Welcome to the first in what will be a series of blog posts detailing how our company uses technology to keep ourselves connected.

Years ago, when I was selling phones at a retail store, I found that I would go through all of cell phone models available to a client, and then have them ask me: “So, what phone do you use?”  I sold more models of phones based on the fact I was using it than any other model.  The concept is simple:  If you use the phone, then it must be good!

Some of the products and services I will be writing about in this series are ones that we sell/resell, and others are technologies that we find really useful and want to share our experiences with them.  In all cases, we use them for a reason and hope it may help you find a solution to a particular problem or need you have.

Today, we will be talking about: Evernote

Evernote is a note taking application for your computer, Smartphone, and tablet computer.  It is designed to help you record everything you need electronically instead of on little scraps of paper.  The beauty of Evernote is that when you record something, (it handles text, audio, documents, etc.) it is then uploaded to a central server that makes it accessible from your other devices.  This allows you to start a note on your computer, and complete it on your phone, or from a web browser on a different computer.

Evernote also offers a great text recognition feature, which will scan text in images and pdf files and make them searchable.

All-Aboard Telecom uses Evernote to help us keep our notes all in one place and searchable.  It is one of the ways we have been transitioning to a paperless office system over the past year.

As we get business cards from new contacts, we can either scan them in (more on that in a future post) or take a picture with a camera phone and upload it.  Once it’s online, Evernote works their magic and makes the text from the business card searchable.  If someday, I need to find a name of someone I once met, or are looking for something in particular, like a mortgage broker, all I have to do is a keyword search, Mortgage for example, and it will find all the text entries, not only in our text notes, but for the occurrence on business cards that we have submitted images for.

All-Aboard Telecom believes in a multi-platform environment for business tools.  PC’s and Mac’s can co-exist along with Android phones, Apple iOS devices and BlackBerry’s. We like how Evernote is available on such a wide variety of tools.  When it comes to notes, memos and general information we need to keep a record of, Evernote works best for us.  It is a great combination of Hybrid cloud computing which makes your records available both online and locally.

Evernote offers both free and paid premium accounts depending on your needs.  If you are looking to go paperless, this is one of the great services that helped us.