Ideas from Mark Stout

I first signed up for Evernote back in July of 2008--Evernote still has my lone "My First Note" to remind me of the date. In April I discovered the most recent Windows client. I love the cloud and web based apps, but for some things, a local client makes a huge difference. Since then, I've become a rabid new convert. This program has revolutionized the way I do fundamental things. It replaced a program I wrote myself to meet similar needs. I willingly threw away hundreds of hours of hobbyist development work when I realized Evernote was tens of thousands of hours of effort ahead of me. In these last two months, I have found new ways to use Evernote almost every day. I thought I'd share a few things I've discovered useful about Evernote. Maybe one or two you will find new and helpful to you. Inbox I've discovered it's best to have a Notebook named "Inbox" and make it your default Notebook. All notes coming in via email, or Web Clipper go t...

I saw a Twit recently from someone named mrdoornbos saying "After a year of daily @ evernote usage, it's now as important to me as email. And no I don't get paid to say that :-)" I know how he feels, and I've only been using it steadily for 2 months. Think of Evernote as a giant box that you can throw any information into, and then easily find it; scans of documents, notes of phone conversations, blog ideas, shopping lists, lists of prescriptions, PDF's of gadget manuals etc. And since you can get all this material back from your phone, it is like having someone following you around with your filing cabinet. About two months ago, I started just dumping information into it. Back when Delicious first hit the scene, I dumped bookmarks into it for months all the while wondering why I was bothering. Eventually, I started going in to retrieve dimly remembered websites. I have over 4000 bookmarks now in Delicious. I thought I'd try the same a...

This week I saw a Twit from danomanion asking for stickies or stars in Evernote on specific notes. I had been thinking along the sames lines; a Google Reader / GMail type stars on specific notes, and a way then to see all my starred notes quickly. There are certain notes I need to see frequently, and fast. I think danomanion and my need can be solved easily. I went to the handful of notes I wanted to be able to get quickly, and added a new tag to each, that of course I called "starred". Then I created a Saved Search that searched All Notes for the notes with a tag "starred". It's simple really, click on "All Notebooks" and then in Evernote's search box, type in "tag:starred". Your starred items appear. Then go down to Saved Searches, right click and choose "Create Saved Search", and name it "See Starred Notes". Now every time you click that, the starred list notes appears. To add a new items to the ...

HowManyOfMe.com There are 217 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name? I was up at midnight anyway last night, and was interested in seeing how bad Facebook's servers were going to smoke at the online goldrush for vanity Facebook domain names. Imagine my surprise when at midnight exactly, there site stopped counting down and asked me if I wanted http://facebook.com/mark.stout as my page? I grabbed it. And the servers held up under the onslaught by all reports. I have the two major email addresses in that name too. Sure makes it easy to give out my email address verbally. Sorry all you Mark Stout's. At least I don't own markstout.com. And the ironic thing is, I've only been on Facebook for a few weeks now.