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Burner's disposable phone numbers save everything in the cloud
Thanks to The Wire (one of the greatest TV shows ever), we know all about burner phones. These cheap and quickly discarded phones are an easy way to communicate without sharing your permanent number with random folks (or the police). The Burner app for iOS and Android works under the same concept. It creates temporary numbers to hand out to people while keeping your main digits a secret. To add value to those short-term (and in some cases long term) numbers Burner is adding integration with Dropbox, Soundcloud, Evernote and Slack. Linked numbers can auto-save texted photos and voicemails to Dropbox. Slack can route messages from a channel to a number and accept replies. While Evernote can create an auto-response bot that replies to texts with pre-determined messages.
Evernote shutting down its Food apps for iOS and Android
Evernote Food has been around since 2011, but it looks like its days are numbered. In a blog post today, Evernote announced that the service's apps for iOS and Android, which allowed people to share recipes and book restaurant reservations, will no longer be supported as of September 30th. While users can keep accessing Food if they've already downloaded the applications, the company did say certain features within them soon won't work anymore -- including syncing with Evernote. Naturally, this also means the apps are going to stop getting updates, so be sure to mentally prepare yourself if you happened to be a fan of Evernote's Food.
Evernote's cleaner, faster web interface starts rolling out
Evernote's been beta testing a redesigned web interface since last October. But, after nearly a year of experimenting with the fresh look, the company is finally ready to make it available to all its users starting this week. The main purpose of the new web client is to be "distraction-free," according to Evernote, thanks to a cleaner, faster and, overall, more beautiful UI. Evernote says the idea isn't to mimic the desktop apps it already offers, but instead provide easier-to-navigate options and a simple canvas to take notes on -- all while continuing to be a powerful productivity tool for people. "Rather than be derivative of another client, we felt it should exemplify the speed and lightness of the modern web," Evernote said in a blog post. What do you think, though? Do you like or hate it?
Outlook plays nicely with Office for iOS, PayPal and Uber
Outlook is now a more powerful tool if you get a lot of work done on your phone... or just need a quick ride to the airport. To begin with, the iOS versions of Excel, PowerPoint and Word have received tight integration with Outlook. You can send a document you're working on as an Outlook email attachment, or edit someone else's attachment and return directly to Outlook with a new message ready and waiting. Also, some big, promised third-party Outlook web add-ons have gone live. You can set Uber ride notifications in your calendar, or put Evernote clippings into email. Boomerang will schedule both meetings and messages, while PayPal lets you pay a friend for last night's meal. Tie-ins with IFTTT, Wunderlist and Yelp are still "coming soon," but there's already plenty here to keep you busy.
Use Skitch on iOS to annotate pages without leaving Safari
Skitch is one of the most popular productivity apps, both on mobile and the desktop, for a reason: it makes it easy to snap, mark up and share just about anything, like PDFs. If you've been using it on iOS, there's now a reason to like the application even more. Thanks to a new version, released earlier today, you can use Skitch to annotate web pages within Safari, eliminating the need to manually capture a screenshot and then having to open up the app. To install you simply have to tap the Share button while in the browser and add Skitch as part of your actions, which will then let you see it next to Copy, Print and others. It's basically an extension, so think of it as a way to save you a few taps whenever you're trying to express something important -- as shown by the example above.
Evernote's Plus tier gives you a bit more notetaking for $25 a year
Until now, Evernote's service options have been something of an all-or-nothing proposition: either you stick to the free, very limited tier for your notetaking or shell out $50 a year for the full Premium package. You won't have to pay quite so much after today, though. The company has introduced an in-between plan, Evernote Plus, that unlocks a few key features at a more reasonable $25 per year, or $3 per month. You can only upload 1GB per month, but you get access to offline notes on mobile devices, automatic email-to-note conversion and a passcode lock. It's enough to help you with some serious life organization or your schoolwork, and not much more. If you do need more, though, you'll be glad to hear that Premium now has unlimited uploads and larger note sizes. All told, you're more likely to pay only for the features you'll actually use.
