HR Block is the go-to tax service provider for millions of people each year, offering both in-person and online tax preparation products.
For this tax season, HR Block added Evernote as part of their tax interview process, encouraging customers to save, snap, clip, and scan their receipts, documents, invoices, and just about anything else that might come in handy during tax prep. By using Evernote, HR Block customers can easily collect and find everything they need at any time.
In the video below, HR Block explains why they recommend Evernote to their clients.
20% OFF for Evernote users
With just over a week left until tax day, HR Block is graciously offering Evernote users a 20% discount off of their tax preparation. Click the link below to take advantage of this limited-time offer.
Don’t wait until next April to get going. Start collecting relevant information today, so you won’t have to worry about it tomorrow. For more ideas, check out our tax tips post.
David Sarna started using Evernote after he realized that finding anything in paper piles at his home and office was an archeological excavation. A typical ‘messy desk person,’ before Evernote, David discovered the tool via an article written by an old classmate of his, Wall Street Journal personal computing guru, Walt Mossberg. After finishing his last book, he decided to tackle his next project: Evernote for Dummies.
We sat down with David to ask him a few questions.
Why did you decide to write Evernote for Dummies?
Evernote changed my life. For me, it’s the most amazing program. But, as I talked to others, I realized that some people don’t quite get Evernote, or how to get started. They need someone to tell them: “If you want to do this, then do that.” I believe that there was a major need for this book, and I saw an opportunity to help more people see the incredible value that I get from using this product.
Who is the audience for your book?
The target audience for Evernote of Dummies are those people who need a little more step-by-step guidance for using a new product. These are not active Evernote users, who understand the features inside and out. This book is targeted at people who may have downloaded Evernote to their machine, but aren’t sure where to go from there, or what the value is of the product. The book doesn’t presume the reader has any previous knowledge of using Evernote.
Give as a very quick overview of what one would find in the book.
Evernote for Dummies is a typical ‘Dummies’ book. We try to cover everything about Evernote — from how to install it to your computer to how to use all of the different features. There’s also a chapter for developers, in which we introduce the Evernote API.
Where do you use Evernote?
I have a BlackBerry, Macbook Air, and iPad and I have Evernote installed on all of them. These days, I find myself using Evernote on my iPad more and more. If I’m borrowing someone’s computer, I use Evernote on the web.
How do you use Evernote?
I use Evernote in a myriad of different ways:
I send all of my important emails to Evernote.
I have an electronic fax system set up to send every fax that I received into my Evernote account.
I use the Evernote audio feature to record meetings I have over Skype.
I use Shared Notebooks to share information with my colleagues. It’s the main way people within the company (who are all based in different locations around the country and the world) stay up to date with everything that is going on.
I use the Simultaneous Search feature, which lets me conduct a Google search and see the results inside my Evernote account. Simultaneous Search has become my primary search method.
I use the Evernote Web Clipper to capture and remember interesting things I see on the web.
I probably do much less tagging than most people. I prefer to let Evernote do the work for me. By typing in just a few keywords into the search box, I’m able to find exactly what I’m looking for.
Anything else?
The fact that I can combine my web clips with my faxes, emails, and everything else I do in one place makes Evernote an invaluable tool. When I was younger, I was much more of a ‘nerd’ than I am now. These days, I like tools and technologies that are simple to use and Evernote is just that. You click a button or an icon, and it’s in Evernote.
The more you use Evernote, the more valuable it is to you. As you save more of the interesting things you care about into Evernote, you’ll see it become the primary place you go to for you to find something.
Our users love the idea of tying their notes in Evernote to calendar entries. We’re excited to tell you about two great mobile apps that make this possible: Meshin Recall (Android) and SnapCal (iPhone).
Meshin Recall
Meshin Recall is an Android app that shows you all of your Google calendars in one streamlined view. When you connect it to Evernote, you can easily associate notes with any event in your calendar.
Using the integration is easy. When you launch Meshin Recall, create a note right from an event. The note will automatically be tagged and synced to your Evernote account, where you’ll be able to easily search for it and view it from any device where you have Evernote installed. Here’s how to make it work:
After downloading Meshin Recall, you’ll be asked to authorize your Evernote account, and sync your various Google calendars with Meshin Recall.
