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I admit it. I am hopelessly, woefully in love.

With Evernote.

What is Evernote? Here’s the description from their website, Evernote.com:

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes everything accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Use Evernote to capture your ideas, snapshots, voice memos, things you see online, and just about anything else that you want to remember.

Their slogan is “Remember Everything.” And that’s exactly what Evernote does.

And they have the COOLEST logo on earth, in my opinion (above, next to the block quote).

Here is a nice visual – also from Evernote.com – that conveys what Evernote does:

Practical: How I Use Evernote

A question I get asked frequently is this: How do you use Evernote in real life on a daily basis?

Here’s how:

• As client service/transactional record: This is one of my favorite Evernote uses: keeping a chronological record of documents, phone calls, client notes, contracts, offers, listing docs, closing docs, etc. and just about anything else that relates to a specific real estate transaction. I do this by setting up a specific “Notebook” (that’s the term Evernote uses to describe what is essentially a folder) with the name of the client and the street name, e.g. “Smith | Wall Street.” I then put anything and everything that relates to that transaction in that Notebook. It’s as simple as typing or dragging and dropping PDFs into the Note that you create.
• As sharing vehicle: Evernote is awesome for sharing information with someone else. Continuing the prior point, I share my transactional records with my clients, which eliminates the search for documents that so often happens when you get a call from a client or when they misplace something you gave them. All you do is click on a specific Notebook, select “Share Notebook” and follow the easy instructions from there (special thanks to Thomas Cunningham  – @HomesbyThomas – for showing this to me).
• As to-do list: Evernote is great for keeping to-do lists. It even has a little “checkbox” creator that allows you to place a checkbox next to an item in a list and then “click” that checkbox to put a little checkmark in it to indicate the item is done. Cool.
• As web clipper/bookmarker: Evernote has a “browser add-on” (example below) that you can add to your browser of choice that allows you to click and save any webpage (or specific section of content from within a webpage) into a Notebook. This is really slick, I do this constantly, and this has become my de facto bookmarking method. You can download the add-ons here:
  • For Chrome, click here
  • For Firefox, click here
  • For Safari, click here
  • For iPad, click here
    
    
• As voice note recorder: Evernote even allows for the recording of voice notes! I walk my dog a lot, and I use this feature frequently to make notes to myself that, knowing me, I would otherwise forget.
• As idea incubator: I am constantly working on and developing new ideas. Evernote is ideal for cobbling together concepts, projects and ideas over a period of time because it’s so easy to go back to a Note and work on it, whether it’s for a few hours or just a few seconds. It’s like having every thought you’ve ever had at your fingertips, immediately searchable and findable, all the time. I cannot even begin to imagine how much time Evernote has saved me simply because it makes is nearly impossible to lose anything.
• As note pad: Evernote is great for jotting down a random thought or something that you simply just don’t want to forget. I use it for grocery lists, random thoughts that don’t fit elsewhere and just about anything else where you’d normally use pen and paper.
• As diary: I am notorious for keeping notes on just about everything I do (example: I have recorded every workout I’ve done since I was 17 years old, spread across countless volumes of notebooks, loose leaf paper, Palm Pilot, computer and now Evernote). Rather than continue to destroy rain forests, Evernote is the perfect place to keep your running diary.
• As iPad turbo-charger: This is my current favorite Evernote use. I am one of those “I better take my computer to that meeting, because I might need to pull up something while I’m there” people. Now, I just preload a Note with every conceivable document I might need for a given meeting (or for a day’s work while on the go), and I leave my MacBook Pro at my desk. Evernote has “turbocharged” my iPad to the extent that I now frequently leave my MacBook Pro at home when I go into my office. Truly, it is a mega-mobility-enabling technology (and yet another reason why I feel brick-and-mortar in real estate is an endangered species).

Evernote does a  lot more than what I have described here. You can also email notes, save Tweets and probably a lot of other functions and tricks that I haven’t learned yet (I still consider myself an Evernote novice).

FULL DISCLOSURE: It took me several attempts – in which I started using Evernote and then stopped – to get the hang of it. So, if you try it and it doesn’t grab you at first, my strong suggestion is to keep using it, because it WILL grow on you. I have found that, with *most* new technologies, I eventually become bored with them or something else comes along that is a newer/cooler/bigger/better version of whatever that thing is and I quickly forget about the earlier “shiny object.” But Evernote is unique in that the more I use it, the more I discover about it, and the more I love it. At this point, it feels indispensable to me…

Give it a chance! I’ll bet you’ll end up loving it as much as I do!

Click here (affiliate) to learn more about Evernote!

PS – Chris Smith (@TechSavvyAgent) talked about Evernote in a recent video he did. Check it out here (his comments about Evernote begin at the 12:00 mark of the video).

PPS – Here’s a cool little video I got from Evernote.com:

March 2, 2011 UPDATE: Evernote has come out with an upgraded version for the iPhone. Here’s a video that explains the new features: