‘Product updates’ Blog Posts

In the past week, we released new versions of Evernote for Windows and Evernote Web. Here are some of the noteworthy enhancements.

Evernote Web

Rich text editing: The new text editing feature on Evernote Web allows you to add formatting and style to your notes. The editor lets you to add:

• Bullets and numbering
• Indentation
• Fonts, colors, and styles

Web Clipper Firefox extension: The Web Clipper Firefox extension (click to install) works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It lets you clip webpage content, including links, images, and text, directly into your Evernote Web account. If you have Evernote for Windows installed, the Firefox extension will automatically clip web content into the Windows client.

Mobile Web text note editing: We’ve added the ability to edit text notes on Evernote Mobile Web. This feature is coming soon to Evernote for iPhone. Evernote Mobile Web (www.evernote.com/m) is a version of Evernote optimized for mobile browsers.

Evernote for Windows

Numerous updates: The latest Evernote for Windows release contains tons of enhancements, usability improvements, and bug fixes. Our release notes are available here.

We are amazed at the number of Evernote accounts created since we launched Evernote for iPhone a few days ago! The feedback keeps pouring in and we’re pleased to say that we’ve just released an update (version 1.0.1) that addresses some of your most common requests. If you have the 1.0 version installed, your iPhone should alert you to the upgrade via the App Store icon. You can also just re-download Evernote directly from the phone or from this iTunes link and you’ll get 1.0.1.  As always, the Evernote iPhone app is free.

Here is the list of changes in Evernote for iPhone 1.0.1:

NOTE: Upgrading to 1.0.1 will delete any notes you currently have pending for upload in 1.0.  This won’t be the case in future updates.

• Snapshot notes are now sent in full size, for much more flexibility with display, sizing and recognition later on. You can also pinch and crop a snapshot before sending. Try it.
• The default zoom level is now set correctly when viewing text notes and small image notes, so you can read without any further zooming. This required both a change in the client and a server update, which went live this morning.
• The “pending” experience is greatly improved. Individual pending notes now display their status. We’ve also revamped the network code to prevent some notes from getting stuck in the queue. There’s also an indicator to tell you whether the phone is online and sending. Please note that sending full-size snapshot and long audio notes over the original iPhone’s EDGE network connection is pretty slow. Performance is much improved with 3G (best four hours you’ve ever spent in line), and performance over WiFi is very fast. Pending notes will continue to be sent even if you’re taking new notes, browsing existing notes, or making changes to your account setting. Due to restrictions in the Apple API, they will NOT be sent if you exit the Evernote application, but will remain in the pending queue until the next time you launch the app.
• The login experience has been improved to better handle user authentication, registration, incorrect passwords, etc.
• Search on the iPhone client is now improved and full-featured; you can search on any combination of keywords, tags and attributes. We replaced that icon to the right of the search box that no one understood. It was supposed to be a funnel. It will be missed.
• Snapshot orientation detection is improved.
• Memory handling has been optimized for a snappier overall experience.

Editing notes directly on the iPhone is coming soon! It’s a highly requested feature (by me, let alone all the rest of our users), but anything that involves changing the content of your memories on the primitive iPhone editor is just too risky to jump into without thorough planning and testing. We’ll roll out a way to edit text-notes on the iPhone (and our other mobile platforms) in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, since Evernote keeps all of your memories synchronized, you can easily edit notes on our Windows, Mac and Web clients and have the changes automatically show up on your iPhone.

This brand new platform presents us with lots of exciting, unexpected possibilities (and exciting, unexpected obstacles). We’re thrilled with the progress we’ve made on the iPhone so far and are busy figuring out more ways to make Evernote on the iPhone your shiny external brain.

If you like the idea of Evernote on the iPhone, please download the client, write a review in the App Store, and tell your friends! Thanks again for helping us make a better Evernote.

Apple just launched the App Store for iPhone and it’s got a shiny new Evernote! Our iPhone app is the best Evernote experience on a mobile phone yet; it’ll let you capture image, voice and text notes and automagically zap them to your Evernote account. You can also find, browse and search your notes with full tag, attribute and keyword support. All this without having to futz around with email or the web browser.

Oh, and since your iPhone knows where you are, it’ll geo-tag anything you capture! Having location information in your notes is going to open up lots of new possibilities and future enhancements.