To create a new note, tap the plus (+) icon next to an event. After saving the note in Evernote, you’ll be taken back into Meshin Recall, where you’ll see that the note icon is now an Evernote elephant icon, indicating that the event has a note associated with it. Tapping the icon will take you back into Evernote. When you create a new note, Meshin Recall will recommend useful tags and will title your note with the event’s title as well, making it easier to find later.
To share a note, tap the elephant icon on the lower right-hand side of your screen to bring up the share menu and select a method of sharing.
SnapCal
If you’re an iOS user interested in connecting Evernote with your calendar, try SnapCal.
Here’s how to make it work:
After downloading the app, authorize your Evernote account from the Settings menu.
To send a calendar event to your Evernote account, simply tap on the event, then tap on the elephant icon in the tab on the bottom of your screen. Select the destination notebook, tags, and title.
To associate existing notes with a calendar event, go to the settings menu and choose ‘Tags.’ Select all of the relevant tags associated with notes you may want to link with your calendar. You’ll be able to search your notes right from your SnapCal screen. Tapping on a note will allow you to attach the note to an event, select a calendar, and add an alert. You’ll can even tap on the note text and edit away.
Use SnapCal to connect your Evernote Food notes with your calendar
Wish you could browse your Evernote Food notes from your calendar? Now you can, using the nifty integration with SnapCal. To show your Evernote Food notes on your calendar, choose ‘Sync with Evernote Food’ from the Evernote authorization screen. All of your Evernote Food notes will appear on your calendar, on the date they were created.
The Evernote API
Meshin Recall and SnapCal were able to do all this thanks to the open, free Evernote API. You can also create amazing Evernote-integrated apps and products. Take a look at our developer site for more information.
For those of you who use Evernote’s audio feature to record notes, you’ll find today’s Trunk Spotlight to be very exciting. Quicktate can actually turn lengthy voice notes into text that you can easily search for and access anywhere you have Evernote installed.
An introduction to Quicktate
Unlike some transcription services, Quicktate does not use voice recognition technology but rather, employs its own team of pre-screened professionals that transcribe voice recordings. Because your audio notes are transcribed by a real human being, the accuracy of the transcription is remarkably high, and the turnaround is surprisingly quick.
Quicktate transcribes both long and short voice notes. A 60 minute voice note recorded in Evernote can be transcribed in about 4-6 hours. This means that if you attended a meeting in the morning and recorded it using the audio feature in Evernote, you’d get the transcription before the end of the day. A 30 second voice note can be transcribed in minutes.
How it works
To start using Quicktate, first create an account. As part of setting up your account, you’ll be asked to authorize Quicktate to access your Evernote account. After you’ve linked your accounts, anytime you create an audio recording in Evernote, the recording will be sent to Quicktate for transcription, and the transcribed text will go straight back into the original note in your Evernote account.
You can record an audio note in every version of Evernote. But if you’re on the go, you can also call (888) 222-NOTE and dictate your recording to Quicktate. They’ll transcribe your recording and create a new note in your Evernote account containing the results).
Why would I want to transcribe long-form audio?
There are plenty of reasons why you’d want to record and then transcribe a long audio note. Here are a few ideas:
To capture and search everything discussed at a business meeting. There’s no better way to know what each person said at a meeting than to record and transcribe the entire meeting.
To capture speeches and lectures. Whether you’re attending a class, or a conference, you can record a speaker and forget about having to feverishly take notes.
To write your book. Ok, you might not be an author, but if you are writing a book, blog post, or article, you might want to speak some (or all) parts of it to capture nuanced dialogue and emotion.
To record an important event. Whether you need to capture the scene of a car accident, or a business deal, dictating the events happening around you might be the easiest way to capture them. Transcribing these notes might be the easiest way to find and remember them later.
How would you use Quicktate and Evernote together? Tell us in the comments.
The Evernote API
Quicktate was able to do all this thanks to the open, free Evernote API. You can also create amazing Evernote-integrated apps and products. Take a look at our developer site for more information.
Whether you’re traveling, working from a coffee shop, or just sitting on the couch, sometimes it’s just easier to browse the web from your mobile device. If you’re using an Android device, then a great way to do your mobile browsing is with Dolphin Browser. Now, you can get add-ons for Skitch and Evernote that let you annotate webpages or save text to Evernote.
