It must be nice to be Evernote CEO Phil Libin right now. His company's product / service, Evernote, is about to break 2 million customers, they're past the days of initial development and beta testing, and the future is looking bright.

I had a chance to chat with Mr. Libin last Friday about Evernote, the service that acts as a cloud-based repository for all of the information in your life. Last year during the closed beta test of the service, TUAW's Brett Terpstra interviewed Libin, who called Evernote "universal human memory extension." Whatever information you want to put into the Evernote cloud -- text, photos, voice memos -- is available for searching and viewing from your Mac, PC, or iPhone. Handwritten or printed text runs through a recognition routine that makes it searchable text, something that I've found incredibly useful when storing my business cards in Evernote. You can send web pages to Evernote from Firefox with the click of a button, or tweet notes to Evernote by addressing them to @myEN.

Libin ran me through a short history of Evernote, mentioning that many of the first reviews and discussions of it were provided by TUAW. The Mac app and the service began a closed beta in February, 2008, moving to an open beta in June of that year. As Libin noted, "We never really told anyone when we came out of beta; we just gradually removed the word 'beta' from the site and the software." Since then, Evernote has signed up almost 2 million users.

When I asked Libin if Evernote was meeting the company's expectations in terms of growth, he replied that "we're right where we thought we'd be now." In terms of the present and near future, there's a lot going on. Localized versions of Evernote will be available by the end of 2009 for several European countries, with a Japanese localized version on tap for early 2010. Libin noted that "the Japanese market is huge! Evernote is listed in many Japanese magazines, half of our Twitter traffic is in Japanese, and we're even thinking about opening an office in Japan."

This video is from a chat I had with Phil and Andrew, CEO and Lead Mac Developer for Evernote, respectively. We covered Evernote when it first came out a while back, and it's been fun to watch it evolve since then. We talked about WWDC and recent Apple news, as well as some upcoming improvements in Evernote for both Mac and iPhone (searchable voice notes! UI improvements!). The interview ended up running quite long, and while it's still a bit lengthy, this version is cut to about 1/4 of the full video. I think I got all of the important bits in, though. Enjoy.

Update: This video has been moved to YouTube and is now watchable. Due to YouTube's length limitations, the video has been split into two parts, both embedded here.

Recently I spent a few days in Paris, France. I travel light: One bag (pro tip: Roll your clothes), one jacket and one hat. I love getting my necessities down to a single carry-on bag. What I hate is all the paper. Airline confirmation receipts, bus schedules, relevant correspondence from family and friends, etc. Not to mention lists of restaurants to try, sights to see, etc.

This time I went nearly paper-free (I'm sticking with paper boarding passes for international flights, although iPhone scanning has been done and is now officially supported by some carriers), thanks to my iPhone and 2 applications. Here's how I did it.

Tracking flights

Of course, the first thing I've got to do is line up all of my flights. I typically go from Boston to Newark when I'm traveling internationally, which means there are several connecting flights to manage with Flight Update and Evernote.

Flight Update [App Store link] is among my top 5 iPhone apps. Here's how it works and why I love it. First, add a trip and then add your flights. You can designate a preferred airline if there's one you use often. Enter your flight number and date (or search by route if you prefer) and Flight Update fills in an incredible amount of data as if by magic.

You'll get airtime, departing and arriving airport, terminal, distance, scheduled meals and so much more. It even identifies the type of plane and offers a color-coded seating chart (the colors rate the seats by desirability). You can even search for alternate flights should a problem arise.

What I really love about Flight Update is that it consistently beats the airport at dispensing timely information. For example, the flight I took from Newark, New Jersey to Boston, MA this past Monday was listed as delayed on my iPhone before the announcement was made at the gate. When the delay was later lifted (thank goodness), my iPhone let me know before the airport did. That's awesome. At $4.99US, you simply can't beat Flight Update. Every iPhone-toting traveler ought to own it.

Eliminating paper

With Flight Tracker handling the airplanes, I turned to Evernote [App Store link] to handle the paper. This is straightforward: I made a notebook called "Paris" and filled it with:

• Confirmation codes for each flight, including the original emails as PDFs
  
• Hotel information
• Correspondence from family members I'd be traveling with
• Special instructions

With each one tagged "Paris," I simply created a saved search. Here's how. First, enter your search term. Next, click the little blue arrow, scroll down and select "Save Search." From then on, you can access all documents that meet your criteria (in my case, a single tag) by hitting the bookmark button. In fact, I just left it there for the duration of my trip.

