The One Thing I'd Change about Evernote

As I've mentioned in earlier columns (here, here, here, and here), I've hopelessly fallen for Evernote. I did want to mention one flaw I hadn't realized until just recently, and it relates to the way Evernote handles notes from your phone (in my case, an Android phone) versus content you clip via your desktop.

When I'm at my computer and I find an article I'd like to save to Evernote, I can do so via the Evernote Web Clipper, a browser extension - I usually use Chrome as my browser of choice, and the extension puts a little elephant head in the upper right-hand corner of my screen. I can click on the icon and save the whole page, an article, a selection, or just the URL. It's terrific - I love having that content available to me regardless of what device I'm on.

I'd assumed for some reason that my phone was doing the same thing. I frequently see articles I want to save and so I use the Evernote extension from my mobile browser to save them as a note. I can tag the note and add it to a notebook. But what I didn't realize was that it's not saving the actual content of the page; it's just saving the link to the page. So if, for example, I'm using my computer at a location without Internet access, the notes I saved via my phone are pretty useless, as they are just links.

I don't know if Evernote eventually plans to roll out an app that functions more similarly to how their browser extensions work, but I would really love to see this development. I'll still use it on every device I own - Kindle Fire, laptop, blender - but it would be easier if I knew I was getting the same result when I clip a page.

Several folks have emailed me to say they've tried Evernote as a result of this series, which makes me so happy! What questions would you like to see me address in other columns?