The Skitch Add-On
You can now seamlessly grab web content you’re viewing on Dolphin on your Android device and annotate it using Skitch. You can point something out on a page, draw on a map, make a quick reminder to yourself, then save it to Evernote or share with your friends. First, be sure to install Skitch. Next…
When you come across web content you’d like to edit, swipe to the right to reveal the add-on bar and tap the Skitch icon.
The page instantly opens in Skitch, where you can add text, arrows, circles, free-hand lines and drawings. Next, save it or share it. It’s that simple!
Clipping Text from Webpages
In addition to allowing you to annotate web clips and screenshots using Skitch, you can now also clip text from the webpages you visit straight into your Evernote account. Capture articles, research, travel deals, and more. To do this:
Whenever you come across text on any web page that you might want to remember, select it and tap the Evernote logo on the right side bar. The information you want to remember will be synced to your Evernote account.
The Evernote API
Dolphin was able to do all this thanks to the open, free Evernote API. You can also create amazing Evernote-integrated apps and products. Take a look at our developer site for more information.
These days, many of us have to attend conference calls and meetings in which the participants are spread out across a lot of different locations. Increasingly, we have less face-to-face interaction and more voice chats, which means that presentations aren’t as dynamic, it’s hard to get everyone on the same page, and the real value of collaboration is lost. That’s why we’re so excited about our new integration with iMeet.
When you sign up for iMeet, you create a virtual ‘room’ that you can ask up to 15 people to join. Enabling video means you’ll see everyone in your meeting in one place and interact as if you’re all sitting around the same conference table. With our new integration, you’ll be able to bring Evernote right into your room to capture more insightful information from your meeting.
Evernote + iMeet: More context around your meetings
In addition to enabling you to invite people into your own private meeting room, iMeet also lets you share files and your Evernote notes in a visual way with everyone in the room, fundamentally transforming the way that you’re used to exchanging information when meeting with someone via your computer.
If you make a habit of taking diligent meeting notes in Evernote or want to share your notes, you’ll love this integration.
First thing’s first: authorize your Evernote account by hovering over your own meeting cube.
In your profile, you’ll see a little Evernote icon.
Once you click on it, you’ll be asked to authorize the app.
Once your account is synced with iMeet, you’ll be able to do a few very cool things:
Pull up a note from your Evernote account to share with everyone in the room. The host of the iMeet meeting can share a note that will float to the forefront of your screen and be visible and accessible to everyone in the room.
Create a new note from your Evernote account. Any iMeet participant can link and use their Evernote account privately while in a meeting.
Take group notes. If you click on the Notes button next to Chat, you can take group notes in the ‘Room Notes’ area. You can save the content of the group note into Evernote. In addition to the content of the note, it will also include information like who contributed to the note as well.
Take notes for yourself. Going to ‘My Notes,’ you can type away, without disrupting the conversation, and save your personal meeting notes to your Evernote account.
Ideas for using iMeet with Evernote
There are plenty of good reasons to use iMeet with Evernote. Here are just a few.
For HR and recruiting. Use iMeet to conduct webcam interviews with potential candidates and take notes in Evernote to remember what you liked and didn’t like.
For sales training. Practice customer-facing presentations and elevator pitches with colleagues. Save collaborative feedback to Evernote.
For team meetings and presentations. Share Evernote notes, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents on screen while discussing them with colleagues.
In a legal setting. Use iMeet to conduct a deposition or share documents with opposing counsel. Jot down questions in ‘My Notes’ and refer to them in Evernote later.
In an education setting. Whether you teach at the school or university level, use iMeet to connect with colleagues, share research, etc. Pull up an article you clipped using the Evernote Web Clipper and float it on screen during your meeting.
Bonus: If you’re one of the first 130 people to sign up for an iMeet trial, you’ll get one year of Evernote Premium! Give iMeet a try now (it’s free for the first 30 days).
Imagine if the Internet was like a Rube Goldberg machine; an event in one place caused a planned cascade of actions. Well, now there’s a way to make that a reality. A service called IFTTT (if this, then that), allows you to devise a simple automated flow that starts whenever a certain action occurs. The setup is easy, the possibilities are endless and it can make Evernote even more useful for you.
Create Tasks and Recipes with ifttt
Ifttt connects two services of your choice to create an automated flow called a recipe. Recipes consist of Triggers and resulting Actions. You can create your own recipe or use those created by other ifttt users. There’s a near-infinite number of ways to use ifttt. Here are some great Evernote-related recipes.
