Everyone knows that the Internet can provide e-mail, web browsing, and shopping services.  However, with the increasing presence of the Internet in our daily lives – at home, on our mobile phones, at work, in hotel lobbies, at the coffee shop, etc – something interesting has been happening.  The nearly universal access to the Internet itself has spawned countless projects from companies and groups that leverages this access in ways that many of us have never imagined.

We’ve provided extensive coverage on how you can use online services to complete your data backup strategy, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Every day, more and more services are available that can improve the way you perform the tasks in your inbox or provide you with ways of achieving tasks you never realized you’d need to do.  We’ll take a brief look at one such today – a service called Evernote.

Evernote is essentially a note-taking application that stores your data in a password-protected account online.  This, of course, doesn’t sound very interesting.  It gets more exciting once you hear that it allows the storage and retrieval of images and audio content as well as text.  Evernote really shines in that it provides software for many different desktop and mobile platforms, giving you searchable access to ALL of your notes from pretty much anywhere.  If all else fails, you can even log in via a web browser.

Not convinced?  Let me go through the ways in which I’ve used the service.  This article is not a review of Evernote itself – for that please take a look at these links.  Instead, consider how much more useful Evernote is with highly-available connectivity than a similar standalone application would be.

First a little background on my technology-addicted lifestyle.  I have a desktop system at home, a laptop for work, and an iPhone.  I don’t have a permanent desk at work at either of the two offices where I (usually) work.  Some places that I work don’t have network connectivity, others do.  At home, I only use the laptop while doing work, but I carry the phone with me most of the time.  I pretty much don’t go anywhere without the phone, even short trips for shopping, etc.

I started using Evernote on the laptop to take notes in meetings.  It was great because if I cannot be connected to the network, the meeting notes will sync with the servers at the next available time.  If I don’t even have the laptop, I can tap the key notes in on the Phone.  Then, after I get back to my laptop or desktop system, the Evernote software will automatically sync back up with the online data and provide a unified view of all of the notes I’ve taken.

Being able to search all of that content from anywhere is also helpful.  No matter where I am when I take the notes, photo, or voice recording, I can search, retrieve, and manage the content.  If you’re on a conference call while at home with a sick kid but need the ideas that were dreamed up at a work meeting two and a half weeks ago, you can get them.  Same deal if you’re traveling and brought just your phone instead of the laptop.  Since lists can be made public, you can even create a notebook and share it with others who would benefit from seeing the data as you update it.

Perhaps one of the more interesting uses of Evernote is the “To Do” feature.  You can insert checkboxes into notes, and search for To Do items that have not yet been completed.  This is a killer feature when tracking “action items” or other things to follow up on after long and mind-numbing meetings.  Another great aspect is that each item can be tagged with short descriptions or categories.  This also makes searching easy, as you can quickly find all notes that have to do with “shopping”, regardless of which notebook they are in.

Possibly one of the most understated features is that each photo you upload is processed with Optical Character Recognition (OCR).  After uploading a snapshot (including from a phone), you can search within any text that is in the image.  Of course OCR isn’t perfect, but my tests have shown that it’s on par with some of the more widely used commercial software titles available today.

There is no shortage of creative ways users have found to use Evernote, so I’ll leave that to them.  I do, however, want to share a few of what I think are the more unusual ways I’ve used the application:

What’s even better about these kinds of services is that they are often free or very inexpensive.  Evernote has two tiers of service – one free and one for $45 per year.  The paid tier provides more bandwidth and a few other additional features.  I’ve used the free version for several months and have not needed to upgrade – yet.

Again, Evernote is just one of many new applications that consumers can use to improve their everyday lives.  Thanks to the growing ubiquity of Internet connectivity, we look forward to the advent of many new and exciting offerings for years to come.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.