Evernote Blog

I'm surprised by how often questions like this come up, but I always find the responses interesting and educational.

* What I Want *

Non-negotiable items include:

- Low Friction: A little initial setup is ok, but just taking a note should require no more than a click or two (whether clicking a mouse or a pen).
- Open source.
- Aesthetically Pleasing: I'm tired of looking at ugly stuff.
- Has to handle LaTex.
- Has to handle syntax highlighted code listings.
- Notes are in an easily portable format.
- Organization Tools: Some sort of organizational ability. I have thousands of notes that I use and need to refer back to all the time.
- Privacy: No sending my personal information to someone else's server.

Negotiable:

- Mobile Friendly: My eyesight isn't good enough to use a phone for note-taking or reading. Tablets are Ok. Desktop is best for me.
- Implementation Language: Since I'm looking for an open source solution, I'd like it to be in a language that I like. In my case, Clojure/ClojureScript, Lisp, Scheme (Racket) would be optimal. JavaScript is least desired.
- Minimal dependencies: I'd prefer that it not be based on Node, NPM, Electron, Atom, or any other huge ecosystem that would have to be installed on my system. (Java is Ok with me, obviously.)
Scriptability: It would be nice if it could help automate my workflow.

* What I Have Tried *

- Long ago (2005) I started a job at which the company provided me with a stylus-based, Windows tablet PC. Included was a copy…

I've been "coding" full-time for two years now and I use Windows as primary operating system, the biggest issue/pains that I've experienced is:

1) Most of the tutorials online are written for linux
2) installing dependencies on windows is a bitch sometimes (75% of time I can get stuff to work on windows other times I give up because of lack of availability of certain packages and compiling issues).

It's my opinion that you will eventually need to learn how to operate in linux, so what I'd recommend you do to help with learning:
- Install Hyper-V if you have Windows Professional, this way you can install various linux distros (start with ubuntu, then debian, then centos possibly).
- install Bash for Windows
- install docker for windows

http://www.evernote.com/l/AUkyLCQy0YJFQYIxEsVqV1nD1fUEpd4Uqfg/
^ how to turn on hyper-v and bash for ubuntu on windows

Due to anecdotal experience, I will never go back to anything that has their format without the ability to let my notes be or be exported. I was an early Evernote[1] user and Prime/Pro subscribe for quite many years. We even used it for team collaboration on documents. Unfortunately, I had to leave it like everyone else and have gone all plain-text (sometimes, spiced with MarkDown here and there when needed). Now, any tool should be a wrapper on top and should leave no damaging changes -- the best I found so far being Obsidian[2].

I tested/tried OneNote long back and doing a quick search says you can export[3] the whole at one go to a Word format. This should, then work macOS -- export to Word Format and Pandoc.

1. https://evernote.com

2. https://obsidian.md

3. https://www.thewindowsclub.com/export-onenote-files-different-formats

That was a surprisingly frustrating article to read. It kept repeating the exact same things just worded slightly differently over and over again, like the four or five times it mentions machine learning being a major part of Evernote's decision to go with Google, without ever explaining what, exactly, that machine learning would be.

The whole thing reads like a press release targeted at an audience that doesn't know anything about the actual mechanics of cloud computing.

Edit: Fortunately Evernote have published a great five-part series on their blog[1] which goes into much greater detail about the transition to GCS, although there's still no explanation of how machine learning fits into their future plans.

[1] https://blog.evernote.com/tech/2017/02/08/part-1-evernote-service-options-migrate-google-cloud-platform-gcp/

You can opt-out of the machine learning features (which use manual human review) in your account settings at https://www.evernote.com/PersonalSettings.action.

You cannot opt-out of allowing staff to read your notes altogether, but you can export your data and move to another service.

If you don't need OCR and are on Mac/iOS, I have found Bear to be a great note-taking alternative to Evernote.

http://www.bear-writer.com/

It includes Markdown support, code syntax highlighting (for some languages), and Evernote migration:

http://www.bear-writer.com/faq/Code%20Snippets/Show%20code%20highlighting%20in%20your%20code%20snippets/

http://www.bear-writer.com/faq/Import/Migrate%20from%20Evernote/

> ...This is interesting point. It is coming from "everyhour". What difficulties you think we could face?

IANAL but... If it's coming from "every hour" then go with that. You reference the Evernote inspiration in your description above, the tagline on the site is "Evernote for time", etc. Saying 'it's evernote for time' is great for elevator pitches, less so for product wording. But because the product is called "Everhour", I'd either a) start looking for a new name or b) pretend (at least in public) that I never even heard of Evernote. If not, at best you'd be labeled as a copycat, at worst, face some legal issues for encroaching on their trademark[1].

[1] http://evernote.com/trademark/