After Evernote, the personal note-taking app with 60 million+ users, got slammed with a security breach in February 2013, today the company is turning on three new features to give users better control over their accounts: two-step verification, access history and authorized applications listings. Two-step authentication will eventually get rolled out to all users, but a spokesperson tells TC that at first it will be only be rolled out to Premium (paying) users first, to make sure that the experience is right.

“Evernote Premium users are the most engaged so it made sense to start there,” she says. “With feedback from our Premium users, we’ll be best prepared to address questions and concerns as we continue the roll out to our larger user base.”

Unlike the gradual roll out of two-factor authentication, access history and authorized app lists are getting turned on for everyone from today.

The move to add more security and access controls comes after a breach that was bad enough to force Evernote to require password changes from its 50 million users (now numbering over 60 million), but not, according to CEO Phil Libin, serious enough that users’ data and payment details were accessed.

Evernote’s two-step verification — the most important of these three new services getting introduced today — had been in the works already, but plans to roll it out got accelerated after the February incident: today is the fruition of that attempt.

Like other two-step user authentication systems rolled out by Twitter just last week, Evernote’s service will be SMS-based, and it will be optional for all users. That is to say, if you are an Evernote user and don’t want to take the extra step to prove who you are every time you need to log in, you do not need to.

This is what the screen will look like in your settings to turn on the new features:

Once you have turned two-factor verification on, whenever you are signed out of your account or need to re-enter your password for other purposes, you will get a six-digit code sent to you by SMS — an example of how it looks on the iPhone is illustrated above. That code in turn is required in a new sign-in screen:

The need to re-enter a password shouldn’t come up regularly for users: it’s something that is typially required when you sign into Evernote on the desktop or install it on a new device. The code itself is generated by the Google Authenticator app, or users can get it by SMS, Evernote says in a blog post.

Drawbacks: for those of you who tend to forget passwords and reminders, two-step authentication may not be your security solution. Evernote says that it will provide users who turn on the feature a one-time set of backup codes “for when you’re traveling,” but it is also notes that “if you lose access to your secondary access method, you run the risk of permanently locking yourself out of your account.”

And in reality, for some users, two-step may end up being many steps. Evernote also notes that some apps on its platform will simply stop working until you create specific application passwords for each of those apps. These can be set also in Evernote’s security settings page, along with two-factor authentication.

Two other security features. While the main focus today for a lot of security of cloud-based services like Evernote’s is on two-factor authentication, the other two features getting turned on are also significant steps in how the company is helping users better control their data on the Evernote platform — an important confidence booster for users as Evernote continues to grow and seek out an ever-more essential position in how people use the service to organize and run their lives.

The authorized apps list — which lets users see all the apps linked to their Evernote account, and revoke access if they wish to — in all honesty, is probably something that Evernote should have been offering to users up to now, given that this has been a feature for other services like Twitter and Facebook for some time now. What it does underscore is how Evernote is starting to become significantly more focused on its own position as a platform for other services, as much as a place for people to store notes and other information using Evernote’s own, homegrown features.

The access history, meanwhile, which lets users check out each time Evernote has been used over the past 30 days (think of it as Evernote’s “bank statement”), is a useful feature for those who suspect that their accounts have been accessed by others. It covers all versions of Evernote, regardless of platform, and tracks by both location and IP address.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

One of the more interesting projects to emerge from Evernote’s 2013 Devcup hackathon is called Postach.io, a new blogging platform which turns your Evernote notebook into a Content Management System. Input Logic, the Vancouver-based company behind the now just four-week old service has already caught the attention of local investors, as well as Evernote, who met with the team to discuss possible monetization ideas.

Input Logic was founded two years ago by UI designer Shawn Adrian and programmer Gavin Vickery, with the intention of becoming a software development firm. The company bootstrapped its first app, proposal writing aid QuoteRobot, and has sustained itself with contract work over the past couple of years. The five-person team (3 full-time) has worked for clients including Nest, Michael Kors, ski resort Mt. Washington, and others, doing everything from coding to design.

This year, the company stopped doing client work to focus on Postach.io instead.

Adrian says that initially, neither he nor Vickery were Evernote users, having “not drank the Kool-Aid,” so to speak. But at the urging of Lance Tracey, Full Stack partner (now investor, who just funded the company with $200K), they decided to take another look.

“We started playing with it, got into it, and said ‘hey, this thing has really come a long way,’” Adrian explains. “And Gavin especially just got fully addicted to it,” he adds.

Later on, when the co-founders were collaborating on documentation for a newly redesigned QuoteRobot using Evernote, a thought occurred to them: “wouldn’t it be great if we could just publish it instead?” Vickery, too, wanted that same functionality for his own blog – he writes all his blog posts in Evernote anyway, why not just publish directly from there?

So they decided to build a service that did just that.

Having worked on CMS’s in the past, the team built Postach.io to include nearly everything you would expect from a lightweight blogging system: customizable themes, RSS (Atom) feeds, built-in Disqus commenting, support for multimedia, and more. In fact, anything you can store in Evernote – images, audio, video/YouTube, etc. – will work on Postach.io, too.

Currently, the half dozen themes available are reminiscent of sites like Svbtle or Medium, favoring clean, minimalistic design and rounded icons. Now the plan is to extend Postach.io’s feature set even further, with special themes designed for Evernote Food and Hello app users, as well as support for social sharing, wikis,  and community features designed to help new bloggers have their content found.

