That’s what I was wondering when I received an invite to the preview version of the Evernote Webservice today. And as a matter of fact, it does:
Evernote, previously known only as a very popular notetaking application, has ventured forth and is planning on conquering the web as well. Complementing that new webversion, Evernote offers a beta desktop version, which lets you synchronize your content. And here’s another plus: The Windows version of the app (a Mac version is soon to come) can be installed and run via WINE on Linux. Apart from a single button you better not click, the app is working flawlessly on my computer. In case you don’t trust my word, here’s a little screenshot:
So what is it Evernote can do for you? For one, it can do what I so elegantly displayed above: recognize writing in an image, even handwriting, and even when it’s written by me and photographed using a crappy cameraphone. Meaning you can just take an image of a handwritten page, put it either into the desktop app or send it to the webversion (either way, since they’re synchronized anyway) and the search function will find whatever’s written on that piece of paper.
In addition, Evernote offers a webclipping bookmarklet, letting you clip images and text right into your Evernote notebook.
And since we’re all social, you can publish your notebooks too, like so:
http://preview.evernote.com/pub/stormgrass/Public/
Go on, click it.
Well, what can I say. I’m impressed. Even though there are other notetaking services online (most prominent ones being Google Notebook or Zoho Notebook), none of them offer a service as sophisticated as Evernote.