il mucca

welcome to iPhone app reviews- where i talk about the apps i can’t live without and why you shouldn’t wait another minute to download them.

first up: evernote. this app is like the brain i never knew i never had. say that five times fast. go ahead. i dare you. *ahem*

it’s basically a powerful, cross-platform digital notebook. you can access your notes from the web, your computer, or your phone. i use it every day- anything i need to remember for longer than a day goes into evernote. i’m a college student, so having class notes accessible is really important to me. i experimented with other notebook solutions like google docs, ms word, and countless other random apps, but nothing worked. until i met evernote. it was love at first type.

i take notes directly into evernote in class. while i’m typing, the program syncs with the evernote web service. which means my class notes are just a finger-tap away, no matter where i am. amazing.

but evernote’s superpowers don’t stop there. you can upload pdfs, snap web clippings, and add voice notes. oh, did i mention that when you add a picture, all the text in the picture immediately becomes searchable? so if (heaven forbid) my laptop should run out of battery, i can hand-write my notes, take a picture of them with my phone, upload the photo, and wham! it’s part of my class notes.

one of my other favorite uses is recipes- when i see a recipe i love, i select, copy, and paste into evernote. (or if i’m using safari, i right-click and add to evernote from the contextual menu!) then when i’m in the grocery store and i can’t remember if that killer cannoli recipe calls for mascarpone or ricotta, i simply look it up. and likely discover that it’s neither and i just dreamed about cannoli because of too much mafia research.

notes are organized into notebooks and can also be tagged. of course, everything is searchable. and notes are geo-tagged, so you can sort them based on location too. you know, so you can find out exactly where you were standing when you added “get a killer cannoli recipe” to your foodie to-do list.

i also use it for grocery lists, to-do lists, audio recordings of composition ideas… and it’s great for stashing all of those things that you know you’ll need someday. there is a monthly upload limit for the free version, but i’ve never even come close to it. clearly i’ve only scratched the surface of evernote usage.

so what are you waiting for? go! Get it from the App Store. and discover the brain you never knew you didn’t have!