Using ifttt with Evernote
To get started, create an ifttt account. Next, decide what your first task will be (a world of possibilities!). In these recipes, a Trigger in Craigslist, Twitter, Gmail, Foursquare, and others will create a new note in your Evernote account.
Here are some of the ways you can use ifttt with Evernote:
Keep track of searches in Craigslist. Have every new posting that matches your search parameters sent to your Evernote account. [recipe]
Create a new note in Evernote for every Starred item in Gmail. Don’t miss important emails; send them straight to your Evernote account for followup or reference. [recipe]
Create a new note in Evernote every time you Star an article in Google Reader. Remember articles and blog posts from your Google Reader and access them from any device where you have Evernote installed. [recipe]
Save your Instagram photos to Evernote. Are you an avid Instagrammer? Use Instagram to create and share your beautiful photos, then ifttt will save a copy of the photo to your Evernote account for easy access. [recipe]
Archive your Tumblr posts in Evernote. Enable Tumblr to send new posts straight into Evernote to create a searchable archive of everything you publish. [recipe]
Send your Flickr photos to Evernote. Send all newly-published, public photos straight to your Evernote account. [recipe]
Create an archive of your Foursquare checkins in Evernote. Keep track of your activities about town to remember places you’ve recently visited and might want to return to. [recipe]
Send your favorited Tweets to a Favorite Tweets notebook. Anytime you favorite a tweet, automatically send it to an Evernote notebook where you’ll be able to keep track of your most valuable tweets. [recipe]
We see infinite possibilities for automating tasks with ifttt to make Evernote even more useful. Have you already created some recipes in ifttt that you’d like to share?
Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch, Android Tablet, iPad, Web
Keeping up with the news can be hard. Staying on top of information is often a time-consuming process that involves finding and tracking sources, and filtering through a lot of stories that we’re just not that interested in. There’s a new way to discover news that matters to you: News360, an intuitive news reader that scours over 10,000 sources from around the web. With the new Evernote integration, News360 actually figures out your interests and delivers personalized news streams based on your interests. Here’s how.
News360 + Evernote
When you tap on ‘My Interests’ in the left-hand tab of the app, you’ll be prompted to create a News360 account. From there, you’ll be able to connect your Evernote account with your News360 account simply by authorizing the app.
News360 will analyze your account, figuring out what kinds of things you’re interested in based on things you’ve clipped from the web. Once your account has been analyzed, blog posts and articles that match these topics will be presented to you in a slick, easy-to-browse interface. You can edit your interests, adding categories, topics, and titles to create a customized news center for yourself — right on your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android Tablet, iPad, or on the web.
A 360 Reading Experience
When you open an article in News360, you’ll be given the option to learn more about highlighted people, companies, and places within the article, broadening your knowledge, without losing your place. These topics can also be added to your Interests, to further personalize the news that is served to you. Articles that you might want to remember can be saved to your Evernote account for later reference.
You can also check out the 360 view, a super visual way to discover interesting stories you might not otherwise come across. We think this integration is really useful because it allows you to discover news in a fresh way using using the content in your Evernote account. To help further refine your recommendations, don’t forget to save interesting articles back into Evernote. Give it a shot.
News360 was able to do all this thanks to the open, free Evernote API. You can also create amazing Evernote-integrated apps and products. Take a look at our developer site for more information.
Price: $3 for 1 NFC tag, $10 for 10 NFC tags, $20 for 25 NFC tags
Platform: Android
If you followed the progress of our Developer Competition, you might remember the company that took home the Grand Prize: Touchanote. A very cool integration that brings your notes into the real world by associating them with physical objects, Touchanote blew away the Evernote judges as well as the Trunk Conference audience. We sat down to chat with co-founder Hamid Zaidi to learn more about the app, the evolution of its development, NFC technology, and cool, everyday ways you can use Touchanote to remember stuff in your life.
What inspired the creation of Touchanote?
I’ve been using Evernote for the last couple of years. I save everything related to my accounting and also use Evernote for recipes, travel checklists and to-dos. The idea of Touchanote came thanks to my own personal shortcomings — mainly my really bad memory. What if I could just associate my memories with the objects that they relate to? Before Touchanote, I would tape Post It notes all around my house and my office to remind me of things I needed to do. Now, all I need is my NFC-enabled phone and Evernote.