Evernote's redesigned Android app adapts to your note-taking style
Evernote only reworked its Android app half a year ago, but it's already back with a new version that's centered around adapting to your note-taking habits. Besides a fresher look that's in step with Google's flatter and brighter Material Design, the update gives you more control over the pop-up action buttons, navigation bar and even notebook covers. The all-important note interface is simpler, too, to help you focus when you're jotting things down. This upgrade probably won't sway you to Evernote if you weren't already a fan, but you'll definitely want to grab it if you didn't think the existing app was flexible enough.
The Productivity Pack: Make 2015 your most productive year yet
It's never too late to make a resolution to change, even if it is the last week of January. The Productivity Pack is a new bundle containing one-year subscriptions for four services plus an 8-week trial subscription to the digital versions of the New York Times. Valued at over US$185, the Productivity Pack is a bargain at $59.99. Created by the folks behind Pocket, the Pack includes one-year subscriptions to Pocket Premium, Evernote Premium, Wunderlist Pro, and LastPass Premium. In case you're unfamiliar with any of these wonderful app-based services, here's what they do: Pocket Premium: "Pocket lets you save articles, videos, and web pages to view anytime, anywhere. Pocket Premium takes your productivity to the next level with powerful features designed to let you do more with the content you save." Evernote Premium: "Evernote Premium is built around your core daily tasks of writing, collecting information, and presenting your ideas. It's the modern way professionals get work done." Wunderlist Pro: "Wunderlist is the easiest way to get stuff done. Whether you're organizing your work, sharing a shopping list with a loved one or planning an overseas adventure, Wunderlist is here to help you accomplish more." LastPass Premium: "Remember your passwords, login to websites without typing, and organize your online life with LastPass. And with LastPass Premium, you can sync to all your computers and mobile devices, easily share logins, and access additional security features." Like most New Year's resolutions, the Productivity Pack's availability won't last forever, so get it while the going's good.
Evernote says goodbye to Hello and Peek
Evernote has announced it will be ending support for its contacts management app Hello on February 7. The company suggests migrate their data to Evernote before then. Here's the email Evernote sent out announcing the closer. As of February 7, 2015, Evernote will discontinue its support for Evernote Hello and we won't be making any further updates to the app. What will happen after February 7, 2015? Future attempts to sign in to Evernote Hello will no longer work. For this reason, we recommend you save your contacts to Evernote or your phone before February 7. Suggested Alternative If you like Hello, Evernote is an even more powerful way to manage your contacts. Like Hello, it instantly captures information from business cards, adds details from LinkedIn, and lets you search and recall contacts with any of your devices. The company is also ending support for its flashcards app Peek on February 7. Now users will be directed to download the company's partner app Study Blue.
Promo gives you subscriptions to five big productivity services for $60
Like the idea of using cloud-based services to keep your life organized, but don't relish the idea of paying a huge amount just to use the paid versions of those services? That won't be a problem for about... oh, the next month or so. Evernote, LastPass, the New York Times, Pocket and Wunderlist have teamed up to launch the Productivity Pack, a promotional bundle that gives you subscriptions to all of their premium offerings for $60 if you sign up before February 13th -- not bad when you'd normally pay $185. The NYT subscription only gives you eight weeks of unfettered reading, but you'll have a year's worth of advanced note-taking, password storage, downloadable web articles and task management. The price will go up once it's time to renew, of course, but it might be worth the investment simply to see what's worth keeping.
