Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Evernote - Youth Ministry Tech

I'm just going to put it out there...

Evernote helps me get stuff done.  Flat out.  

I'm not being paid for this spot... I am receiving no benefit whatsoever other than passing along a good thing.  So, this is a genuine recommendation. 

I love Evernote.

Saturday, I was sitting in a gathering/meeting with some other youth pastors.  As my faithful readers will know, last summer I declared the age of the Moleskine in my workflow dead.  At that point, I moved exclusively to working in Evernote.  In this meeting, one of the other youth pastors commented that he had been saving notes in the "notes" app on his iPhone.  When I asked him if he used Evernote, he looked at me like I had 3 heads and 7 eyes (which I don't... in case you were wondering...).  Briefly, in about 2 minutes, I explained the awesomeness that is Evernote and we moved on.  Then he said, "we should have a tech day at our youth ministry gathering."

Then it dawned on me... There are still some who don't know about this wonderful Evernote service.

If you haven't heard, Evernote is an amazing program for just about any device you have.  My experience is Mac-based... sorry PC users... But I have Evernote as an app on my MacBook Pro, my iPhone 3Gs (yeah, still rockin it old school) and my iPad (3rd gen).  Basically, it allows you to create a note... about just about anything... and then tag it and upload it so you have access to it on any of your other devices.  Additionally, you can created notebooks where you can keep notes organized according to type or function.

Currently, I have approximately 1,100 notes in Evernote in a handful of notebooks.  Everything from shopping lists at Home Depot to ideas for upcoming events (like our Holiday Lock-In that I'm planning right now).  The tagging option is great because then I can go back and search for a note and find it. Additionally, most web browsers (I use Safari... but they also have a Firefox app... no idea if Internet Explorer does (does anyone actually still use IE?)) have a clipping option where you can clip articles or pages and save them in Evernote.  I clip blogs... games... ideas... pictures... just about everything that I think I might have a use for down the line.  Then I tag it and I can find it quickly in the future.

As if that wasn't enough... you can email email messages to Evernote and it will add them as notes... You can send tweets to it and it will save them as well.  It really is a handy tool.

One of the best parts: it's free (up to 60mg a month)!!! For a small investment, you can get more storage.  But honestly, I have rarely gotten close to maxing out my monthly free limit (only a couple of times when uploading hi-res photos).  Want to check it out for yourself, head right over here and get rolling.  They just released new apps for the Mac iOS and they are really slick and well put together.

Good stuff...
Check it out and get stuff done!

Jim



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