Evernote; Don’t search for Lost Treasure without It!

 Every fall I love to get into the mountains and enjoy my favorite hobby of treasure hunting.   One of the unique uses of Evernote I have found is  to organize my treasure  hunting research.   Weather I am out in the mountains, in the library, or at  home all my treasure hunting research is always with me in Evernote.

     For the past 30 years I have  had a hobby of looking for John Swift’s Lost Silver Mine.  Searching for  the silver mine began when my grandfather and I would take long walks in the woods when I was in my early teens.  Since  that time I  have kept notebooks, copies of articles and stories and maps of the many geographic areas concerning the silver mine legend.  Keeping track  of all the research and stories concerning the silver mine has been a  very tedious task.  In the early 1990’s I began keeping all the notes  in a  word processing program and retyping a lot of the print material into the word processor so I could search my data by key word.  I also had hundreds of photographs that I have taken of unique rock cravings and treasure signs, that were stored in photo albums.  Then came Evernote!

     With Evernote all this became a simple process.   I began using Evernote in my law practice and day-to-day life, then one day it occurred to me to put all my “Swift Stuff” into evernote.  It was actually an easy because I had been  scanning a lot of the articles and other materials into PDF files ever since I bought my ScanSnap scanner about 4 years ago.

     First I scanned  every piece of paper and picture I had regarding the silver mine with the ScanSnap.   I even scanned my hand written journals and notes.   Evernote’s  software will even search your handwriting.   Evernote also allows you to create an image note, so I loaded all my photos of rock cravings and places  associated with the legend.   Then it  is a simple  matter of sending it to Evernote or just dragging and dropping it into the Evernote desktop.

     I have Evernote  on my Android Phone, my iPad, by laptop and my office computer and they all sync seamlessly.   Perhaps one of the best  uses of Evernote is taking a snapshot (picture) directly in Evernote with my phone and then being able to view every photograph I have when I am  in the mountains searching for the Swift Treasure.   I can get to my whole Swift Treasure reference library from anywhere.

     Evernote is great to use while doing research on the internet.  When I find that great article for an old  newspaper or magazine online I can send it right into Evernote.  Evernote has a web clipper for most browsers that allows you to clip web pages  directly into Evernote.

     You can also share your notes or whole notebooks with others, even if they do not have an Evernote account.  A link to one of my Swift Notes can be viewed here straight from my Evernote account.

     If you want more information on the Swift story you can find Mike Steely’s excellent book here.  Also Ed Henson has written an excellent fiction novel entitled Swift which you can find here.

     Evernote is free for the first 60 Mg of data for every 30 day cycle, but you can upgrade to the premium account.  Personally, I have never needed to upgrade,  but I can see it happening soon because I use Evernote for  everything!

Related articles

• Review: Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 Instant PDF Document Scanner (geardiary.com)
• Evernote Tips Tricks and Resources (ismckenzie.com)
• Evernote: How do you use it? Talk amongst yourselves. (parenthacks.com)

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