When I checked in at the airport kiosk, I simply grabbed my confirmation number from Evernote. Same with the hotel. When I found the restaurants and other points of interest that I wanted to explore, I snapped a photo note and applied the "Paris" tag. Back at the hotel, everything was sent to the Evernote servers via the free WiFi.

This has been said before, but Evernote (free from the App Store, basic and premium plans available) is awesome. Human beings have short term memory, long term memory and now, Evernote.

Keep in mind

Going paperless isn't without risk. There's a good chance that your airport will have a lousy cell signal and no free WiFi. Having to pony up $5 or so just to get a code is a hassle if you forgot to sync before leaving the house. Additionally, not all ticket agents are tolerant of kids these days with their fancy smart phones, and may give you an odd look (or a hard time) when you say, "I don't have the printout, but I have my iPhone!" Hence my hesitation to abandon paper boarding passes.

Finally, Evernote displays PDFs as attachments, meaning you can't view them without an internet connection. If you think that might be an issue, copy and paste the text itself into a note.

In the end I had a very enjoyable travel experience with just a small bag, my wallet and my iPhone. Here's a huge thank you to the developers of Flight Tracker and Evernote. Your apps are awesome.

As noted by our commenters below, you may also get a travel boost out of the Tripit app, which Steve reviewed not long ago.

In the hustle and madness of yesterday's wayback machine activity, there were a couple of App Store introductions (and a notable upgrade) that might have slipped through...

First up: The long-awaited version of Quickoffice for iPhone that allows editing of Word and Excel files hit the store today and was demoed at CTIA. [Looks like the new Quicksheet is available now, but the full bundle and the Quickword standalone app aren't on sale yet as of Thursday morning.] While QO has had a 'mobile files' tool on the iPhone for a while now, this is the first build of the venerable portable office suite (which has been a favorite on Palm handhelds for years) that can do editing in both formats.

Quickoffice for iPhone can do font formatting and cut, copy and paste within Word documents -- presumably to be tied in with system-wide C/P in the OS 3.0 world-to-come. Both the Excel and Word tools will support landscape mode for extra editing area.

Files on the iPhone can be transferred off the device using WiFi to a local Mac, or straight to a MobileMe account. Quickoffice for iPhone is shipping now for an "introductory price" of $19.99, but if you just want the Excel spreadsheet editor (formerly MobileFiles Pro) you can have it for $12.99; the Word document editor is also $12.99. Quickoffice Files (previously known as MobileFiles 2.0) is $3.99 and offers similar file transfer capability to Readdle and other file managers. We're getting a review copy for a more thorough walkthrough later this week. It's worth noting that a Microsoft exec hinted at a version of Office itself for the iPhone that may be coming sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Second... who doesn't love a good robot game? For $4.99, you can now dive into Pangea's classic Otto Matic series with the company's new title for iPhone, Otto Matic: Alien Invasion. The B-movie style game pits Otto against the attacking Brain Aliens from Planet X; his job is to save as many humans as possible. Otto Matic: Alien Invasion features 10 levels and 25 different enemies, multiple weapons and activities, and quite a bit of fun.

Lastly, the TUAW top pick Evernote has been updated with a nifty landscape mode, thumbnail viewing, improved performance, favorites sorting, and an embedded web browser to reduce the tap a link --> Safari --> back to home screen --> scroll around --> relaunch Evernote loop-the-loop annoyances. Evernote 2.0 for iPhone remains a free download, and the basic Evernote service is also free; a year of pro-level service costs $45.

Right around Macworld-time, Zengobi released Curio 5.4, which included a healthy dose of Evernote integration. I had fallen for Evernote before I really figured out Curio, but lately I've found both to be key elements in my organization arsenal. I especially like Evernote's mobile capabilities and cross-platform sync. At home, I organize nearly all of my projects and related materials in Curio. Now, with Curio 5.4 and Evernote's very thorough API, we get the best of both worlds. All of the notes I take on my iPhone by photographing, recording and typing show up automatically -- and with full search capabilities -- when I sit down at my Mac. I also do a lot of research on the web, and this new integration means I can clip web pages to one place -- Evernote -- and have the information immediately available in Curio.

Evernote's various software clients are free, and premium accounts (allowing for any filetype and much more storage) are available for $5/month or $45/year. Curio is more pricey; the standard version is $99, and the pro version is $149 (there are significant academic discounts available). If you're already a Curio user but not an Evernote user, I'd recommend you sign up for a free Evernote account and start enjoying the benefits of the integration. You can always upgrade to a premium account if you find it indispensable (a fairly common occurrence). If you're an Evernote user considering Curio, use the coupon code EVERNOTE at Zengobi's online store (or Academic Store) to get a 20% discount on a Curio purchase. If you use neither, and don't want to, shouldn't you have given up reading this about a paragraph ago? Nah, thanks for sticking around.

