Living On The Cloud – Evernote

My friends think I am a control freak when it comes to organizing things; they’ve seen my OCD going to work on so many different occasions that it no longer surprises them when I am being extra particular about a small thing. They’d look at my Android home screen, my bookmark folders, the way I obsessively label everything on Gmail, my Pocket list, my Dropbox folder and believe that I know exactly where to look when I need a certain piece of information or a news article. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

The truth is I have absolutely no idea when and where I save a certain piece of information, much less being able to retrieve it in no time. Useful information such as a news article, an interesting research finding, something on the internet I found useful for blogging or a quote I found especially inspiring are dispersed among places such as Chrome Bookmarks, Pocket, Evernote, Gmail, Google+ (yes, I email and post stuff only to/for myself), and Twitter favorites. And then there is also a physical notebook I carry around with me most of the times which I use to jot down ideas, blog topics or things that I need to do more research on. When it comes time for me to sit down, organize things and get some work done, I would be looking all over the place for everything that I’d come across in the past few days.

I’ve kept Evernote on my phone for over a year but hardly use it much beyond taking a couple of notes. After reading this article on Lifehacker, I decided to give Evernote another shot and this time I’ve decided to be disciplined about it and use Evernote exclusively for all the use cases the author mentioned in the article. I even took more than 30 minutes creating Stacks > Notebooks > Notes and moving most of my bookmarks, articles and notes onto them. The result and the productivity following the move have been more than satisfying:

Literally spent more than an hour creating those stacks on the left sidebar and importing over 100 notes into them

Value Proposition – Centralized Information Center

Evernote Web Clipper has become my new best friend on my Chrome browser. I no longer obsessively save articles on Chrome anymore. Although Chrome is synced across all devices and much more easier to load an article than say I open a note on Evernote and then click on the link to load, Chrome doesn’t help me much in saving articles from other sources. If I am reading a news article on Flipboard for example, it’s much easier to drop it onto Pocket or Evernote than say open it in Chrome and save it to Bookmarks. Sometimes, I don’t feel like loading the articles because the 3G is slow most of the times and I don’t have time for it.

Perhaps the biggest reason why I could move so quickly away from Pocket and Chrome bookmarks is the fact that I can write down notes, potential blog topics or even draft blog posts in Evernote; eventually all of them are available to me on all devices in just ONE place. Of course, you can argue that I could use different services for such a wide variety of activities; my point is wouldn’t it make better sense if I can do everything in just one place? Besides all these, I can also save code snippets I come across from forums and also Linux scripts that I could use when I log onto my Ubuntu. Doing all the saving/organizing from Android is even easier than using the web clipper; the system-wide “Share” button makes it possible to save everything into Evernote (or any other services for example) and I can’t emphasize enough how much I love that bit about Android.

I did mention I also used to use Gmail/Google+ to solve the note-taking part, but honestly it sounds a bit lame even to me no matter how convenient it could be. We should probably use Gmail for just what it’s intended to be, i.e. sending and receiving emails.

Perfectly Synced + All Notes Listed in Chronological Order when not viewed in Stacks/Folders

It’s worked out perfectly for me. What about you?

It’s been more than a week since I started using Evernote exclusively to speed up my work flow, and I’ve to say the result is astoundingly satisfying. I am not saying that other services I mentioned in the post earlier can’t compete with Evernote in terms of providing users speed, productivity and convenience. In fact, every app/service has something unique that it does very well. The fact that I get all crazy over Evernote is the consistency, in the sense that “Evernote” has sort of become the go-to app/service for everything I do on the Internet/mobile phone. Do you also use Evernote extensively to help you in your productivity? I want to know why or why not and also what other services keep you at the peak of your productivity.

Android App Review – Action Launcher Pro

Play Store Link – Action Launcher Pro by Chris Lacy

The ability to tweak/customize the look and feel of everything on Android has always been one of its strongest selling points. Third-party launchers are always among the most popular apps at any point in time, even more so in the pre-ICS era. Before Android 4.0 came along, the stock launcher on both AOSP Android and skinned Android (TouchWiz, Sense, etc.) were not so flattering and functional, to say the least.

Although Android 4.0 is a huge leap for Google’s home-brewed mobile operating system in terms of both aesthetics and performance, third-party launchers have continued to thrive well. However, innovation in that area has significantly slowed down after Android 4.0. Popular launchers such as Apex, Nova focus on improving the stock AOSP launcher by adding more flexibility, themes, functionality but there hadn’t been a new launcher that focuses on productivity, and reinvention.

That is until Action Launcher came into the picture. I didn’t discover it until I came across it recently on my news feed, so I’d only talk about what’s in the latest iteration, rather than how it evolves.

Unique Features

Quick Drawer

The app drawer on Android has stayed the same, or at least very similar for the better part of the years since Android’s conception. There’s always a button in the middle or leftmost of the dock at the bottom of the screen, tapping which would bring up pages of all apps or one vertical scrolling page of all apps. In Action Launcher, the app drawer has been reimagined. The app drawer button is at the top left of the screen; you can also get to the drawer by swiping the screen from the left or hitting the home key from the default home screen (for phones with a physical home key of course). Scrolling in the quick drawer is extremely smooth and it kinda reminds me of how Windows Phone organizes all its apps. Productivity wise, this is a plus.

Covers/Folders

The above is the typical homescreen of my phone at the moment (boring I know; it’s a habit). And apps are organized in folders so that I have access to all on the home page.

If you open up a folder, there is a three-dot menu button with which you can use to Make the first app in the folder the icon of the particular folder. In my case, LinkedIn. Choosing “Make cover” will result in the following screenshot.

Instead of the folder icon, now my Social 2 folder has become LinkedIn icon. Tapping the icon would take you to LinkedIn, obviously. But what about the rest of the apps in the folder? Tapping the LinkedIn icon twice quickly or swiping up or down the icon will open up the folder, where you can get to other apps. The whole idea behind it is to eliminate some time going to the folder if there’s a particular app in the folder that you go to the most during a day, for example. Another plus for productivity, but I haven’t seen much use of it in my use cases.

Note: You can revert back to the folder icon by following the same step I did while making cover.

Quick Search Bar + Play Store Integration

Lastly, it’s the little semi-transparent bar at the top of the screen just under the notification bar, which has Quick Drawer button, Quick Search Button and a Play Store icon. It took me about 1 minute to get used to this bar and I actually find it pretty productive and refreshing to get to apps, by either opening the quick drawer, or using the search for apps. The search icon typically searches for EVERYTHING on your phone, apps, contacts, playlists, etc.

Special Note – Screen Margins Adjustment

It’s a bit ironic this part came in last because this is actually the first thing you have to do after installing Action Launcher Pro. Due to Android phones’ having different screen sizes and dimensions, the spacing of apps and screen margins need to be adjusted in order to get the previous settings you’re used to. For example, on my Galaxy S2, after setting row x column setting to 4×4, the apps and widgets were actually weirdly sized, in the sense that they were out of place and looked either stretched or squeezed (if you set 5×5).

Go into Action Launcher Pro’s Settings > Display > Screen Margins and play with the following two values until the icons/widgets are sized the way you want.

Final Verdict

In a nutshell, I find it very difficult to move away from Nova Launcher Prime, which I’ve grown so used to and which I cannot live without. To be fair, I’ve been using Action Launcher Pro exclusively for 3 days and I have to say its unique features indeed help with productivity in my use cases but I am still inclined to go back to Nova everyday. I will keep Action Launcher installed on my phone but will be using Nova as default for now, i.e. until the next iteration of updates from the dev could bring me back to his app, if ever.