Of course, any self-respecting external brain is the same no matter what device you use to get at it, so the new iPhone version of Evernote automatically synchronizes with all of our other PC, Mac, Web and mobile versions.

Evernote for iPhone works on first generation iPhones (just download the iTunes 7.7 which came out today and upgrade to the 2.0 firmware), as well as the iPhone 3G that comes out tomorrow. To get it, go to the new Apple App Store, or visit our new iPhone download page. Like all of our clients, the new iPhone version is free to download and works with both free and premium Evernote accounts..

We’re really psyched about this new platform for Evernote and are already planning lots of additions and enhancements. Evernote for iPhone is just scratching the surface compared to what’s coming, but it’s a pretty nifty scratch. Check it out and let us know what you think!

[Update: Some people in the comments are reporting problems with notes lingering in the ‘Pending’ section of the app. This is partially caused by the slowness of the iPhone’s EDGE network which has been hit particularly hard in these past few days. The phone will sometimes go to sleep while sending a note and it doesn’t always wake up smoothly. Syncing works better over WiFi and 3G.  We’ve also submitted a new version of the Evernote client to Apple that improves syncing performance across all networks and has a few feature enhancements. You’ll be able to auto-update as soon as Apple starts pushing out application changes to the App Store. We expect this to happen soon, but - since Apple has a lot on their hands today - we’re not sure when.

Thanks again for helping us make Evernote the best it can be!]

What’s the toughest thing to remember? For me, it’s websites. Everyday, I visit tons of sites: blogs, shopping, news, recipes, and travel. It’s too much. I’ve actually stopped bookmarking because it’s so hard to find anything in the sea of links, and when I do go back, the page is often gone or changed. Since Evernote is a single place for all of your memories, (websites you visit are memories too, you know) we thought we could do better.

Introducing, the new Evernote Web Clipper, which gives you the ease and simplicity of bookmarking, but more importantly, also gives you context by saving the text, images, and links, including the source URL, right into your Evernote account. Once the page, or part of a page, is saved into your account, you can tag, organize, search, browse, edit, and remember it forever.

I use the web clipper when I’m researching vacations, looking for a good recipe, or when I run across neat technical articles. With a single click, I have the content saved. So, even if the page goes away, my memory of it doesn’t.

Most importantly, because the web clipper is part of Evernote, you can have more than just copies of web pages. You can remember all sort of stuff such as, pictures, personal notes, doodles on napkins, and anything else, all accessible online, offline, and from your phone.

Here’s a short video where Andrew shows us how to install and use the web clipper:

Here’s another idea. Find a recipe online and clip it into Evernote. Then, when you’re at the store, bring the note up on your phone using Evernote Mobile Web: instant shopping list.

A little technical detail: You don’t need to reinstall the bookmarklet (the little browser button that says “Clip to Evernote”) if you already have it. It automatically upgrades to the latest version. Otherwise, go on and install it. Just drag or add the green clipper button below to your link bar.

Now, get out there and start clipping!

If you’ve been using Evernote for more than, oh, 2 days, then you probably noticed some pretty dramatic changes to the Evernote Web interface. Not only does it look great (*collective pat on the back*), but the new interface is also more user friendly, a whole lot zippier, and it saves a ton of vertical space, which makes it more usable at different screen sizes and resolutions. We also cleaned up the UI by removing redundant actions that can now be accomplished with drag and drop and multi-selection, such as tagging, moving, and deleting notes and notebooks.

Sign in or create an account to see for yourself.

Firefox 3 Support

In other big news, Evernote Web now fully supports Firefox 3! No more pesky popup messages.

Enjoy.

Big news today: Evernote is now in Open Beta and we’ve rolled out many changes, including premium accounts.

Four months ago, we introduced the invitation-only private beta of the new Evernote service.  Our goal was to get about 10,000 people to use the system so we could fine-tune our servers and try out new features.  We were blown away by the response and watched with equal parts of glee and horror as the closed beta users count passed 10,000, then 25,000, then 50,000…  By the end of the four months, over 125,000 people had participated in the closed-beta!  Luckily, our hardware, software and team held up with only minor incidents of spontaneous combustion.

Since launching the closed beta, we’ve released new feature updates virtually every week and today we took the biggest step of all: Evernote is now open to the world!  You no longer need an invitation to create an account.  Anyone can sign up right from www.evernote.com and start using your shiny new external brain in 60 seconds.

We now have two types of accounts: Free and Premium.