Scannable app supercharges Evernote scanning on the go
It's been a year since Evernote's Phil Libin (a/k/a TUAW's favorite CEO) responded to user criticism by vowing to double down on the quality and performance of the "outboard brain" cloud app's core functionality. Despite the occasional misstep, the company's managed to improve the basic Evernote platform while continuing to introduce new features, apps and brand extensions -- including a partnership with LinkedIn, expanding the Evernote Market and delivering all-new versions of the Evernote app for both the Mac and for iOS 8. Now the elephant factory has pushed its latest mobile app out of beta and into production. Scannable for iOS delivers quick and easy scanning to Evernote with a minimum of configuration. Whether you're snapping Post-It notes or capturing business cards, Scannable is intended to make it as fast as possible (and get it all into Evernote, of course). When you launch the Scannable app, the camera immediately begins looking for a "document" -- something vaguely rectangular that stands out against the background. As soon as it finds the edges and you hold still enough, a round countdown icon appears over the highlighted document onscreen; then, poof, it's scanned and saved. No shutter button needed! A simple timeline of past scans shows up for you to approve, share, export and upload as required, but you can set Evernote upload as the default/automatic action and the app will simply push your scans to the service. The edge detection, cropping and deskewing that Scannable does is quite impressive. I'm a fan of powerful document scanner apps like Jotnot which allow you to manually define the edges of a document, turning a rhombus into a nice rectangle; Scannable simply does this on its own, with no real intervention needed. Sometimes if there's a particularly dark top or bottom edge on a document it might overcrop a bit, but in most cases it's spot on. If a specific document proves too baffling for the edge checker, you can switch into manual targeting mode to capture whatever you need. Scannable goes beyond the iPhone's camera with its ability to remote-control the US$495 ScanSnap Evernote Edition sheetfed desktop scanner (a rebranded version of Fujitsu's well-reviewed ScanSnap iX500). If the phone and the scanner are on the same Wi-Fi network, you can walk up to the scanner, scan and then work with the results on your phone. I didn't have the chance to try out this feature, but in an office equipped with a ScanSnap EE it certainly seems like it would be a pleasant addition. The killer use case for Scannable, in my brief testing, is business card scanning. The last app I used consistently for scanning cards was LinkedIn's CardMunch, which shut down in May of last year (roughly simultaneous with Evernote's deal with LinkedIn). Now, by connecting a LinkedIn account to the Scannable app, you can power through a stack of business cards in seconds, with solid OCR and a very good hit rate for contacts connecting to their LinkedIn profiles. Evernote's standalone Hello app (for keeping track of who you meet and when you met them) does one-off business cards reasonably well, but Scannable is much faster for a bulk scanning job after a trade show or day-long meeting. Once they're scanned, it's one tap to save them into your iPhone's Contacts list. With Hello, Food, Skitch and the flagship Evernote app all offering various scanning capabilities into the Evernote ecosystem, not to mention all the third-party apps that support Evernote as a destination, users have nothing but choices when capturing a whiteboard, flyer or business card. Scannable's value is the streamlined, single-tasker approach it takes to getting things captured quickly and in a near-touchless manner. For that, it deserves a try-out spot on your homescreen.
Evernote's new app turns your iPhone and iPad into a scanner (updated)
You likely already have a favorite scanner app if you regularly deal with documents outside the office. But in case you haven't found The One yet, there's one more contender to consider: Evernote's Scannable app for iOS. The company first announced it at Evernote's annual conference in October 2014. After going through a beta testing phase, it's now available for anyone with an iPhone or an iPad. Like similar programs, you can use it to scan anything by launching the app and pointing your device's camera at a document. According to Evernote, you don't need to press any button, since the app can automatically capture the paper and sharpen its contents, even if you're processing multiple pages.
Evernote now adds context to your memos on Android and Windows
Evernote's bringing Context, one of its more interesting announcements during its fourth conference in October, to Android and Windows. This feature, which was first made available to iOS and Mac users in November, pulls content (based on what you're typing, hence its name) from various sources and displays them on screen. By "various sources," we mean your old notes, your co-workers' notes and a handful of websites, which includes The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and TechCrunch -- just click on an entry inside the Context panel to read it.
Evernote's CEO: Siri and wearables are doing it wrong
Evernote may have started out as a place to keep your digital notes, but CEO Phil Libin has far grander plans in mind: He wants it to be your everything for productivity. We're already seeing shades of Evernote's evolution today. New features let you collaborate with others from within its apps and automatically get links to content relevant from your notes. They're just a start, but they give you one less reason to start yet another email chain or open a web browser for research. But if you want to get a better sense of where Evernote is headed, you just need to look at the burgeoning fields of anticipatory computing (things like Google Now which anticipate information that you may need) and wearables. Yes, wearables.
