Evernote
He was very close to locking himself out ofĀ Evernote
This is the story of how I helped him save hisĀ notes
Evernote, like many other companies, lets us use two-factor authentication. This means that, once you enable this function, youāll always need to use a randomly generated code in addition to your password to gain access to your account. I see it as a good security feature that we all should turn on in every App where itās available.
Itās usually activated by scanning a QR code with a so-called Authenticator App, which then starts generating random numbers. But hereās the catch: if you lose access to that App, you are in trouble because no one else has those codes.
As a last resort, there is always a list of one-time-use numbers that can unlock the account in case of an emergency. But not everyone saves that list, despite being instructed to do it every time we turn on two-factor authentication in an App.
The Problem
This unique combination of problems is beyond my comprehension, but criticizing him for not having the printed list of codes would not help. The facts are that this person only had Evernote logged in on his iPad, and he lost access to the Authenticator App.
I donāt believe the support team at Evernote or any other company would be able to help someone in this situation. After all, the codes are generated on the personās device.
The suggestion
Before anything else, I asked him to try something that would probably not work on the iPad, but who knows? Iāve heard that some people have disabled the authentication layer by accessing the Evernote settings on the computer App. Unfortunately, as expected, it didnāt work on his iPad.
Time for a more drastic approach.
The plan was to move all his notes to a new account. On the iPad, he would have to go to each notebook and share it with the new account. On the new account, he would then create a local notebook and move the shared notes to it.
An important detail to remember is that one can only move 100 notes at a time, and thereās no way to select multiple notes on mobile clients. So, the easiest way to do everything on his new account is on a computer with Evernoteās App installed.
How can you prevent this from happening?
First, you should remember to take care of the Authenticator App you are using and to print the one-time-use numbers list. By the way, a good place to put this list is wherever you keep all your personal documents.
A password management App is another option. Many of them can read the original QR code and generate the authentication codes. As they are synchronized with the cloud, you will still have access to the information, even in the event of losing or permanently damaging your phone.
However, if you donāt like this type of Apps, you may want to also print the first QR code you have to scan when you create the code generator for that account. That QR code can be used to recreate the code generator on a different Authenticator App. Just be extra careful with where you keep it because anyone with that QR code can recreate the code generator.
Why choose Evernote instead?
Being good at something doesn’t mean it’s easy or that everyone will be able to do it. After helping clients for more than a decade, I can confidently say that the number of people who are not good with technology is much larger than we think.
Today, I started helping a new client who had already told me about his lack of proficiency in technology.Ā In situations like this, Evernote is always my top choice because it’s easy to understand and use.
In about 20 minutes, my client was comfortable with the user interface and the simple structure of notes and notebooks. Tags and tasks were also part of the explanation, but I told him to ignore them for now. Even inĀ such a short time, I was able to show him all the basics andĀ how Evernote Home can be used as a summary of all the information he has in the app.
Next, I helped him strategically think about and create some notebooks that he’ll be using to add content for the next few days.
In half an hour, a person who is very uncomfortable with technology was already creating notebooks, adding information, and moving notes to organize things on his own. That’s how intuitive Evernote is.
If everything goes as planned, he will arrive at the next session with many more notes and some discomfort with organizing and finding information. Yes, you read that right. It is intuitive, but it can’t do miracles.
This is when we’ll start creating his mindful workflow. I’ll be helping him make sense of all his content while introducing strategies using tags, widgets, or whatever else. It will all depend on how he describes what he is having a hard time finding or doing.
Baby Steps
Not only is he uneasy with technology, he also has his business and personal life activities to take care of. Like several others in his position, he cannot afford the time it takes to learn the fancy apps and methodologies productivity gurus love to sell as magical solutions.Ā
That’s why I try to constantly remind myself that many people can only improve their lives with technologies and workflows that are straightforward to understand and use.
That’s it for today. I hope you have a great week.
Plugins might be the missing link for Evernoteās success
Over the years, Iāve heard CEOs say itās tough to change things or add new features because we all use Evernote differently.
