We collect information wherever we go. We can't help it. There's so much of the wretched stuff that even the most organised person ends up with bits stored here and there: photos on a phone that should be on a PC, a piece of paper tucked into a top pocket, a PDF downloaded to a folder (heaven knows where), a list of bookmarks as long as your screen, and nothing quite where you need it to be.

Many people used to swear by a paper-based filoFAX for this kind of thing, and have almost lost hope of finding the electronic equivalent. Sticky notes are too one-dimensional, OneNote too expensive and Microsofty, DropBox is good for synching but doesn't present the information in the right way, while something like WikidPad is free, but nerdy.

What we need is a central store that's able to keep and organise many different kinds of information and make them easily accessible, wherever you are and whatever device you're using.

Of all the products we've seen so far, Evernote steps up to this particular plate with the most panache. Sign up for an account (it's available in both free and paid-for versions) and then decide how you want to use it: directly via the web site, using one of the tools to clip and save information from your browser as you surf the Net, or by downloading the software that runs on Windows, Mac OSX, iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry and various Windows-based smartphones.

Having set up the account you can add information from any of these devices and watch it synchronise automatically with all the others. Evernote is a pretty catholic product and accepts typed notes, text and pictures copied and pasted from web sites, e-mails, photographs and voice notes, and then lets you organise them into notebooks, and add tags so they're easy to search.

It also passes pictures through some fancy image recognition software so that clearly visible text in pictures is also searchable; add the ability to find notes using attributes (like when - or even how - they were created) and you've got a powerful free-form database sitting on the web, available wherever there's an Internet connection.

You can elect to store notebooks locally on a particular device, in which case it won't be synchronised and won't support image recognition; this is useful if you're working on something sensitive that you don't want to share. Alternatively, you can make a notebook you want to share public in which case it gets its own URL and anyone can see it.

Although the Windows and Mac clients share similar features, only the Windows version supports ink notes for tablet PCs (so you can write onto the screen) and the ability to import notes directly from OneNote, while the Mac version supports iSight notes so you can grab pictures from the Mac's built-in camera.

The beauty of Evernote is that you can dump stuff into it on the fly as it occurs to you and then organise it later. That's useful because it means you don't have to struggle with a device that's not best-suited to inputting information (like a phone). Instead, you grab what you want and then spend five minutes the next time you're at a PC cleaning up the title, tags and so on.

We set up web clipping on a Windows PC, the software on a MacBook and iPhone and, apart from some sluggishness on the phone, found the Evernote experience almost pleasurable.

The paid-for version of Evernote costs a measly $5 a month (or $45 a year), has a monthly allowance of 500MB and synchronises any kind of note (there's a 25MB top limit per note). It also includes SSL encryption and lets you collaborate with others so they can view and modify your notes. The free version has a 40MB per month limit and supports fewer file types, but is very usable and a great way to see how useful the service is likely to be.

Verdict
It requires some new thinking - most of us aren't used to storing so many different kinds of information in the same place with the same program - but once you get the hang of it, the ability to grab, save and organise information wherever you are makes life and work so much easier, and Evernote becomes disturbingly indispensable.

Company: Android

Contact: 00 1 408 746 9900

Tags: evernote dropbox iphone microsoft windows wikidpad isight microsoft onenote windows phone 7