The new Evernote app for OS X is a joy to use
Evernote updating its software isn't particularly noteworthy; after all the note-keeping service is known for regularly releasing a steady stream of new content and features even to its non-paying customers. The update Evernote released on November 20 for OS X is different from its standard updates. Rather than simply supplying users with a handful of new features, Evernote's latest update is a complete redesign -- a smarter, better version of what users already know and love. You should update right now. The first thing you'll notice is the app's new look, in keeping with the Yosemite aesthetic but redesigned in a way that streamlines the interface. Finding what you're looking for is easier than ever, and if you're worried about getting lost in the minor changes to the menus, the app comes with a handy tour to show you around. Beyond the pretty coat of paint the app has received, users will notice a wealth of improvements in the way Evernote works and helps get work done. Syncing has been dramatically sped up; according to the developers sync is three times faster than before. Tables can now be resized within the app, and Evernote finally has configurable background colors and border styles. Images can also now be resized within the app by clicking on the image and dragging the handle in the bottom right corner of the picture. The notebook selector at the top of the note list now remembers your recently used notebooks and search results are now sorted by relevance to your query. The service has also added support for its Evernote chat feature, allowing you to send messages, share notes, and have discussions with coworkers without leaving the app. Best of all, for those who use Evernote for work related research, you can now search your notes directly from OS X's Spotlight search. It's incredibly handy to be able to find a specific note without having to fire up the entire app itself. Premium users also get a new feature called Context. Context displays notes, articles, and contacts related to whatever you're working on. Even if you don't use any of these new features, it's worth updating just for the noticeable boost in speed that Evernote has received with its latest update. Searching through a sea of media-heavy notebooks is faster than ever, whether you're doing it in Spotlight or from within the app itself. If you use Evernote on your desktop, this is an easy choice to make. Go update your Evernote and enjoy the glory of a well-designed, better version of the app you already probably love. You can download the new improved Evernote from the Mac app store here.
Evernote to add collaborative chat to its note-taking app
In an effort to make Evernote a more efficient workspace, CEO Phil Libin announced a new chat feature in its note-taking app. Simply called Work Chat, it's meant as a collaboration tool for the workplace where coworkers can communicate and work together on a document or a project in real time. Not only will you be able to see who's viewing the note, but you can also see if they're looking at it from the desktop or mobile. Unlike Google Docs, you'll also be able to see at a glance who's working on all of your shared documents at the time that they're doing it. "We're trying to break the tyranny of the inbox," says Libin. "We want to reduce your dependence on that." Realistically, he says that we'll never be free from email, but he would like Work Chat to help alleviate that burden. Work Chat should be available for all platforms -- Android, iOS, Mac, PC and web -- later this year.
Evernote relaunches web client with new distraction-free interface
At the fourth annual Evernote conference today, CEO Phil Libin announced a brand-new web client that promises to be simpler and cleaner. As Libin says, the previous web version was rather clunky and overwhelming, and was really a second-class citizen to the desktop versions. The new web client, however, is much more minimalist and better-looking. Indeed, one of the key features is that you can now write notes in a distraction-free interface. The UI, he says, melts away, so that your words take center stage. In a demonstration onstage, the second you start typing notes, the navigation bar disappears, leaving just the text that you're typing.