In my opinion,Ā Ian Small, the former CEO, said it best. People often refer to it asĀ My EvernoteĀ because, in fact, it is an entirely different experience when compared to the way others use it. Thatās why when the company releases something new, some people will love it, while others will see it as a waste of time and resources.
An ecosystem of compatible Apps
If we go way back to the beginning of theĀ Phil Libin era as CEO, the App was much simpler. To add new features, businesses and developers would use theĀ APIĀ to create a myriad of compatible services that, in a sense, functioned as plugins. Even Evernote, the company, would create separate Apps if they wanted to experiment with new ideas.
These Apps were listed on Evernoteās website in a space calledĀ Evernote Trunk, which was later renamedĀ App Center. Those of you who were not users back then would not believe in the number of services available.
Eventually, Libin’s team began adding new features to the main App. But, the upcoming CEO, Chris OāNeal, took the opposite approach. In an effort to maximize the firmās resources, he began discontinuing Apps and removing numerous features. That trend, for some reason, never stopped. Even today, features are still being removed. Nonetheless, new ones have also been added. Evernote 10 introduced Home, Tasks, Widgets and many others. And more recently, Bending Spoons add many AI options.
Being in the position of approving, rejecting, and removing features must be extremely challenging. Especially because it has a significant impact on so many people.
As an example, I enjoyed the Evernote map feature, but letās be honest, how many people actually need to see their notes on a map? Likewise, I always wanted a way to see my notes on a Kanban board. For a long time, there was even a Kanban beta that never saw the light of day. Yet again, does it make sense to spend time and resources developing a feature like this? How many people are likely to use it?
The plugins approach
If the decision to remove or introduce features was a daunting task before the acquisition of Evernote, one can only imagine the current situation after significant staff reductions. But maybe it doesnāt have to be like that.
Remember the App Center? Many people didnāt know about that section on the website. And if they managed to get there, things wouldnāt be easy.
First, not everything would be an App. Some were more about connecting and synchronizing with Evernote. Others I would not even know how to categorize. For example, there was a substitute client for the Mac called Alternote. It was a fully functioning App, but Evernote didnāt build or maintain it. A developer from Ukraine was the responsible for it. Amazingly, theĀ Alternote websiteĀ is still up, so you can go there to see some of the amazing screenshots. I hope youāre getting a sense of how powerful the API was.
Do you remember the map and Kanban system I talked about before? Obsidian also doesnāt have these features. It doesnāt even have a task feature like Evernote does. However, I can do all of these and much more using plugins.
Iāve got a suggestion
What if Bending Spoons were to stop adding new features to Evernote? Possibly, even remove some of the current features to make the App easier to use and maintain. This would mean that fewer company resources would be needed. What if they were to transform it into something simple and elegant, such as Alternote? What about having a plugins space like Obsidian, instead of the cumbersome Trunk experience?
I do not have numbers or any inside information, but I think it is reasonable to say that this would make maintaining the App much easier and would possibly incentivize developers to innovate, as has never been done before. Naturally, it is imperative that the API is still working as before to make something like this possible.
It would also mean bringing Evernote back to its roots as a note-taking App, which would attract people who donāt like all the new features. At the same time, the plugins would make so many innovations possible. And those who are very specific about how the App should be, would be able to easily create their ownĀ My Evernote.
Iād love to know what you think about this idea.
Will 2024 be my first year without Evernote?
I think it’s fair to say that everyone was a bit astonished when the news broke on the third day of 2023. Bending Spoons, a company barely anyone knew about, had acquired Evernote.Ā
For the past 15 years, I have never considered leaving Evernote. To be more precise, the thought never crossed my mind. Now it looks like 2024 will mean more to me than just a new year. Maybe it will be a year without Evernote. But it’s rare for something so big to happen suddenly. We have to go back to the beginning of 2022 to understand what’s going on.
I was already experimenting with Obsidian for my video production workflow when some of my clients asked me to help them build their workflows on Obsidian. That ended up starting a feedback loop of fresh ideas and more experimenting and teaching.Ā Long story short, by the end of 2022, this learning and teaching system was at full speed. Then, boom! The acquisition news in January 2023.Ā And, let’s not forget the chaos Twitter was in because of its own acquisition. What if Evernote experienced the same fate?