Free users will keep all of the features of the closed beta, including automatic synchronization between Windows, Mac, Web and mobile phone clients and advanced image search.  There is no limit to the total number of notes that you can store.  Free accounts can upload up to 40 megabytes of new notes into the service every month.

For $5 per month (or only $45/year, because we’re bad at math), you can upgrade to a premium account.  Premium users have their upload quota raised to 500 megabytes of new notes per month and get a number of other goodies, including enhanced security through SSL for all data transmission (free users only get SSL for login), priority access to the recognition queues (for much faster image recognition, even during peak busy times) and premium customer support.

You can try out a premium account at any time without worry: if you ever decide to go back to a free account, you’ll still have all of your notes (you’ll just go back to 40 megs per month for new notes).

We’ve also got a limited number of stylish Evernote launch t-shirts (pictured above) that we’ll give away to one-year subscribers until we run out of stock.  I’ve been wearing one around the Las Vegas strip lately and getting more compliments than I deserve.  People just like swirling pink elephants.

For more info on free and premium accounts, check out http://www.evernote.com/about/premium/.

Two more big changes are going to get their own blog posts soon, but you can try them out right away: we’ve got a brand new web clipper and a completely redesigned web interface.  I think you’ll like them.

We’re excited (and a bit scared) about abandoning the relative shelter of the private beta for the open waters ahead, but if we’re really going to expand everyone’s memory, we’ve got to let everyone in.  As always, let us know how we can improve.  We’ll be keeping up the rapid pace of new development throughout the open beta.

Thanks to the 125,000.

Wish us luck!

With our latest releases, we’re introducing monthly upload allowances to Evernote.

What’s a monthly upload allowance?
The monthly upload allowance is a measure of how much new data you add to your account on the Evernote web service in a given month. For all of our existing users, the month starts today, June 13. Oh, and don’t worry, all the notes you’ve created and all the features you’ve grown to love aren’t going anywhere.

How much do I get?
All free accounts are set to 40 megabytes per month. At the start of each month, your allowance is reset and you get a fresh forty. This means that if you max out your account every month, you’ll have 480MB of notes at the end of the year.

You’d be surprised how much 40MB gets you in Evernote terms. Here’s a rough estimate:

• Typed notes: 20,000
• Ink notes: 10,000
• Mobile snapshots: 400
• Web clips: 270
• Audio notes: 40

How is the monthly upload allowance calculated?
Every time something new is added to your account on the Evernote web service, it counts towards your monthly upload allowance. So, if you have 10MB remaining for a given month and you add a note containing a 1MB image, that will leave you with 9MB for the month. One important thing to keep in mind, you cannot add to your monthly allowance by deleting a note. So, deleting that 1MB note will not bring you back up to 10MB. Notes kept in local notebooks are not sent to the web service and therefore do not count towards your monthly upload allowance.

What if I want more?
Hang in there. We’re putting the finishing touches on our premium subscription, which will offer a significantly higher monthly upload allowance and a bunch of other goodies.

How do I know how much I have remaining?
We’ve built meters into Evernote for Windows, Evernote for Mac, Evernote Web, and Evernote for Windows Mobile to show exactly how far along you are.

There are also a bunch of improvements and bug fixes, so make sure to update Evernote on all the platforms that you use.

I use Evernote to collect all of the interesting things I see, wherever I am. For me, a big part of collecting is sharing, so I tend to make a lot of public Evernote notebooks (see: publishing notes). We recently added a new option that makes sharing a lot more flexible: The Evernote Widget.

Here is a widget of funny things I’ve found on the internet:

Think of the Evernote Widget as a portable version of a public notebook. You can create a widget from any public notebook and embed it directly into your blog, Facebook, and MySpace pages. Here is what you can do with it:

• Share notes from any public notebook
• Display thumbnails, titles, and links to the notes
• Search right from the widget, even for text within images

Get your own

Follow these steps to get your widget:

1. Go to a public notebook (yours or someone else’s)
2. Click the ‘Get Widget’ link beneath the search bar
3. Click ‘Add to Facebook’ or click the code to copy it
4. Paste the code into your blog or anywhere that takes HTML

Share your memories as they happen

Here’s how to set up the Evernote Widget to instantly share everything from mobile snapshots to web clips to audio notes as soon as you create them:

1. Make your default notebook public
2. Create a widget of that notebook
3. Embed the widget on your blog, Facebook, or MySpace page.