How Touchanote and Evernote lets me remember how to use my home theater system
Touchanote lets you associate real life objects with your Evernote notes in a really intuitive fashion. Here’s an example: I have a note in my Evernote account with instructions for how to use my home theater system. I can associate the note with an NFC tag that’s attached to my remote control. If I touch my NFC-enabled phone to my remote control, the note in my Evernote account with instructions for how to use my home theater system will pop up.
Since your notes are available to you everywhere you have Evernote installed, anytime you make an update to a note say, on your Mac, it will automatically update to all of your other devices as well. So, if your home theater system has been updated, you can make changes to your instructions in Evernote and always have access to the most recent version when you place your phone near your remote control.
Above: Watch Touchanote’s presentation at the Trunk conference
Select ‘share,’ then select the ‘Touchanote’ option that appears.
Touch the NFC tag with your phone, and you have written the note to the tag.
You can attach a tag to any real life object. Later, to access the information on the tag, simply touch the tag with your phone once again. There is no need to launch an app beforehand; that’s the beauty, notes launch instantaneously.
Who is behind Touchanote?
Touchanote was created by two partners (myself and Cyril). We have a team of eight people, half of which are technical and half of which are experienced in social media and the web. My partner and I blended our expertise areas (mobile and online marketing) to create Touchanote.
Who is Touchanote made for?
Touchanote is made for Evernote users with NFC-enabled phones. Even though our business plan is aimed at the enterprise, the Evernote Developer Competition really put NFC on the map and gave us a lot of insight into how even the average consumer would use it. Touchanote is making larger players realize that there is a market for people who already own NFC smarphones and could really benefit from this kind of service so we’re broadening our initial ideas about our target market to better meet individual consumer needs.
Do you often find yourself surrounded by paperwork? Imagine if you could throw all of it into an envelope and have someone else organize it for you (instead of sitting in front of your scanner for hours). That’s exactly what Shoeboxed does. We’ve been big fans of the service that scans all your business cards and receipts, digitizes them, and sends them to your Evernote account for safekeeping (read our first post about the Evernote/Shoeboxed integration). Recently, the service got even better! Now, Shoeboxed will accept all of your paper clutter —including documents and bills — so you can truly lead a paperless lifestyle.
Get rid of your paper today
If you’re not already a Shoeboxed user, you can sign up for a free 60 day* trial of the service (Shoeboxed has a variety plans and price points to fit your needs, depending on whether you’re a business, individual, light, or heavy user). Next, send Shoeboxed your paper clutter via mail. Shoeboxed will scan, extract and data verify your documents. You’ll be able to see all of your digitized documents in your dashboard when you log into your Shoeboxed account online. From there:
Decide which documents you’d like to send to your Evernote account, where they’ll be archived and searchable.
Select “Archive to Evernote” from the Actions dropdown menu.
Sending to Evernote is easy — just enter your Evernote email address when prompted and everything will get sent straight to your account. Shoeboxed will remember your email so you don’t have to enter it every time.
Organize your clutter
There are lots of great reasons to use Shoeboxed with Evernote, but here are just a few:
Go paperless: Now that you can send any kind of document to Shoeboxed, start cleaning out your closet to make room for more stuff you actually WANT.
Save time: Scanning all of your paper documents and organizing them into a digital storage system takes a lot of time. Shoeboxed does that work for you, and lets you keep your important documents organized.
Create a searchable archive of your documents: When you send your digitized documents to Evernote, you’ll be able to find them and access them anywhere. Need to track down an expense from several months ago, or locate a specific line in a contract? Just do a quick search in Evernote and find what you’re looking for — super fast.
*Shoeboxed has been gracious enough to offer our users a free 60 day trial of their product until October 19th. You can sign up here. After October 19th, you can still sign up for a 30 day free trial.
Quicktate transcribes both long and short voice notes. A 60 minute voice note recorded in Evernote can be transcribed in about 4-6 hours. This means that if you attended a meeting in the morning and recorded it using the audio feature in Evernote, you’d get the transcription before the end of the day. A 30 second voice note can be transcribed in minutes.
If you make a habit of taking diligent meeting notes in Evernote or want to share your notes, you’ll love this integration.
Ideas for using iMeet with Evernote
