Category: Productivity

Am I just too polite to use Evernote Hello?

Recently Evernote launched a series of new apps  -

  • Evernote Clearly (a plugin for viewing the text from web pages  - great for cluttered sites)
  • Evernote Food (for those fetishists who like taking snaps of meals)
  • Evernote Peek (for learning) and …
  • Evernote Hello (for collecting information to help you remember people you meet)

As a well-documented Evernote bore, I had to give them all a go.

I have no real use for Peek, have used Evernote Clearly and Food once or twice – but I was keen to give Evernote Hello a go.

It’s a great idea. I am useless at remembering names (great a faces, which means I know exactly WHO’s name I’ve forgotten) and am always looking for new tools to beat this affliction.

How it works

Evernote Hello encourages you to formally gather information about a person when you first meet them via an iPhone app. In a traditional setting, you’d receive someones business card during the conversation, which ends up in your pocket with all the other business cards to gather dust and become a notepad for other more pressing bits of information (train times, phone numbers etc).

This app allows you to gather the Twitter name, email address and telephone number of the person AND, most importantly, a photograph – which will then sit within the app, and within your Evernote account. It also logs where you met them, and allows you to link this contact to notes within Evernote.

So far so good.

But …

(and this is the entire crux of the app) … I must admit to being far too polite to ask to take someone’s photograph, on first meeting. It just is not in my nature to do that. Asking for their Twitter name, or email address is one thing – a photograph? …  a step too far.

Is this just a British thing? Are other nationalities more easy going about this?

It is interesting to see this issue raised on the Evernote forum (post here)

Starting to Use It

There have been multiple opportunities for me to use to use this app  - the recent News:Rewired journalism conference the major one. However, I am no point felt it was the right time, during a conversation, to whip out my phone and take a strangers picture (and it would have been even more creepy to take a picture of them on the sly)

However, this week I began teaching  a new class (MA Social Media) at Birmingham City University as a visiting tutor. I will be working with them for several weeks so it was a great chance to test this app out. As a small group of tech-friendly people – I hoped they would be open to me gathering their information at the start of the class so I could begin to learn names, as well as pick up twitter and email account details.

The phone gives you several ways to add information, You can pass them your phone (often easier than trying to spell complex twitter names and risk mistakes), you can do it yourself or link the contact with one already in your address book.

As I passed my phone around the (small) class, the general concern that I was going to put the images online (probably thanks to  culture of endless tagging on Facebook).  This was not the case – it was simply for my records.

Interestingly, we realized that if an email address is added by the contact, they receive a message from Evernote Hello, with MY details – very useful for automatically exchanging contacts.

Thoughts

This app is  - in theory – a great idea. However, whipping my iPhone out asking to take someones picture is just not going to happen.

Instead, I am going to start using it to gather contacts in the normal way. So, at the end of a conversation, when I would normally ask for the persons email or Twitter details – I will let them manually add into Evernote Hello. There is a photograph button clearly visible, and I am hoping people will be intrigued by the app and volunteer to take  picture themselves.

And that is just polite enough for me.

Using Evernote for Email > tried, tested and failed

Česky: Toto je ikona pro sociální síť. Je souč...

(this post requires a basic working knowledge of Evernote)

It is no secret that I am an Evernote fangirl. I love the fact I can send pretty much everything I find online, into one huge vat of stuff.

Recently I decided to take this one step further and use Evernote to read and process all of my emails.

The Method

  • Use the FORWARDING feature in Gmail to send all emails to Evernote
  • Tell Gmail to keep the email, but mark as read (this means I can still access the messages via Gmail if I need to, but they won’t show as unread in my inbox on my phone)
  • Within Evernote, you can SHARE notes, so simply paste the email address into the SHARE facility, and reply to email.