Now, whenever you create and sync new notes, your friends will instantly see them.

More sharing options are on the way. Stay tuned.

A couple of weeks ago, we introduced multi-selection checkboxes to Evernote Web. Now, we’re taking that once step further with the addition of drag-n-drop.

Here’s what you can drag

• Drag notes between notebooks
• Drag notes onto tags or tags onto notes
• Drag notes, tags, and notebooks into the trash
• Create nested tags

Give it a shot.

Evernote for Mac version 1.1 just came out, and it’s full of the most requested features and improvements.

PDF Support

You asked for it and now it’s here: Evernote supports PDF files! You can now drag a PDF into an open note, onto the dock icon, or into a notebook. You can also combine multiple PDFs, text, and images in a single note. Notes with PDFs will get synced like any other notes (unless you specifically put them into a local-only notebook, of course), so you can access them from any computer or device capable of viewing a PDF. The Mac version will even search the text within PDF notes.

You can also “print” right into Evernote from any Mac application, just go to the File>Print menu, push the PDF button, and select “Save PDF to Evernote.” A fully-formatted copy of your web page or document will automatically be added to Evernote. This works great with Safari, Firefox, iWork, MS Office, whatever. Try it with this blog post!

Our image-recognition technology won’t work on images within PDFs yet, and the Windows and Web clients will currently display PDFs as attachments, and will not automatically search within them. We’re working on it…

Spotlight

Evernote is now fully integrated with Spotlight. Now, you can search through all of your files and all of your memories in one place. You can also make Finder “smart folders” that include Evernote content. Just set the “kind” drop down to “other” and type “Evernote” into the field that opens up. Neat!

New “Mixed View” Mode

Evernote for the Mac now has three views: List, Mixed, and Thumbnail. The new “mixed view” mode shows you a single column of small thumbnails and metadata for each note. Now there’s a view that’s perfect for any set of notes, monitor sizes, and user styles. Try them out and find the one the works best for you.

Vertical Preview Pane

The Mixed and and Thumbnail views now offer a resizable and collapsable vertical preview pane on the right.

The currently selected note is displayed in the preview pane and is fully editable, scrollable, and shows live search results. If you have the screen real estate, try opening the preview pane to a generous size and you’ll never need to leave your favorite viewing mode again. Hitting “New Note” in Thumbnail or Mixed view will no longer force you into List view. You can still open a note in a separate window by double clicking on it. Of course, if the preview pane is taking up too much room, just drag it closed and it’ll stay that way.

The List mode keeps the preview pane on the bottom of the screen to accommodate more horizontal columns in the list.

Encryption

Ok, technically we rolled this out in the last build, but for some reason the announcement fell through the cracks, so let’s pretend that encryption is a brand new feature. Just select any portion of text in a note, right-click on it, and select “Encrypt Selected Text.” If you haven’t selected a password yet, you’ll be prompted to do so. To decrypt text, just click on it. Notes with encrypted text can be synced just like any other notes, and are fully interoperable between the Mac and Windows clients; you can encrypt stuff on a PC at work and decrypt it on your Mac at home, or vice-versa.

There’s currently no way to decrypt stuff on our web or mobile versions. You’ll see that a note has encrypted information, and you’ll be able to see any unencrypted content, but you won’t be able to decrypt it yet. We do this because we don’t ever want you to transmit your password over the network and we never want to see it on our servers. There are ways we could work around this restriction, but they’re not trivial to implement so we just haven’t had the time to work on them. We’ll get to it sooner or later, but in the meantime just keep your secret spy stuff to the Mac and Windows versions.

Don’t forget your encryption password! We never see it or store it anywhere on the service, so if you lose it, you won’t be able to decrypt your secrets. Seriously.

Bug Fixes

Version 1.1 also has many bug fixes and stability improvements: you can now drag-n-drop images, text, html, and supported audio into a note, thumbnails look better, and everything is just a bit smoother. Of course, this is still beta software, so if you find any bugs or issues, please send them to us.

If you’re already using the Mac client, just select “Check for Upgrades” from the “Evernote” menu to upgrade to version 1.1. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you can always get the latest version here. If you need an Evernote account, just sign up.

Thanks to everyone who’s tested our Mac client. It may be the newest addition to the Evernote software lineup, but it’s really starting to look pretty good. Keep the comments coming!