The world’s tallest filing cabinet, in Burlington, VT is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from EPS’s New Hampshire home base. Hanging high over an overgrown empty lot, the cabinet is a monument to the power of stored information, its creator Bren Alvarez showcasing information’s towering dominance over our lives. Yet, at 38 feet tall, the world’s tallest filing cabinet may not be tall enough anymore.
Think about the information you receive and recall every day. The cool new album you heard on the radio. Your son’s appointment, needing to be rescheduled. The flower you saw at a greenhouse that you want to try growing in your spring garden. How do you keep all this information straight? You may be taking mental notes, but it soon becomes exhausting and frustrating to keep what’s important at the forefront of your mind, while still trying to remember all the other extraneous details. Folders on your computer seem to grow exponentially, with important documents getting lost in a sea of downloads and images. And if you took physical notes on all of these bits and pieces of your daily life, you could find yourself buried under piles of paper higher than the world’s tallest filing cabinet.
This is where Evernote comes in, a tool with the superhuman strength needed to lift all your thoughts’ weight. At its heart, Evernote is designed to help you remember all the details of your life without the stress of storing and organizing them. Users create “notebooks” which act as files, then fill these notebooks with all sorts of data. You can jot quick notes on your smartphone, forward Evernote emails for future reference, snap and save pictures, even store voice memos on the service. Evernote is constantly accessible through smartphones or tablets, and every note gets synced between devices to be reached anywhere you are. Everything you upload to Evernote is easily searchable. Through systems of “tags,” or categories of information, and search filters, you can efficiently find the exact note you need. No more wading through endless lists of untitled documents for one kernel of information.
Evernote is also a starting point for several other apps compatible with the service. “Penultimate” offers the tactile feeling of pen-and-paper notes for tablet users. Evernote’s “Web Clipper” tool stores portions of online articles for later use. What may be most tantalizing is the “Evernote Food” section, which recipes from online databases; users can then bookmark and collect the most delicious of these in their own online cookbook. Now when you are drooling at a dish you wanted to try, you can instantly remember how to cook it!
It’s no surprise why a service to help you remember everything is compelling. Much like the filing cabinets of yore, Evernote enhances productivity by centralizing all of life’s little tidbits in one location. But now this location is wherever you need it to be. Just try and carry around the world’s biggest filing cabinet instead, and you’ll surely see Evernote’s effort-saving appeal.