The Positives:

  • EASE – Evernote is far less clunky via desktop than Gmail
  • IT WORKED – I had been having problems using Gmail through Thunderbird and other desktop email apps, but Evernote worked
  • TIME – I was forwarding so many emails, it seemed to make sense to forward them all, and delete the ones I didn’t want.
  • ATTACHMENTS –  You can merge notes so send several attachments to one person (easier than adding attachments via normal email)
  • INTEGRATION – Sending my emails into Evernote immediately puts them in the mix with my documents, PDFs, articles etc  - where they can be easily searched and grouped.
  • TAGGING –  being able to integrate your email with other information I had stored, documents etc meant I could group project information together, and tag items that required action.

The Negatives (and why it eventually failed as a process for me)

  • SPACE: I use Evernote premium (which allows you 1GB of uploads per month) and for normal usage, this is perfect. Unfortunately, this month I have found receiving a much higher volume of emails (due to several projects and the subsequent discussions). I have already used a quarter of my upload quota and I’m only a few days into my month.
  • REPLYING: when you receive an email in Evernote, it shows the SENDERS email address, which means you simply need to copy this and paste it into the SHARE box. Simple. Unfortunately, as Evernote is not an email system,  it does not show when the email has been CC’d, so they would miss out on any replies. In the end I was having to use my old system for replying to group emails
  • UNRELIABILITY: Several times emails have simply not arrived.
  • SPAM – Some of the emails were ending up in spam, and some users were not spotting this – so the email was not received.
  • CLUTTER – Again, as Evernote is not an email system, it does not have an UNREAD facility so I was often missing emails in my inbox, as it was in amongst the posts, tweets etc that I was sending.

The Solution

If you have any suggestions of how I could overcome the above problems, I would love to hear from you, but for now, this is my solution:

  • Download the new version of Thunderbird which seems to be coping with Gmail right now. (I am also trying a free trial of Postbox, although this is £30 if I want to use it beyond a month)
  • Forward emails into Evernote that require action (I could potentially use IFTTT.com to autoforward anything I tag with TODO in Gmail, but I have found IFTTT.com strips too much formatting from an email rendering them often unusable)
  • Forward emails into Evernote that need archiving – articles, information etc.

 

 

Become Master of your Email Inbox

Is your email inbox bursting at the seams? Overrun with nonsense,? Drowning in newsletters?
Here are a few easy tips to get your wayward email inbox whipped into shape.
The idea here is to reduce the number of emails in your inbox, so the important ones aren’t forgotten about.
Before you clear out your inbox (we’ll do that later), LOOK at the emails in there – they should fall into one of four categories:

EASY TO DEAL WITH EMAILS 

Deal with them … right now. Sounds silly, but the rush you’ll get by just getting it down will be worth it
Alternatively, if you’d prefer and have the facility – convert the email to a task

UNWANTED EMAILS:

  • Unsubscribe from them. There should be an unsubscribe option at the bottom. It seems like a hassle now, but think – how many of these emails do you delete every week? Trust me – it’s worth it.
  • If you are receiving unwanted emails from individuals simply ask to stop receiving them. A polite email explaining why (i.e. your job role has changed, your interests have changed, or you get the information from other sources etc.) should do the job. This also applies to chain email that at some point applied to you, but don’t now.
  • You could also set up a filter to delete unwanted mailouts before they even enter your inbox BUT be warned: in the future you may want to resubscribe to this service, so you will need to remove the filter if so. Also, the more specific you cna be with your filter, the less chance of other emails being caught.

“NEED LATER” EMAILS

These re messages you don’t need to see now, but will need later.
The answer here is to FILTER. If you use a free-mail service, like GMail or Hotmail, or Outlook, make use of the filtering / archiving process which skips the inbox and moves the emails directly into a folder.
Examples:
  • newsletters from fashion stores / vouchers etc. can be hidden away until your next shopping trip
  • work documents that I will need for a future task but don’t need reviewing now
  • job alerts – I file these away, and set myself a calendar reminder to check that folder every couple of days so I don’t miss anything important

PESKY EMAILS (aka All the rest …) 

 