There you have it. It was a perfect storm forming before my very eyes.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s rare for only one event to cause a big change. It is usually the culmination of many small things happening simultaneously that creates the perfect conditions.
Most of my notesāabout 80% of themāare still in Evernote. But if I’m quoting Pareto, the 20% of notes I’m using 80% of the time are already in Obsidian. And this makes all the difference. When I need to find something, chances are that Obsidian will have it. Which ended up helping me create the habit of opening Obsidian first. Oops!
Another important aspect of Obsidian is the fact that the mobile clients are fully functional. During short trips or vacations, I do not bring a computer with me, and I can still use Obsidian on my iPad as if I were at my office computer.
It’s not all roses, though
I was an early adopter of Postash.io back in 2014, and I loved the fact that I could convert any of my Evernote notes to pages of a website or blog posts. Sadly, the service never worked properly, and I ended up going back to a conventional website hosting service. Obsidian Publish seemed like the perfect opportunity to try that again, but although it is a very reliable service, it came with its own set of problems. As you already know, I went back to a traditional website hosting service.Ā But this is a story for another day.
For the moment, I will leave you with this. It’s more likely than not that 2024 will be the year I switch from Evernote to Obsidian.
Happy New Year!
Technology is neither good nor bad...
It’s all about how we use it
The year is 2012, and I brought a real camera to the Evernote Conference to make sure I would end up with good pictures. It was a wise move, but there was a problem with this one picture.
The small display of the camera might have made me believe everything was okay, but the picture I asked someone passing by to take of Phil Libin and me ended up being blurry. I think you can imagine my disappointment when I transferred the pictures to my computer later that day. It was the only one I had with him, so I kept it.
Fast-forward to the era of AI…
The other day, I was searching for a picture to test the Google Photos unblur feature, and I thought of the one with Phil Libin. Google Photos fixed it in seconds with a single click. I’m impressed. That’s so cool.
Before and after pictures
Original picture from 2012
Picture fixed by AI in 2023
What went wrong with Evernote? How did we get here?
I expect negative comments on every video or article I publish about Evernote now. Sadly, talking about it makes me feel anxious.
I donāt think Evernote is doomed, but there is a profound shift in perception going on. It used to be that going to theĀ Evernote ConferenceĀ was the most important moment I looked forward to every year. It was great to see my friends, clients, developers, and the Evernote team.
Furthermore, sharing news from the conference or anything else Evernote released throughout the year had such positive vibes. Now, itās hard to ignore all the negativity out there.
But the mood didnāt shift at once;Ā it rarely does.
It all started many years ago
In July 2015, Phil Libin stepped down as CEO, and Chris OāNeill initiated a series of changes that made many of us, myself included, uneasy with the future of the company, or, in other words, our notes.
Evernote had a family of companion apps, and the new CEO gradually discontinued most of them, making many of us unhappy. But moving Evernoteās database to Google Cloud and the layoffs kicked off the first negative wave I’ve ever seen. At least, I do not recall anything similar during the Libin years.
I have to believe that from a financial standpoint, moving to Google servers was the best course of action.Ā Even Apple used Google’s service in the early stages of iCloud. And I think they still do. However, the publicās perception was distorted by the way the media covered all the other CEO decisions.
For instance, I recall reading articles that referred to Evernoteās headquarters as a āghost town.ā I was furious about that; it made no sense. Back when Libin was CEO, or, in other words, before the layoffs, I visited the company and can attest that the building was not fully occupied. As far as memory serves, floors one and two were completely empty. Not even desks! The idea was to have enough room to grow in the future.
October 10, 2014. Redwood City, California
Nevertheless, I can relate to the anger and frustration people felt. The way the story was told made it hard to tell the difference between noise and reality, which leads me to the topic of communication. Iāve always found Evernote to be terrible at conveying decisions to its users. And the problem is still present. For instance, I believe thatĀ transferring operations to EuropeĀ was an excellent decision, but again, the public perception was different.
