Evernote and Curio

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 29, 2012 at 11:49 PM

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Okay, Evernote is free
>and what it does do it does remarkably well, so I’m not complaining. But there seems to
>be a lot of un-met potential here. All of which is my long-winded way of saying I don’t
>think there is anything for Windows that works with Evernote even in the limited way in
>which Curio does.

I believe that there is a reason for this beyond Evernote. As a Windows Evernote user I’ve often been jealous at Mac users for getting useful new features first. Things like blog.evernote.com/2008/05/11/evernote-for-mac-just-got-better and automatic syncing of edited attachments. But I understand that it is the Mac system itself which facilitates Evernote’s interconnection with other programs such as Curio, through cross-application standards.

Similarly, a brief look at the the Desktop+Web section of the Evernote Trunk http://www.evernote.com/about/trunk/ (wonder why these two are supposedly in the same category? read on) will show that most offerings are web applications.

I believe the first answer to both ‘injustices’ above is opportunity, in this case the ease of development: it is much easier for developers to forge interconnections at the web server level than at the level of desktop software, just as it is easier to forge interconnection in the Mac system than in Windows.

For example, an obvious candidate for manipulating Evernote items would be a mind mapping program like MindManager. Yet Mindjet—who I don’t think are short of development resources- have chosen to only make the link to Evernote via their web offering, Mindjet Connect.

And this brings us to the second reason—motive: why would a developer want to link their product to Evernote? Marketing their product to a new audience would be an obvious answer, and it is clear that Mindjet wants to promote Connect, whereas it has no need to promote MindManager which is the leader in its category.

As to why Evernote haven’t done their interface better themselves, I believe that the answer may lie in any of the factors below, or a combination thereof:

- Their strategy is very focused (as pointed out already); they are in the memory business, not the production business.
- Their strategy isn’t focused at all; just look at the trunk and at the buy-outs they’ve done.
- The underlying engine isn’t as versatile as they would like us to think; it took them years to provide the ability to copy an item, believe it or not.
- What they provide IS their idea of better.