These emails will annoy the hell out of you, and make you feel bad about yourself until you can deal with them. Often these depend on other people/situations. My solution is to remove it from your inbox but set up a reminder to deal with it, when you know you’ll be able to.
In order to do this – think – what’s stopping you from answering it immediately?
  • You need to consider your response  / it’s not urgent and you’re busy right now – Sometimes you’re just not in the mood, right? Sometimes it’s just not a priority.  Sometimes that difficult email needs an extra cup of coffee / lunchbreak or an entire day before you feel up to dealing with it. First, be honest – are you just procrastinating, or does this really need some thought? If so, allocate yourself a time of the day/week to deal with emails like this. End of the day perhaps? Start of the day – before things get to hectic? Set yourself a timed reminder, or a morning todo list, archive the email and forget about it until then.
  • Are you waiting for a specific date? – either archive and set yourself an calendar reminder, or  - if it’s an email that needs sending – does your email system have a DELAY email function? (you could also give ifttt.com a go – this allows you to schedule emails to a specific person through your Google Calendar – very geeky and very clever). There are other email schedulers available  - these seem to allow a small number of free emails (eg 10 a month) but for larger amounts you will need to pay.
  • Are you waiting for an email from someone else? – if so, archive the email currently in your inbox – the email from them will remind you to deal with this
  • Do you need to have a phone call/conversation/meeting with someone else first?  - do you know when this will be? If so, you could either set yourself a calendar reminder for the date you will find out the information, or a reminder for the deadline when it has to be dealt with.

A few more things you can do …

  • Turn off social network notifications – if you are on Twitter / Facebook all day anyway (or have an app on your smartphone) do you really need an email alert as well?  If you’re like me you are signed up to a lot of accounts, so the notifications are endless!!  Also think – what’s the point of getting a Facebook alert if you’re at work and can’t do anything about it? Turn them off, save yourself the frustration!
  • Preview setting on mobile email readers – I miss important emails because I review them on my mobile, but can’t deal with them. Now I use the “PREVIEW 5 lines” function (IPhone) so I can get an idea of what the email is about, without having to open it (which marks it as read). It will then remain in your inbox unread, until you get to office/home etc.
  • Similarly, review your the “mark as read” setting on your desktop email – change this from “mark as read as soon as open” to something that means you have really processed with it. It means emails will stay as unread until dealt with.
  • Reduce the time you spend receiving emails. This takes self-control and is definitely not suited to every role. Decide how often you will check your email (2/3 times a day) and set an autoresponder (out of office reply) explaining this fact. Also spell out WHEN you will be replying to the email, if one is required. This will cut down on email “ping pong” – when an email turns into an entire conversation as senders will be a LOT more concise and it won’t turn into a conversation.
  • Mailing Lists – consider changing the settings of these. Do you really need to receive ever update of an email list – or would a daily / weekly email be enough?

NOW ITS TIME TO BE RUTHLESS

Go through your emails and decide – are they:
  • dealt with – then delete
  • contain important information – archive or remove info (ie contact details) and delete
  • pending – process as above … archive and setting dated/timed calender reminders
Also – depending on your workflow, I would say bulk archiving emails before a certain date is a good move. Think about it, they’ve probably been resolved now anyway.

NEED MORE ROOM?

All of this archiving can put a strain on your email account size – even giant accounts like Gmail have a limit, and corporate accounts are very limiting when it comes to how much you can archive Consider an archiving / filing service like Evernote / Springpad (useful list here).
These are cloud based and will store your files, emails etc. so you can retrieve them from in different ways (i.e. computer, smart phone, tablet etc.).
I use Evernote, and as it comes with an email address, I now forward a lot of emails to this automatically, and also manually when they arrive. (using Gmail filters) but there are others available (both free and paid for) – find the one that suits you the best!

6 Tips for Using Evernote

If you’ve ever had a conversation with me about workload, computers, tech etc -then there’s a *very* good chance that I’ve mentioned Evernote.