Evernote, a versatile (and oft-mentioned) note-taking application for Mac and iPhone (as well as Windows and other mobile platforms), has recently opened up a Service API. This comes as an intriguing extension to the basic AppleScript support found in the 1.1.5 release, and opens up the possibility of creating homegrown interfaces ranging from simple calendar/todo managers to "thick" clients which can manipulate the entire collection of Evernote data.

The AppleScript library itself is quite useful, albeit slightly limiting. You can retrieve lists of notes based on searches, create new notebooks and notes from a variety of sources, and obtain properties for the various elements of Evernote. The most interesting feature of the AppleScript library is the import/export automation capability. You can export (in well-formed XML) entire notebooks, or notes from a list (such as one generated by a search). These can be transported automatically by whatever means work best for your purposes, and then imported on the other end. This, to me, is primarily interesting because it allows for "local" synchronization of large libraries without using up online quotas. It's also ideal for automatic backup of your notes, among other potential applications: a recent MacOSXHints tip shows a means of adding notes to Evernote via Quicksilver, complete with notebook, title and tagging syntax. Open the Evernote dictionary in Script Editor for the full set of definitions.

The AppleScript library lacks the ability to add tags to existing notes, move notes or delete notes and notebooks. These functions can, however, be found in the Service API. I'm waiting on an API key today, but I'm looking forward to exploring the possibilities for both desktop and web applications. Libraries for the API are available in Java, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby -- along with sample code and documentation -- at the API overview page.

The last thing I'll mention is the query syntax, which can be of as much use in the Evernote search bar as it is in an AppleScript or API call. I hadn't fully realized the extent of the search grammar until I read the API documentation. For Evernote users who haven't explored this, it's a very effective way to build searches quickly without a lot of token-clicking. You can start with the basic tag syntax: tag:"tuaw", which will find every note tagged with "tuaw." Prefix it with a minus sign (-tag:"tuaw") to ignore any result with the "tuaw" tag. Combine multiple search parameters for boolean searches; the default search is "all", requiring the results to match every parameter in the string (AND), but you can prefix the query with any: to make it an OR search. Other possible parameters include created: and updated: (which respond to some natural language dates as well as a compact profile of ISO 8601), intitle: (search only in the titles of notes), as well as terms for narrowing to a specific notebook or querying just about any attribute of a note (latitude, longitude, altitude, author, source, etc.). See section C of the API docs for a full description of the search grammar.

It's great to see such a useful application continuing to expand itself and allow for third-party interaction. If you're interested in developing around Evernote, or just playing with the possibilities, stop by the developer page and take a look around.

Since the iPhone's introduction, people have been using the built-in camera for more than quick snapshots. Some have taken macro shots, used it as a webcam or even created high art (OK, so that last one was a bug).

Another popular practice is to use it to generate to-do lists and even as a scanner. People have taken photos of things they need to buy or remember to do. Others have sent snapshots of business cards, receipts, etc. into applications like iPhoto and Evernote.

That's clever, but getting a legible image of your documents is difficult. Enter the iPhone Document Scanner. This device positions the iPhone and document to be "scanned" at the perfect distance and ensures a steady hand. If you're a Ponko member, you can download a free .eps file of the plans to build your own.

We knew Apple put the camera on the back for a reason!

Thanks, Baptiste!

Picking my favorite iPhone apps was pretty straightforward. I went with three apps that save me time. The first one wows me because using it sort of feels like magic, and the other two are great mobile companion applications to wonderful Mac-based programs.


Shazam [iTunes link] Free

When I say using Shazam feels like magic, I'm not kidding. Shazam can listen to any music that is playing using the iPhone's microphone, and based on an acoustic fingerprint of the music can tell you the name of the song, artist, and album. It takes only seconds to listen, then a few more to look up the song and return results. Conveniently, Shazam maintains a list of songs that you've looked up (tagged, in Shazam's parlance) so that you can easily go back and follow up on the songs later. It also includes links to purchase the songs you've tagged from iTunes, as well as links to music videos for tagged songs if they exist on YouTube.

