library, or my tablet.

4. Evernote for group projects and class discussions

When you’re working with a group, you tend to get a lot of information passed back and forth via email. I started using Evernote to keep track of all of my group projects by giving group members my Evernote email. Everything related to the project would get sent to my Evernote account, where I could organize it accordingly and stay on top of the latest versions and conversations. [Emailing to Evernote]

We’d often have class discussions via a thread on a forum that my school subscribes to. Threads would get long and tedious and require you to login to keep track of the conversation. I would just clip it to my Evernote account and pull it up whenever I needed it.

5. Evernote for crunch time

Creating a study guide before a big test was so easy with Evernote. I would compile all of my notes from a certain time period and put them into a separate notebook. From there, I could reference only the materials I needed to study.

6. Evernote for learning a foreign language

I love Evernote’s Audio Note function to help me remember stuff, but it’s also a killer way to help you learn a language. I use audio notes to record myself pronouncing words, then play back the recording to see if my pronunciation matched my teacher’s pronunciation. When you’re learning a language, you need some way of hearing yourself to perfect your accent.

7. Evernote for building my future

I’m starting college in the Fall and will be studying entrepreneurship and design. I attended the Evernote Trunk Conference and saw Kyle Koch’s presentation about using Evernote for industrial design and was blown away. Evernote is crazy powerful for design and I’m excited to see how it fits into my ongoing studies and professional career. [Read Kyle Koch's story]

User Tip: Note Links for Creating a Study Guide in a Single Note

Note Links are an awesome way to associate two notes incredibly quickly. I use Note Links to create a study guide in a single note. I often snap a photo of the whiteboard in class and then take notes as well. With Note Links, I can link my notes to the whiteboard image, giving additional context. [Learn how to link your notes]

Join the discussion about Evernote for Schools on our forum. Learn from educators and share your own experiences, best practices and tips.