When you are hosting peopleās memories, you donāt have the luxury of being as secretive as Apple or carless as a cable TV announcing the new version of its app. Every decision has to be over communicated.
Iām not sure why, but one thing that made me upset was the end of Evernote Market. Possibly because some of the products made it easier to organize things in real life, like we were used to doing in Evernote. Anyway, I was sad to see that go.
Over the past few years, more than 800,000 Evernote Moleskine notebooks and 300,000 Jot Script styluses were sold worldwide. Through Marketās website alone, we sold nearly 20,000 ScanSnap Evernote Edition scanners.
Market gave us the opportunity to illustrate the true value of Evernote to folks who hadnāt yet considered a Premium subscription. In fact, nearly half of the folks who shopped the Evernote Market were paying us for the first time.
Ultimately though, Evernote is a software company.
Communication, communication, communication. I donāt have all the facts, and I believe all of us try to make the best decisions based on the information we have available at the moment. ButĀ the way the official blog postĀ was written suggests that the Market was successful, “but we are ending it anyway.”
As for:
Instead of selling and fulfilling orders ourselves, on February 3rd [2016], we will transition the Market to promote Evernote-integrated products made and sold by our partners at Adonit, Moleskine, and PFU. We plan to continue adding partners and integrations that strongly and elegantly complement Evernote to that list.
The transition lasted for a brief moment. It didnāt take long before everything stopped being sold.Ā I have a lot of items in my collection, but the Evernote Market was much bigger.
Recently, I learned in an interview with Libin that when he was the CEO, the Market was profitable,Ā but its benefits went way beyond that. I messaged OāNeill on LinkedIn months ago, inviting him to an interview on my channel to talk about his time as CEO, but I never heard back.
The last thing I remember from OāNeillās tenure as CEO was the fervor the company generated on social media to unveil a “fresh brand identity”. Once again, the issue of communication was affecting Evernote. There was a lot of criticism about spending time and money on a logo instead of addressing the problems with the app.
Regarding the old logo, did you know that the elephant trunk isĀ hiding the letterĀ e?
A frustrating web client
If you are aĀ subscriber to my YouTube channel, you know that I try crazy experiments all the time. Well, back in 2018, I tried to run my entireĀ consulting businessĀ on a Chromebook. The Chromebook paired with Google Workspace and Trello performed exceptionally well, but the Evernote web* client, which was limited at the time, ended up being a major drawback in my plan.
* It should be noted that the decision to oversimplify the web client was taken when Phil Libin was CEO.
My experiment and what was going on with Evernote (the company) at that time made me think about switching to a different app for the first time. MyĀ consulting businessĀ is about helping companies build mindful Kanban workflows using tools like Trello, so I thought Notion would be a perfect fit for my notes and Kanban workflows.
I moved some of them, played with Notion for a while, and made couple videos for my YouTube channel in Portuguese, but even though I love all the cool stuff Notion has to offer, the database vibe doesnāt appeal to me. If I were to switch to a different app, note-taking would have to be its main feature. Perhaps that is the reason whyĀ I am currently enjoying Obsidian.
Ahead of its time?
Sometimes I catch myself thinking about Evernoteās series of managerial missteps along the way, but analyzing events in hindsight is always unfair. Other times, I believe the problem was timing. It is possible that Evernote was too ahead of its time and didnāt find a way to use this advantage in its favor.
For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to test theĀ Obsidian Map View plugin, and I couldnāt stop wondering why Evernote removed the fantastic map feature the app had back in the day.
Most people don’t even know this, but when we create a note, the app always attempts to save the coordinates of where the note was created. Evernote map view would simply show all notes with coordinates on a map. That’s it. We didn’t have to deal with any configuration.
It was a great feature, as were many others that were discontinued. In contrast, theĀ Obsidian Map View pluginĀ is difficult to set up, but at least it exists for people like me who want to see their notes on a map. Why? Well, you should watch the video below to be amazed by how many interesting use cases people can come up with this feature.
