BP4_Evernote 2.0 Beta 1

The unconscious, though one cannot force it, will not produce new ideas unless it has been painstakingly stuffed full of facts, impressions, concepts, and an endless series of conscious ruminations and attempted solutions. On this we have the testimony of many creative people.
— Morton Hunt / The Universe Within

Sherman, set the WABAC Machine to 1974...

My first graphic design teacher at Cal Poly stressed the importance of beginning and maintaining a morgue file—a manilla folder containing photos, ads, logos, color—anything that sparked one's imagination. In the third of a century+ since that day I've collected thousands of images, first in a series of manilla folders (during the initial 20 years) and in countless digital folders (in the past 15 years).

In many ways, the manilla folders served me better as I could always find what I was looking for (though it may have taken a while). The digital archive contains far more imagery but it is currently scattered across four computers (two laptops, a Mac Pro, and a G4 that won't die), stacks of CDs, and a half-dozen portable hard drives. I just searched for Images in my user account on this laptop (not even a year old) the Finder's results say it has: More that 10,000 items.

To combat this disconnect between image collection and delivery to students, I created the Inspiration page on April 5, 2009. While more successful at archiving imagery than anything I'd tried in the past, it is ridiculously labor-intensive to support and is similar to the old manilla folders in that it's not a searchable imagery database. It does serve as an alternative—however unsatisfactory—to Google Images for students to use in order to find inspiration.

But, since beginning this Masters program at FSO, I've not had the hours and hours to dedicate to discovering new resources and, more importantly, to add each image to the Inspiration archive all the while knowing it wasn't the 21st century equivalent of a morgue file I'd hoped it would be.

Enter Evernote.

Or perhaps I should say, enter the Evernote 2.0 Beta that I read about on Macworld four days ago. Unlike image services like Flickr or Picasa, Evernote is neither blocked by the district now nor likely to be blocked in the future.

The Evernote Beta includes something called stacks that are actually nested folders which makes it far more useful but the real clincher is that the Beta introduces Notebook Sharing—the ability to share notebooks (folders) with other Evernote users. The Premium version ($45 per year) allows other users to edit shared notebooks.

I've been testing the Beta the past few days and am ecstatic. I'll be recording a series of videos to chronicle the tool and its uses and will share them here. For now, here's a look at one of Evernote's how-to videos:



One Minute Evernote video may be found here.

Credits: Featured image by Mac Lab students. Evernote logo and video via Evernote and YouTube.