Equil Smartpen 2 captures notes, sketches with a real pen
For a lot of people, there's no substitute for taking notes with a pen and piece of paper. You can draw, annotate, write, and organize your information in a real notebook. The problem comes when you want to get some of that information into a computer, at which time you usually have to transcribe your handwritten notes and then try to recreate your drawings or scan them. Well, the Equil Smartpen 2 (US$169, pre-order on Indiegogo) wants to change all that by giving you a comfortable ballpoint pen that captures all of your writing and sketching on plain paper, moving it to either a Mac app (Equil Note, free) or one of several free iOS apps (Equil Note HD for iPad, Equil Note for iPhone, Equil Sketch HD for iPad, and Equil Sketch for iPhone. Design The Equil Smartpen 2 reminds me of some pens that I've received as handout promotional items ... and I mean that in a good way. It's triangular in shape, wider than your usual "stick ballpoint pen", and has a good feel to it. The point where your fingers hold the pen is made of a translucent white plastic that tapers down to the pressure sensitive tip, while the rest of the body is made of a white plastic. Looking close up at the pen, you notice several things that clue you to the fact that this is not just a plastic pen. There's a small grey rectangular button on one side, and near the top you'll find a glowing white LED and a pair of charging contacts. The entire pen fits into what's called a "Charging Cradle and Convenience Case" that holds not only the charger for the device, but the receiver for the pen. That receiver is a small 3-inch long rectangular box that slides out like a drawer from the charging cradle. Folding around the triangular charging cradle is a magnetically-secured cover similar to Apple's Smart Covers. There's even a pop-out cap for the pen, which should help the pens last longer as they won't dry out. It's a very attractive package. Equil will be selling the devices singly or in two-packs; we received a two-pack (two pens) for the review. Functionality For me, the real test of the Equil Smartpen 2 was going to be on how well it worked. I've tried a lot of "smart pens" over the years, and to be honest I was pretty skeptical about how well this device would capture text and sketches. My first test was with my iMac, which is running OS X Yosemite beta. Upon pulling the little receiver out of the charging cradle, I noticed a previously hidden switch for setting modes. It has three positions: one marked with the Bluetooth symbol for shutting off Bluetooth and just capturing pen motion with the pen alone, one marked "Other" for Mac OS X, Windows, and Android, and another marked iOS. The receiver is clipped to the top of the page of whatever you're writing on. If you happen to be using something like a Field Notes notebook or Moleskine, you can just clip it to the page, write and draw, turn the page, and clip it onto the top of that page. That receiver is able to determine the bounds of the page and tells you when you're getting too close to the top or the bottom by flashing a red light. I believe it's using some sort of infrared connection with the pen, as there is a function in the Mac app to determine if you're getting either radio frequency or infrared interference. Pairing the device to my Mac was simple - it just required holding down a power button until a tiny blue LED flashed, then using the OS X System Preferences to complete the pairing. At that point, I fired up the Equil Note app. The app design is flat and very "Yosemite-like", with individual documents combined in collections. The piece of paper you're writing on is represented by a blank piece of "paper", and there are on-screen buttons for changing the ink width and color, switching between a pen, brush and highlighter, selecting or "lassoing" a section of transcribed writing or drawing in order to delete or move it, a tool for typing notes or annotations onto the page from your Mac keyboard, a tool for grabbing a small photo of yourself to insert into the notes, and another tool for selecting the color of virtual paper you want to write on. For any note, you can add as many pages as you want. You can select the paper size (Letter, A4, A5, B5, B6 or custom), add tags to a note, name the note, or share it with a number of services. Equil Note has built-in integration to Evernote, and devices can be synched via either Dropbox or iCloud as well. One interesting in-app purchase for Equil Note is the addition of handwriting recognition packages for a number of languages. Those packs run $5.99 each, or all languages can be installed for a single $19.99 purchase. I did seem to have some issues with getting the receiver to stay paired and connected with my iMac - I'm not sure if that's an issue with OS X Yosemite or if the app just isn't happy with my Mac, but twice I had to eliminate a pairing and re-pair to get things working again. After trying out the Mac app for a while, I switched over to the iPhone version of Equil Note to give it a try. It's similar, and the app is very well done. I actually had an easier time getting the iPhone app to pair with the device and then connect to the app then I did with the Mac app, but both worked equally well, providing almost instantaneous "reflection" of my writing and drawing on the screen of the Mac and the iPhone. What I was able to ascertain during my testing of the Equil Smartpen 2 is that it works, and it works very well. Most of the other devices I've tried either required expensive special paper, had a pen that didn't