Evernote even had AI back in 2014, but the āAā stood for augmented. Features like context and handwriting OCR were among the many innovations the company came up with. To learn more about the challenges and the ideas they had for the future, I encourage you toĀ watch my interview with Phil Libin on this topic.
Even today, with so many of these marvels gone, itās still hard to find an app thatās both easy for non-tech-savvy people to use and that also packs in so many useful features.
But when a company stops innovating, others will take over. Steve Jobs famously said that if Apple hadnāt taken the iPod’s market share with the iPhone, other companies probably would have.
Do you remember?
Did you know that back in 1999, in the days of dial-up and DSL Internet, there was a service calledĀ Yahoo BriefcaseĀ that would create a āYā drive in our computers and allow us to synchronize files to the cloud?
Thatās correct; Yahoo had it many years before Dropbox. But I bet that young people believe that Google and other companies invented services pioneered by Yahoo. The book āMarissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!ā has some chapters about how Yahoo missed the chance to be even bigger than todayās version of Google. Instead, it ended up as a Verizon subsidiary with a financial channel on YouTube.
Palmās path was much harder than Yahooās. They were inventing a new market, and if that wasnāt tough enough for the team to deal with, the company went through numerous ownership changes and never found its way to a stable future. Itās mind-boggling to me that an entire generation is unaware of the remarkable products this company invented.
If you believe that the idea of having a personal assistant in your pocket was created by Apple with the iPhone, here is a good book for you: āPiloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring, and the Birth of the Billion-Dollar Handheld Industry.ā
The Apple II was the first computerĀ I owned as a teenager, but my Palm PDA and Yahoo services were tools I used professionally for a long time, andĀ I still miss some of Palmās features.Ā I wish these companies had continued to evolve, but, as I mentioned before, market forces cannot be controlled.
A bright future?
The year is 2018, and here we go again. Evernote has a new CEO, Ian Small. Iād say his main accomplishment was solving a problem that no one else had the courage to deal with before him.
Evernote had apps for Android, iOS, Mac, Web, and Windows, but I always referred to them as āversionsā because they were so different from each other. The original management team had a reason for this approach, but in retrospect, it never worked well for us, the users. For instance, formatting a note using one of these āversionsā would, more often than not, break it in another. However, I believe the worst consequence was that it slowed down innovation.
Evernote 10 was a necessary evil that created so many complications for the end user. It had to be done. It was a long-overdue project. Furthermore, it took longer than expected, and it was hit by COVID-19. And, again, more features were removed from the app.
Can you see a pattern here? From a userās perspective, Evernote is constantly removing features and working to fix new bugs.
But for the first time, Evernote established an astonishing channel of communication with its users. The behind-the-scenes videos with the CEO, the blog posts, and many other projects created a new kind of collaboration between us and the company.
Smallās courage to rewrite all the clients was both bold and necessary. But it also means that from a technical standpoint, Evernote 10 was an entirely new app, and like every new piece of software, there may be several unknown bugs.
The good news is that 10 opened the doors to innovation. Evernote Home and its great widgets, such as the calendar and filtered notes, tasks, notes filters, and backlinks, came after 10 was introduced. Even the Real-Time Editing feature was being worked on by Ianās team for many, many months before the Bending Spoons acquisition.
There are frequent complaints about bugs, but the way I see it, Evernote had no other options. They had to deal with the multiple apps that were incompatible with each other. It was either no more innovation or dealing with some bugs for a while
However, my concern is somewhat distinct. I think Smallās decision to move development towards the āAccomplish Anythingā vision was a great idea. The new features his team created brought our notes to the next level, and the way he spoke about Evernote was a clear indication that many more similar features would be coming. Unfortunately, I have no idea what Bending Spoons plans are for Evernote.
I am a fan of Small and his accomplishments, but what I hope to understand one day is why the company was sold. Was it his decision? The boardās? Was it an offer? What happened?
The Bending Spoons era
I have no doubt that Bending Spoons is working hard to fix all the problems they inherited, but they may be running out of time. The bugs, along with the layoffs, price increases, and other unpopular decisions, may be hurting Evernote credibility too quickly. To add more salt to the injury, the connection Smallās team built with the community by being so transparent is slowly disappearing.
