Thing 9 - Evernote

I have to admit that until I came to the cpd23 blog post for Thing 9, I had never come across Evernote, so had absolutely no idea what it did, or that such a thing even existed. Therefore my initial reaction was a little sceptical...I was sure that never having felt the need for such a tool, I wouldn't find it very interesting. In fact for a little while I considered skipping Thing 9 entirely! However, I decided to give it a go, and was pleasantly surprised at how it could be put to use.

I just spent some time playing around with it  and seeing what it can do. It is certainly very useful to be able to annotate useful websites - but it did remind me a little bit of Delicious, which I have tinkered with over the years but always forget about and then come back to it - by which time a lot of the stuff on there is irrelevant! Anyway, if I were able to use this at work it would be fantastic, as it allows you to do so much more than just 'add bookmark' - I am forever adding bookmarks to my work PC, but then I forget what the website was used for 6 months down the line, or I forget its name and so can't find what I want in my list of bookmarks! So Evernote would really provide me with a useful tool in that respect. Only problem is - yet again - I am now allowed to download anything like this at work, so I find that I am encountering the same problems over and over; namely that I am trying out a load of different tools, which is great, but workplace restrictions mean that I can't always put them to use in my daily role. It's a pity, because that is where I would probably get the most value from things like this. Unfortunately I can't see me being allowed to download Evernote to my work PC - which is a shame.

I think the capacity to archive pictures is really useful also - if you want to combine all aspects of life, not just your workplace one, then the potential benefits from this kind of program are manyfold. I am not sure if I would ever want to use the sync with facebook/twitter abilities of Evernote, but I can see that a lot of people would find this of great value. Again it's just personal preference.

 There is definitely a lot to be said for having one place to go to where you can pull together all this content, organise it however you like, and the ability to make notes on everything undoubtedly makes life a lot easier when it comes to tracking down that website you came across by accident 6 months ago and that was a lifesaver! I would definitely like to try and use Evernote regularly - and will try and do so at home, and will update you all  here if I have any further thoughts on it. Apologies for the brevity of this post in the meantime!