If you’re not aware of it – it’s equivalent to an external hard drive, on the cloud – so you can archive important / interesting information – read more here (http://www.evernote.com/)

There are hundreds of different ways you can use Evernote – here are my top 6 tips:

1. A DESKTOP FOLDER

In Evernote open Tools > Import Folders

Here you can specify ANY folder, and files within that folder will be automatically imported into Evernote

I decided to create a folder called “For Evernote”. This sits on the C Drive but by creating a shortcut on your desktop, you now have a place where you can drag files for quick importing.

I also specified this folder as a FAVOURITE so it is easy to find when I am saving a file from another program.

NOTE: When I set up this folder, I set SOURCE to DELETE – which removes files once they have been imported into Evernote.

I had been hoping to specify a Dropbox folder as an import folder, but this is not possible – hence, Tip #2

2. GOODSYNC

Goodsync – a very useful desktop tool anyway for backing up files/moving etc, but great for syncing Dropbox with Evernote.

I wanted to use this to automatically backup my portfolio as I develop it, but it could be used for anything (images, documents etc).

Point Goodsync at the source file, and again at your Evernote desktop shortcut, and viola! (you can also alter the settings  - so you can have a 2 way sync (not useful here), backup or move (ie delete file from source location)

I have also used this to move a host of images from my IPhone and IPad (before I upgraded to IOS5) to Evernote.

By installing the Dropbox App I uploaded ALL my images to my Dropbox > Evernote folder, and they are  - one by one – moved (and then deleted) from Dropbox to Evernote Import (by Goodsync) then moved (and deleted form source) into Evernote automatically. (I currently use this to move my IPad screen captures into Evernote)

3. SYNC ICLOUD to EVERNOTE

(Disclaimer: I’m not entirely sure HOW I’ve achieved this. I set up a LOT of different syncing techniques and I’m now unable to find out which one works .. but I think this is it – but apologies if it doesn’t work for you)

ICloud is Apple’s latest product to sync items on all of your kit – Ipad, IPhone, Mac etc.

I used Goodsync (above) to link your C:\Users\sony\Pictures\Photo Stream\Uploads folder to my Evernote import folder (as set up above)

Now this only works when my laptop is on, but that works for me: Goodsync moves all the images that appear in my photostream into Evernote

This is useful for keeping track of snaps I take, but ALSO, more importantly for me, screen captures I take on my Iphone (and soon IPad)

4. Filtering and moving with IFTTT.com

Ifttt is a very useful website (a little clunky in places) but  great tool for moving pretty much any online content, to somewhere else.

  • I currently have it sorting certain GMmail messages. Pro: You can specify the Evernote folder in which the item will be moved Con: 1. Sometimes it cuts off the body of the text 2. It does not delete the original message. For some emails now I have reverted to Gmail Filters – see next tip)
  • I have it moving anything I post to my Tumblr images account (http://www.carolinebeavon.tumblr.com) as an image into Evernote
  • Articles I “star” in Google Reader are now moved to Evernote – this does not copy the body, just the title so this is not perfect for reading but useful to a degree
  • Messages I “favourite” on Twitter are sent to Evenote
  • Anything I send to Instapaper (I have a magazine reader on my Ipad that does not have an Evernote link) i import to Evernote.

5. GMAIL FILTERS

> using a filter to forward / move certain emails into Evernote

As stated above – the con of this system is that you cannot specify which Evernote folder the email goes into but it is a trustworthy system.

  • Find your Evernote email address – within Evernote
  • Set up a filter to forward and keep (or forward and delete) emails into Evernote
  • When you log into Evernote you will have to deal with them in your default folder

6. GOOGLE CHROME EVERNOTE PLUGIN

Such a useful tool and I’m sure IE and Firefox have a similar thing.

It’s a button that sits in your toolbar, that lets you grab  webpage and send it to Evernote – allowing you to grab bits of pages, entire pages or URL’s of the page you are looking at. You can also specify the destination folder AND add tags as you go.