Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

EverNote iPhone Voice Memos

I really miss Jott. Since the service went out of beta I have not used it. I’d probably pay a Flickr-Pro price of $30 per year, but $4 or $13 per month seems a bit too pricey. Jott does offer a free option, but so does EverNote for making short web-accessible voice memos on an iPhone. EverNote doesn’t transcribe your voice memo to text like Jott can (or attempts to do) but I do like having all my notes organized in a single place with EverNote. I found the EverNote iPhone application handy this week to record a voice memo for myself when I was in the car, and later return to it when I was on my laptop. EverNote and Jott are different web-powered applications with different types of functionalities, but there are several similarities that cause me to group them together for comparison sake.

I love EverNote on my iPhone!

I am using EverNote with three different software platforms, essentially: The EverNote iPhone application, the EverNote Macintosh software application, and the EverNote website. EverNote also has an iPhone web application, but I haven’t used it yet.

I used Jott a bit to update Twitter in the last six months, but several times I found that it misunderstood some words I recorded and sent unexpected text out as a Twitter update. As a result, I’d classify the Jott-to-Twitter functionality as KOFTT (“kind of fun to try”) but NRFDU (“not ready for daily use.”)

I’m using EverNote more and more for taking notes both on my laptop and on my iPhone. I love how it synchronizes all notes to the web, so everything is immediately backed up just in case something happens to my iPhone or laptop. EverNote does permit users to publicly publish notes, but there is not a way for others to collaborate on those notes currently (in a Google Documents way) or to leave comments on them. EverNote is becoming one of the most valuable applications I use each week to take and organize my notes in different contexts. The ability to record voice memos is an added bonus.

This video provides a good overview of EverNote’s functionality. I like the reference to my “external brain.” Moving information, ideas, and to-dos from your brain into a trusted documentation system is a foundational part of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) organizational approach. I certainly don’t have that approach mastered, but documentation options like these from EverNote certainly help in these endeavors. I have just started to experiment with the EverNote function of OCR scanning a business card from a PhotoBooth or other iSight camera-captured image. At one time I considered purchasing a Neat-Receipts Scanner for this purpose (and to scan receipts.) It appears EverNote could fill that need much more cost-effectively.

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4 responses to “EverNote iPhone Voice Memos”

  1. Dean Shareski Avatar

    So is this your to do or task manager? I’ve been struggling to find something that syncs to my iphone. I’ve not used Evernote in this way. I’ll need to rethink this.

  2. Wesley Fryer Avatar

    I’m using Evernote as a place to collect notes, I’m not using it as a task manager. I’ve tried using 43 Actions to keep my to-dos organized, but I’m not keeping up with it at this point. I don’t see Evernote as a GTD solution at this point, but it can be a good way to digitally capture notes and thoughts that I need to return to at some point, and keep organized / backed up for later reference.

  3. Carmen Vj Avatar

    I have a iPhone and Flickr Pro is the way to go. The $30 a year is a bargain.
    I did this a couple of months ago. Evernote I have not use yet either.

  4. A. Mercer Avatar

    Ah, Jott does have a free option. For transcripts you have to go to the site instead of being sent the text in an email. They were trying to push the pay service so it wasn’t really obvious there is a free option.