OmniFocus [iTunes link] $19.00

I have a particular preference for software that is available in desktop versions as well as mobile versions, particularly if they contain a solid synchronization function. While it can be somewhat of an acquired taste, OmniFocus on the Mac is arguably one of the most capable to-do list applications, particularly if you subscribe to the GTD methodology. Imagine my delight, then, when OmniGroup announced there would be an iPhone version of OmniFocus that synchronizes to the desktop version. What's even better is that the iPhone version isn't simply a clone of the desktop version, but includes iPhone-specific functionality such as being able to determine what context to display based on your physical location using GPS. As with all software that relies on remote synchronization, it can be a bit slow when starting up, but that's a hit you take to have the convenience of synchronization, it seems.

Evernote [iTunes link] Free

Evernote has been around for a long time as a capable Windows-based note taking product, but if ever there was an interesting story of a company re-inventing their product, this is it. Evernote in its modern capacity is a note-taking powerhouse, available on Mac, Windows, on the web, and on the mobile web. But even better, it also has an iPhone version. The beauty of Evernote is in its ability to capture various types of information easily, then make it searchable and easy to reference. Everything you store in Evernote is stored in an account for you on Evernote's servers, allowing them to apply advanced optical character recognition to your images and documents to make even non-text documents searchable. Like OmniFocus, Evernote can be a bit slow to start, and it's disappointing that Evernote's content is not stored locally on the iPhone, but is pulled down from their servers every time you access it. But for its ability to allow you to off-load important information to a secondary brain, Evernote is invaluable.


Honorable Mention

Given my attachment to synchronization apps, how can I not give a nod towards the iPhone version of NetNewsWire, which complements the entire stable of free NewsGator RSS clients, including NetNewsWire on the Mac. NNW would have made this write-up, had Steve not grabbed it first. But who can blame him?

If you were underwhelmed by the initial release of Evernote's client app for the iPhone ("Hey, I can't edit these notes -- what's up with that?") you might be a bit happier now that version 1.2 has been cleared for takeoff in the App Store [store link]. The geotagging, photo-note-taking, audio-recording backup brain now gets editing features on the device, longer audio clips, bug fixes and more.

One feature that's been in demand from iPhone users without unlimited data plans is a failsafe switch to prevent note synchronization unless the device is using a WiFi connection; it's present in this version, and it seems like a clever adaptation to the multi-network nature of the iPhone (of course, iPod touch users don't know from this 3G business, and Evernote works fine for them as well). You can download the updated version or check for updates in the App Store to get it.

Evernote for iPhone (iTunes link) looks to fill one of the big remaining holes on the iPhone: virtual notes syncing. Basically, the iPhone app is a stripped down version of the Evernote client which allows you to create and access notes which are stored in the Evernote cloud. Once created these notes can be accessed on the web or through any Evernote client application (they're available for Mac OS X, Windows and Windows Mobile).

If you're running the Evernote client for Mac OS X you can easily create notes accessible on your iPhone. Technically, this isn't syncing since the notes are not really stored on the iPhone itself; a network connection is required to access the notes. It's rather unfortunate that there isn't any kind of caching on the iPhone, because this means you lose access to all your notes if, for instance, you go on a plane.

The Evernote application allows you to create several different kinds of "notes." Naturally you can create text notes. However, you can also create "Audio Notes" recording a short audio message to yourself, or either of two kinds of photo notes: from a previous taken snapshot, or one newly generated from within the application itself. You can then select which notebook you want it added to, as well as add tags and text. Once saved it goes into the pending category and is shortly uploaded to the cloud. Unfortunately, once created you can only access (and delete) notes from the iPhone; you cannot edit them.

There are a few rough edges on the app. Sometimes the syncing does seem to work quite right. Text notes created on the iPhone default to a ridiculously tiny font. And you cannot edit notes. Nonetheless, it's a handy addition to the iPhone toolkit and finally provides a reasonably good work-around for the missing notes syncing. Check out the gallery below.

Two of my preferred Mac-friendly cloud services have now made the jump to actually accepting money from subscribers, which is a good thing (really, it is!). TUAW favorite Evernote has moved from private to public beta, and Techsmith video hosting site Screencast.com is now at 1.0 release status. Both services are now offering trial/free plans alongside their premium plans for paid subscribers.

The Screencast.com site is already integrated with the free Jing Project capture tool for Mac and the pro-level (and, at least for the moment, Windows-only) Camtasia Studio app; you can also upload screencasts that you create with almost any tool you like (including ADA multi-winner Screenflow) in a variety of formats for hosting on the service. Selecting which of your screencasts to share and which to password-protect is very easy, and the service automatically sets up RSS and iTunes feeds for the folders you choose to make public.The 60-day trial account includes 200 MB of storage and a 1GB transfer limit; paid plans start at $6.95 a month.

