CPD23 Thing #9: Evernote

I was converted to the wonders that are Evernote in late 2009 when as part of a project installing a computer in our kitchen. You see, my wife cooks. My wife also collects recipes and cookbooks. AS part of the kitchen computer project she’s started scanning a lot of her recipe cards and those on pages ripped from magazines over the years. Ultimately, what we needed was a way for her to scan the content on the computer in her office and display it on the computer in the kitchen. Easy enough with something like Windows Live Photo Gallery, but this solution offered searching only on filenames. Mary wanted to be able to search by ingredient. Evernote to the rescue!

All she need do is scan the recipe into Evernote and it automatically syncs to the cloud. Then, the next time she boots up the kitchen computer and runs Evernote, it syncs the new content to the kitchen. More importantly, Evernote indexes every single word in every scanned image. So, I she’s looking for something to use her smoked paprika in, she just searches for paprika and up come dozens of recopies. What could be cooler than that?

Me, I use Evernote more on my tablet. It’s a great way to take notes and have them available later without needing to transfer files. I’m also trying to use it to organize things to do for one of my current book projects with mixed success. (Basically, I keep forgetting I have notes in Evernote that I need to look at.) I’d definitely say that this isn’t Evernote’s problem, it’s mine.