evernote

The note-taking and photo-cataloging tool Evernote is getting a cool little feature next week: integration with Twitter. You'll be able to send messages to the @MyEN Twitter account, and they'll be posted to your Evernote notebook as well.

The integration feature isn't live yet, but should be early next week. I'll Twitter when it is (follow @Rafe). I got a preview of it today and it looks useful.

Here's the setup. If you're an Evernote user, you request to follow the Twitter user @MyEN, a protected account. The Evernote service approves you, and sends … Read more

Disney Online announced on Wednesday that it has acquired "a number" of assets from family site Kaboose.

According to the company, Kaboose assets were acquired for $18 million. Kaboose sites, including BabyZone and AmazingMoms, will become part of Disney's existing family properties. The deal will be completed once the acquisition attains shareholder approval.

FileLater, an authorized IRS e-file provider, announced on Wednesday that it is now the only online service to provide both businesses and consumers the opportunity to file a tax extension before the April 15 deadline. The company said it facilitated the filing of more … Read more

When a business is just starting out and its founders need to fill some administrative holes inexpensively, simple Web apps can fill the void. The apps we're going to look at here are not always good for large organizations; in fact, several are designed specifically for smaller companies that need simple but robust solutions to common business needs.

Manage projects with Basecamp Once a company starts servicing multiple clients, it needs to manage logistics and ensure that employees are doing what's expected of them. That's where Basecamp comes in.

Basecamp is not only a simple online project coordinator, it's the best of its kind on the Web. Once you sign up, you can immediately start creating projects and share them with employees. The site features to-do list creation, the ability to share files, project progress tracking, time tracking to see which employees have been working on the project, and more. In essence, Basecamp provides a full end-to-end project management service that allows you to see how well your company is performing every step of the way.

Creating and monitoring projects in Basecamp couldn't be easier. But Basecamp is not free. Its Basic edition costs $24 per month and allows users to create and track 15 projects at the same time and store up to 3GB of data. Plans go up from there to $149 per month, which allows for an unlimited number of projects, 50GB of storage, and time tracking (the other plans don't offer time tracking). If you're looking for something simple and effective at managing your projects, Basecamp is worth the money.… Read more

Financial services firm, Virgin Money announced Wednesday that it has joined the Uncrunch.org campaign in an attempt to raise awareness about alternative, social sources of credit for both consumers and businesses. Virgin joins Geezeo, Lending Club, OnDeck Capital, Credit Karma, and ChangeWave, while trying to "unthaw" the credit markets by giving consumers and businesses an online resource to research and find credit.

Uncrunch's focus is social lending, which is why Virgin Money joined the campaign (the company has close to $400 million in social loan volume). Those who surf to Uncrunch will be able to learn … Read more

Right on schedule Evernote's Google Notebook importer is now live and ready to use.

Users who want to suck in a Google Notebook entry into Evernote can now do so from the service's Web interface. All that's required is to first export any notebooks you want to move over as Atom files, then upload them one at a time into Evernote's Web interface.

What's nice about Evernote's importer is that it keeps both the organizational structure and tags intact, making it less work to reformat later on. I am, however, a little bummed to … Read more

With Thursday's news that Google is discontinuing development on its Notebook service, it may leave a few people looking for a viable replacement. The good news is that there are a handful of really solid products that do the same thing, and in some cases--do it better. Here's a list of seven of our favorites, in no particular order.

1. Evernote

Evernote has a few big things going for it, the main one being its cross-platform architecture which lets you access and add to your Evernotes from multiple devices. It also has optical character recognition, which means any photos you send in will be scanned for text, which gets indexed for searching.

Serious desktop users will most likely want to download the local client, which enables you to create and edit notes even when you don't have an Internet connection. There's also a browser plug-in that lets you clip entire Web pages, or simply bits of them, to save for later.

If you want to get at Evernote on your phone there are clients for both the iPhone and Windows Mobile handsets. Both let you access your notes collection and create new ones right from your device. This includes things like voice messages and snapshots from your phone's built-in camera and microphone.

The service is free to use up to a certain amount of data per month, which you can easily go over if you intend to use it for archiving high-resolution photo scans or for storing large files. However, if you're just using it for quick notes, and a few photos and Web clippings you'll be well under the limit.

Shortly after the news that Google Notebook was ceasing development, Evernote announced it would soon be providing an escape hatch for users to export their stuff over to Evernote free of charge.

2. Zoho Notebook

Zoho's Notebook is probably one of the best services for ex-Google Notebookers to flock to if only for its collaborative features. Several people can work on the same notebook at once, and it combines a handful of Zoho's other Web productivity services into one place. For instance, you can drop in a presentation from Zoho Show, add a video from YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, or any other site that uses embed code, as well as upload files from your desktop to share or squirrel away on Zoho's servers.

Additionally there's live chat with other Zoho users and collaborators, voice recording, and the capability to link to other notebooks within any notebook.

Its learning curve may be a bit steep for Google Notebook users unfamiliar with other Zoho products, but one thing that might help is the optional browser extension (for IE and Firefox) that lets users clip bits of Web pages to send to specific notebooks.… Read more

Evernote, a tool Rafe Needleman and I both use regularly to take notes and archive scanned documents, put out a new and useful feature early Wednesday. Now, when attaching a file to a note it will be available everywhere else once it's been synced. If a change is made to that file, those changes get updated in all other locations shortly thereafter, mimicking the behavior of creating and syncing text notes on the service.

While not being an official hard drive in the cloud, this step brings Evernote a little closer. You still have to attach your files to … Read more

It seems like a natural fit: Evernote, a Web service that turns random pictures of information into a searchable database and Eye-Fi, a company whose SD cards enable you to turn random information into pictures and upload them to the Web. In theory, it's a great idea. Evernote, which requires input ubiquity to be really useful, gains another data stream, and Eye-Fi gains a relatively compelling productivity application.

Having used both Evernote and an Eye-Fi card, however, I suspect a bit less than that rosy scenario. With Eye-Fi you predetermine the various places you want to send your photos--to … Read more

How do you take and keep notes to yourself? With a desktop calendar, or even with Post-Its?

The freemium note-taking service Evernote not only takes multimedia notes--audio, photo, and text--but also syncs them to your Mac, PC, iPhone, Windows Mobile phone, and to the Web. That puts your videos, photos, scribbles, dictations, and other notes to yourself within reach wherever you have Internet or one of free Evernote's apps.

Watch this Fist Look video to see how Evernote works on them all.