Evernote's private beta grew to include over 125,000 users (ahem), and the new public beta includes an option for a $5/month premium user plan that increases your monthly transfer quota/new note cap from 40 MB to 500 megabytes and gives you SSL for all data, priority access to the text-recognition queues and tier 1 customer support. Plus you get a snazzy t-shirt while supplies last (pink elephants on parade!). The web interface to Evernote has also gotten a facelift, with full drag-and-drop support and an improved clipper feature. Can't say yet if they've fixed the session timeout issue that ate a long note my wife was writing last night, but I surely hope so.

In a conversation a couple of weeks back, Evernote CEO Phil Libin shared some future directions for the product with us as well as a couple of tips from his personal use of Evernote.

First, what many are waiting for will be coming very soon: a native iPhone client for Evernote (shipping shortly after the App Store opens), including one-button publishing to Evernote and location tagging for every item you create from your phone, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading you back to that favorite restaurant or bargain spot. (Phil's tip: whenever he parks his car at the airport, he takes a picture of the parking spot and sends it to Evernote to help jog his jetlagged brain.)

Second, the upcoming platform-wide features for Evernote will soon include more granular controls on publishing and sharing, a revamped Windows client, Evernote for Blackberry, and audio notes. (Phil's tip: he uses Evernote notebooks to share collections of photos or screenshots, like this accidental poetry from CNN rundown.) Later this summer we should expect to see the first public release of the Evernote API, which will permit third-party devs to add features to the service (personally I'd love to have a business card postprocessor tool, which Libin sees as a good 3rd party opportunity).

Other future features are yet to be publicly disclosed, but Libin hinted that the image-processing power of Evernote's servers may be bent to teasing out specific features of photographs. Faces? Product barcodes? Geotagged landscapes? Can't wait to find out. Meanwhile, the free Mac version of Evernote (read Brett's original review here) is downloadable at evernote.com.

Your response to last week's post about Evernote was amazing, with over 250 people requesting beta invitations and jamming my email inbox. Evernote has followed up with a 24-hour open invitation just for TUAW readers. There's also a new 1.1.0a build of the beta that resolves a crashing bug.

Hurry over to this link:

http://www.evernote.com/Registration.action?code=tu4w7

before 2 PM ET on May 20th to get your very own invitation!

The beta just got bettah!

TUAW recently featured an interview with Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote, who stated that the ultimate goal of the application is to be a "universal human memory extension." I've been using Evernote for over a month now and love it -- I've sucked all of my business cards into Evernote with my iSight or iPhone camera, and use the program instead of a card file. Evernote's text recognition simplifies tagging the cards, and I can use either the Mac app, the web client, or my iPhone to look through my database. Evernote's unique focus on images makes it quite different from other information managers like Together or Yojimbo.

The update has some great new features based on customer feedback:

• PDF support -- Evernote can now store PDFs and you can print into Evernote from any Mac application. Image-recognition isn't working for PDFs at this time, but they're working on it.
• Encryption -- Included in the last release, but not announced, encryption works with the Mac or Windows clients only, not with the web client.
• Spotlight integration -- Evernote "memories" are now searchable, and you can create Finder "smart folders" that include Evernote content.
• Mixed View Mode -- In addition to List and Thumbnail view, Evernote 1.1 has a Mixed view that shows small thumbnails with metadata for each note.
• Vertical Preview Pane -- In Mixed and Thumbnail modes, provides a big preview pane with live search results.
  

Want to give Evernote a try? I have 19 Evernote invitations for the first 19 commenters who ask for one politely.

Update: All of the invitations were swallowed up quickly by a group of very polite readers! Thanks for your comments and have fun with Evernote!

Update 2: Thanks to Evernote, I have a huge number of invitations available for TUAW readers. Leave a comment and try out Evernote.

Update 3: Sorry, everyone! I can't send out any more invitations. But thanks for playing!

TUAW disclosed an affection for Evernote a little while ago, and our love of Skitch is no secret. While love triangles are often a logistical nightmare, this one actually works out in a fairly organized fashion. An entry at the Evernote blog details the use of Skitch to input notes into Evernote, complete with annotations. It's simple, if not a bit obvious in a why-didn't-I-think-of-that way.

There have been several other thoughts on extending and integrating Evernote, but one of my favorites was a bright idea for setting up a liaison with Jott to facilitate voice transcription of on-the-go notes.