Evernote Continues To Listen… Adds Notebook Sharing

Posted on 25 June 2009, at 6:54 am, by Dan Cohen

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Evernote Blogcast » Blog Archive » Notebook Sharing and Collaboration_ Phase 1

I am a self-admitted “Evernote evangelist”. I love the service/software/system and live by it. I use it for all aspects of my life, I have my work colleagues using it, we use it here on Gear Diary and I tell everyone I can about it.

No, I don’t work for Evernote. I’m not an investor in Evernote. I’m not even related to anyone who works for them. I just love it and think it is one of, if not the, most important pieces of hybrid-web-based productivity tech available today.

BUT… and this is a huge but… it is far from perfect. When Evernote was first released the iPhone app lacked the ability to edit notes or store them locally. They were HUGE holes in Evernote’s usefulness that were, thankfully, filled with an update some time ago.

A continuing issue with the service as a whole, however, was the inability to share notebooks with anyone else. Either you gave someone full access to your account or none at all. As a result, I use four different Evernote accounts with each shared with a different group of people from one aspect of my life.

Well, all that changed today with what Evernote calls- Notebook Sharing and Collaboration: Phase 1.

This is just the first step toward sharing and, as they explain it…

For the past year, we’ve had a single goal: becoming your second brain. We made it easy to capture and find all of your ideas and inspirations using (almost) all the devices you own. We’ve even been called “the anti-social app“, for our unconventional determination to focus on what’s on your mind, not just the mind of your friends. Ok, maybe we call ourselves that. Today, we’re broadening our view.

Now begins Phase 1 of our major effort to help you share (and collaborate on) the stuff you’ve collected with individuals, groups, and the world. Introducing, Evernote Shared Notebooks.

It is worth noting that the full usefulness of this new sharing system is only available to Premium users. Others can share notebooks as “View only”. At under $50 a year, however, becoming a premium users is more than reasonable considering the added benefits it brings.

Here’s a quick video to explain how it works. More information is available on Evernote’s site.

Evernote tends to be careful rolling out new aspects of the service. They do so only when they know it will work well. For those of us who live by Evernote it can feel far too slow but, in truth, the improvements in it since it came out of Beta last year are remarkable. And as this update proves, they have no intention of slowing down.

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2 Comments For This Post

anguish Says:
June 25th, 2009 at 7:42 am
I want to like Evernote, I really do. Especially since Microsoft hasn’t made a OneNote for OS X.

There are a couple of major issues that I have with it though at the moment.

1) I don’t like their free plan, and their paid plan isn’t much better. Security is the utmost concern of mine, and I also potentially run into legal issues by putting notes on their servers. Which also leads into the next item.
2) I have yet to figure out (admittedly haven’t investigated much yet) how exactly it stores things. For example, with OneNote, you have a .one file. Makes it real easy to move back and forth between computers when needed, especially during a rebuild. Plus, it also makes it easier for me to control the security against it, such as being on an encrypted disk.
3) Yeah, you can have local notebooks, but between item number one and two, those are show stoppers right there. But this is a major one too: You have to have an account that you can sign into before you can create a local notebook. That about killed me.

Truthfully, I don’t mind paying for a good quality product at all. But those three items above are showstoppers for me. I hate the idea of having to have an account with them period.

I just wish I could find a good alternative to OneNote and Evernote that has both Windows and OS X versions, and doesn’t have the above issues.
Travis Ehrlich Says:
June 25th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I am really loving Evernote. I just upgraded to a premium account this morning. My wife is setting up Evernote on her iPhone as we speak. I am going to share a family folder with her free account so we can share and edit documents. The main reason is to share our monthly spending for our budget. Writing what we have spent on the paper on the fridge is not cutting it for us. I do wish I could import a file from Numbers. Then I could upload our spreadsheet and edit on the go. Maybe that will be added in the future. I’ll report on sharing when she gets her phone going.