actually write on the piece of paper, or were so slow in transmitting the pen strokes to the computer or device that they were worthless. Not so with the Equil Smartpen 2. One thing I really find to be useful is that you can shut off the Bluetooth connection altogether and just capture your writing with the pen and receiver. Later, when you're near an iPad, iPhone or Mac (or those other devices...), you can sync up the receiver to them and transfer the captured writing to your computer for sharing. I was not able to test the handwriting recognition, so I don't have any idea of the accuracy of the software that's used. There are some gestures that can be turned on in the software to make your life a bit easier; one lets your double-tap the wake button on the pen to get a new blank page started, while two others let you navigate back and forth between pages by holding down the button and circling the pen clockwise or counterclockwise. Right now, as part of the Indiegogo funding campaign, you can get an Equil Smartpen 2 for $60 off of the regular retail price of $169. For $109, you're getting a single pen with the very cool charging/receiver dock. They also have a $199 special that gets you the 2-pack, so you'll always have a pen charged up and ready to write. By the way, the pen is supposed to last about 8 hours on a charge. Conclusion The Equil Smartpen 2 is the first pen-to-computer input device that I'd actually consider purchasing. Between the well-designed and implemented hardware and the incredibly well-done Mac and iOS apps, it's obvious that a lot of hard work and thought went into the creation of this accessory. There are a few small annoyances with Bluetooth pairing that should get fixed, but otherwise, this is a solid product right out of the starting gate. Rating: 3-1/2 stars out of 4 stars possible
The first four Android apps for Chrome OS are here
Google promised that Android apps would eventually make their way to Chrome OS, and, well, here they are - the search giant announced that the first batch has just gone live in the Chrome Web Store. We knew that Vine and Evernote were on the short list of Android apps to make the leap, but there's no sign of Flipboard yet. Instead, we also got startup Duolingo's excellent language learning app and something called Sight Words, a tool to help little ones identify and recognize words (aww). Four apps may not seem like much to get worked up over, (especially since Duolingo and Evernote work just fine in a web browser) but it's just a start. Google says it'll work on getting more developers to use its App Runtime for Chrome "over the coming months," so don't go expecting a full-on Android invasion of Chrome OS any time soon.
Menote is yet another diary app
Your iPhone or iPad can make remarkably handy devices to chronicle your life with. Diary and note taking apps can make the process easier and perhaps even fun. But not all diary apps are equal. Menote is YADA-Yet Another Diary App. It's free, relatively good looking, but awkward to use and has limited features. Menote requires iOS 7.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The app is free with In-app purchase for premium features for $2.99. I am a strong advocate of keeping a journal or diary. It's a very useful exercise, and not just for writers. I have the 100 year old line-a-day journal that one of my great uncles kept and it's a fascinating piece of family history. I keep my own on my desk and write in it every day. There are lots of options for keeping a diary using iOS devices, including the built-in Notes app. You can use heavy-duty apps like Evernote, or purpose-built diary apps like the award-winning Day One. The promise of these apps it to make it easier to keep a diary because your device is with you and you can also capture images, location information, and more. As I gave Menote a trial run I found that it didn't offer special features or a significantly different or better experience than using other apps. In fact there were more than a few frustrations with using Menote. The app looks nice on the iPhone, but on the iPad it's just blown up for the bigger screen. That's disappointing. The app doesn't allow a switch to landscape in the main view and when creating or editing an entry and you switch to landscape the app removes the menus and controls. You are required to turn your device back to portrait orientation to save, add pics, or return to the main view. Syncing in Menote is not automatic or easy. I created an entry, with photos, using my iPhone and then checked my iPad. Nothing there. I opened and closed both apps repeatedly and eventually the entry sync'd over. There is an option for manual syncing and it's more reliable, but that's a poor substitute for reliable automatic syncing. On top of all that I am also not sure just how "free" the app is. Menote uses proprietary storage, limited to 50 MB. You'll need to purchase the premium option at $2.99 to gain an extra 1 GB. I am uncertain how many entries and photos the initial 50 MB represents. Purchasing the premium features will gain you that 1 GB extra storage, password protection for individual notes, notifications, and a night mode theme. I did not test the premium features. If you are committed to keeping a diary or journal I'd recommend Day One. The app is $4.99 for the iOS app and $9.99 for the Mac OS app. I find it to be really well thought out apps for both iOS and Mac. Day One also syncs with iCloud, not proprietary storage. Menote might be worth a try if you don't require a Mac version and use only a single iOS device and you're looking for a free option.