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Google Keep and Google Now


I find Google Now's voice capabilities useful on my Android phone.  I recently struggled to get it working on my Samsung Galaxy S3.  If you have an S3 do check out my post on the topic.

One thing I often do while driving is touch the Call button on my Bluetooth earpiece to invoke Google Now and then say "Note to self" and then say an idea I've just had, or a task I want to remember to do.

Until this week, Google Now would send that as an email to myself.  From there I would make use of that note when I got home, perhaps creating an event in my Google Calendar, or a task in Google Task or whatever.

If it was just a note I wanted in Evernote, a filter I had created in Gmail automatically moves all emails with the subject containing "Note to self" to Evernote.

Wednesday evening I installed the Android Keep app on my phone.  I guess I didn't make any Notes to Self on Thursday, but I did on Friday while driving home from work.

At the next light, I looked on my phone safely nestled in its dock, and was astonished to find a dialog box asking if I wanted to complete the action with either Gmail or Keep.  Before it had automatically used Gmail without asking.

I chose Keep as the light changed.

When I got home, I checked.  The note and an audio file recording of my command were in Keep.

Further, I've tested this and it appears in Keep instantly.  Before, Google Now had to email to me, then the filter forwarded the email to Evernote, and Evernote had to sync with my Evernote app on my phone before I could call it up in Evernote.

Evernote still overwhelms Keep in capability, but the scrappy new kid just scored a point.

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