I believe Bending Spoons has everything it takes to make it right, but only time will tell if they will be able to replace the iPod with the iPhone or end up like Palm, Yahoo, and so many other fascinating companies that are long gone.
Evernote and other technologies I used when I was in Morocco
When we entered the boarding area, my wife realized that she had forgotten her phone. In other words, gone were all the messages the travel agency had sent her. Thankfully, Evernote saved our trip to Morocco. At that point, we were unable to go back home and return in time, so I opened my Travel notebook on Evernote to assess the situation. But before I go any further, let me provide you with some context.
Usually, I am the one who organizes our trips, but this time it was different. My wife was doing it. On my side, as I have already shown in past videos, I was saving on Evernote all that she was sending me. Also, I am not a WhatsApp user.
Back to the airport
I had our boarding passes and all instructions in offline notes, but hereās my question. Why would a travel agency send all the information to its clients using WhatsApp instead of email? Also, why would the clients trust WhatsApp with all that information? And Iām not even talking about privacy. Iām talking about access.
Without a phone, which can be lost, broken, or stolen, there is no way to access the messages. However, on a public computer, one can open and even print information using the web client of an email provider or notes saved on Evernote, Google Keep, or others.
Iām convinced that this addiction to WhatsApp has already gone too far and caused many people serious problems. A few days ago, I even saw an article suggesting that people use the note-to-self feature to take notes.
NO! Please do not do this.
If you are not interested in dealing with all that Evernote or similar Apps have to offer, use Google Keep. Itās simple, and youāll be able to access your notes even without your phone.
Okay, thatās that.
But, since we are here, I would like to share with you the other technologies that made our trip a success, even though we did not buy a local SIM-Card.
Google Maps
You have to do this before loosing Internet connection. Go to settings, select the āOffline Mapsā option, choose an area and download it. From now on, even if you do not have Internet access, that map will be available. But there is a caveat: there are no turn-by-turn directions.
The GPS will still work, and you’ll see the blue dot moving on the map. If you are walking as we were, it is pretty easy to follow a route towards your destination. Nevertheless, Iām not certain how efficient this would be for driving.
Google Translate
Just like Google Maps, we can download dictionaries on Google Translate. Before the trip, open the App on your phone, select one or more languages and tap the icon with an arrow pointing down.
For this trip, I downloaded the Arabic and French dictionaries, which were quite helpful.
Canon App
I love the way Google Photos plots all pictures on a map, and there is also a practical use. I often forget a restaurant or another place location, and finding the address is as simple as opening the photo and selecting ‘Open in Google Maps’.
For this trip, a brought my Canon, that doesnāt have a GPS. To fix this, I installed the Canon Camera Connect App, which connects to my phone via Bluetooth and uses its GPS to obtain the location of the pictures I was taking.
Garmin Instinct 2
This one was just for fun. I used my Garmin Instinct 2 to track all our walks, and at the end of each day, I saved the map in Evernote with some statistics, and a picture of the watch showing how much battery was left.
Each day, we walked more than 10 km, and Iām now even more impressed with the battery of this watch. You can learn more about my decision to buy it by clicking here.
Although I wasnāt expecting to need this, I added the hotelās location to my watch, so I could navigate back there. Google Maps worked great, and we ended up memorizing our way back, but I had to try it. One day I did use the watch to go back to the hotel. It worked like a charm, and the geek in me loved it.
Itās better to be disconnected
My wife and I love to travel, but since the end of the lockdown, weāve been only traveling within the EU. With the single currency, no border checks, and free roaming, things are too easy. There is no need to prepare thoroughly.
Itās great that we can just pack and go, but ultimately, you feel like you never really visited another country.
Morocco was, however, a different story. I went back to being prepared-for-anything mode, read a lot about it and watched some documentaries. Furthermore, without a local SIM-Card, we were disconnected from home most of the time, and we felt really immersed in an entirely different culture.
