Welcome to another Tech Luv Thursday, folks! Last year I did a post about my favorite note taking apps. The pretty clear winner for me at the time was Simplenote. It’s a great app. It doesn’t take up a huge amount of space. It’s fast. It syncs with Scrivener. Also, for those of us who are down with tagging (yeah, that’s right, I said it) SimpleNote makes the most of that feature.

Last week, however, it occurred to me that I probably haven’t used SimpleNote in at least three months. That’s definitely something worth sharing with all of you. What tool am I using now? Why the switch? Why did I stop using it?

Don’t worry, I’ll get to all of those. The app that I’ve started relying on more than anything is Evernote.

Why The Switch?

I’ll admit I’ve always had mixed emotions about Evernote. There used to be some pretty significant delays in syncing. I’d enter a bunch of notes, go to a meeting and they wouldn’t be available. While everyone else had content to share, I had nothing. Evernote’s core cloud functionality (even before we were even using the word cloud to describe anything beyond the weather) was hampering me.

Still, I liked the idea of being able to access all of my files from any device. Simple note did this faster and simpler (hence the name) than Evernote. As time passed, with ongoing updates, the sync issues were resolved. But still, why the switch? Evernote held two significant advantages over SimpleNote.

Clippings

One of the places where this comes into play the most is when I’m researching recipes. That’s hysterical to me because I hate to cook! I’m not kidding. It’s hell for me. My husband, on the other hand, really enjoys it.

Evernote has a wonderful feature that allows you to clip an entire page and save it in your notebook. The advantage of clipping is that I’ll always have the entire content stored in my Evernote notebook. When I came across a recipe I liked, I’d clip it to Evernote and share it with him. When you use clippings in Evernote, you don’t have to rely on hyperlinks always working. A clipping will stash a copy of everything, pics included, into Evernote. You’ll be able to view entire webpages even when you aren’t on-line.

There’s a Chrome plugin that I use constantly when browsing the Internet. That’s definitely worth an install.

 

 

Notebooks

Again, I love tagging, but sometimes I long for a good old-fashioned folder. Simplenote has tags in spades, but no folders. Evernote delivers that in the form of notebooks. As you can see, I’ve got several that break my notes into related content. From there, I tag the results to narrow things down. So I have a Writing notebook, but tags for topics like Literary Agents, Writing Contests, and Tools. it just made finding and using my content easier.

Also, the design is visual so I want to access Evernote. I find myself wanting to work with it more.

 

The Hard Truth

As much as I originally liked SimpleNote for it’s basic look, it’s the opposite that’s attracted me to Evernote. The latter’s interface is clean and appealing. It’s also pretty intuitive once you get things set up. I guess the bottom line is, with Chrome Plugins and other tools available, it’s just easier to get your content into Evernote.

What tools do you use for note taking? I’d love to hear them!