To use Postach.io yourself, after setting up an account and authorizing the service with Evernote, it’s only a matter of tagging posts in a pre-determined notebook with the tag “publish” to make them go live on your blog. You can also use Evernote’s date field to schedule posts for a later time.

Blogs are given their own subdomains like yourname.postach.io, for example, but you can have them work with your own URL instead, if you choose.

In the future, the service might monetize by charging for premium features or converting users to Evernote Premium, while doing a rev share with Evernote. But those ideas are still in the works. Today, the focus is on growing the product and user base, which today includes 1,500 bloggers who signed up since the April debut.

Blogging platforms, of course, are numerous – from the big guys like Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger to newcomers like Medium, Svbtle, and Posterous repository Posthaven. But the team behind Postach.io see the value in building on top of a successful platform instead of a creating a destination site of their own. (And they’re not the only ones with the same idea: see also, Everblog or maybe this IFTTT recipe.)

“One of the big things with Evernote is that you own your content – it’s actually on your own computer,” Adrian explains. “Even if our servers are struck by lighting and everything falls apart, everyone will have their blog posts.”

Interested users can sign up for Postach.io here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A year ago, Evernote kicked off its strategy to bring its personal organization app to China, with the launch of Yinxiang Biji on its own dedicated platform. Now, with 4 million users of the Chinese version, Evernote is taking the next step in monetizing that with the introduction of Yinxiang Biji Business. Phil Libin, CEO and founder of Evernote, announced the news today at the GMIC conference in Beijing, where he also noted that since launching in December 2012, the bigger Evernote Business product has now signed up some 5,000 companies.

China is a big market for Evernote: when Libin announced the launch of Yinxiang Biji a year ago, he said that China was rapidly overtaking Japan to become the company’s second-biggest market after the U.S. Today Libin noted that Evernote now has 4 million users in the country; worldwide, the company has over 60 million users, he said.

“We’re in China because I firmly believe that China will be the crucible of innovation over the next decade,” Libin noted in his keynote today.

Today’s news is not only looking to capitalize on that, but also the bigger trend for a rising class of businesspeople in the country, looking for better ways of collaborating and organizing their information and work — in short, much the same trends that prompted the creation of the original Evernote Business product.

“China now is shiftting from a labor-intensive to knowledge-intensive society, so the continuing creativity will be the basis of its competition,” Libin said today. “The engine of growth over the past 10 years ago has been manufacturing…but right now, in this room, we are seeing the engine of growth for China changing. It’s going to be information… You’ll have millions of small and medium sized businesses suddenly becoming knowledge companies, realizing that their success depends on how easily their employees can process knowledge and information.”

Amy Gu, GM of Evernote China (which has a dedicated staff of 17, Libin noted today), says that Yinxiang Biji Business is the ninth product from Evernote to hit China, “and the first one dedicated to serving business users. I hope Yinxiang Biji Business will grow up together with Chinese enterprises,becoming the second brain of the domestic enterprises and making them much more smarter.”

As with Yinxiang Biji, the Business product was created to offer local users a better experience with the Evernote platform: at the time of the original launch of Yinxiang Biji, Libin noted that local users were having a poorer experience because of the difficulties of internet connections between China and the U.S. The Yinxiang platform localizes the experience, which no longer has to pass over the Great Chinese Firewall to work.

As with the original Business product, the Chinese version will give users increased storage space of 4GB monthly. Users also will have the ability to create Business Notebooks to share with colleagues, as well as keep personal notebooks for their own use, in accessible to their business administrators. And as with the other product, users have access to a Library, a common repository of data posted by others; a search feature for scanning across all the data in the files; and a Related Notes feature for suggested relevant content. It will come at a price close to that of Evernote Business: 60 yuan ($9.74) per user per month, or 688 yuan ($112) per user per year, according to the site; Evernote Business costs $10 per user per month.

Libin took the opportunity in his keynote also to weigh in on his opinion of what role China is playing in world innovation.

“Chinese companies don’t have a good reputation for innovation in the West…the reputation that Chinese companies have is that they don’t really innovate. They just copy,” he said. “I don’t think this reputation is right. I don’t think it’s correct…It’s not that the problem is that Chinese companies copy. Everyone copies. Chinese companies…copy and improve. That’s what apple does. that’s what Microsoft does. That’s what Facebook does. Very few companies start with a first of the kind idea.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Evernote is going after KakaoTalk’s 90 million registered users by inking a partnership deal with the South Korean messaging giant that would bring Evernote integration to KakaoTalk’s mobile app.

Despite boasting nearly 4 million users here in the United States, chances are you’ve never heard of KakaoTalk. The messaging app is mostly used by Korean Americans (such as myself), to communicate with friends and family both here and abroad. Yet back in South Korea, KakaoTalk has a dominant presence. The messaging app is installed on 95 percent of the smartphones in use and has a smaller but steadily growing user base of 15 million in Japan. Mind you, in Japan KakaoTalk is still overshadowed by Line, which reached 150 million users registered users worldwide today.

Interestingly enough, the partnership is the first of its kind that Evernote has inked with any messaging app, and reveals the company’s aspirations to expand its presence across the Pacific. Out of Evernote’s global 50-million-strong user base, only 15 million of those users come from the Asia-Pacific, which includes South Korea, China, Japan and Australia. Evernote is clearly hoping to leverage KakaoTalk’s ubiquity among the South Korean population to expand its user base there.

KakaoTalk is also looking to expand its user base worldwide, and it’s hoping that Evernote’s popularity in the United States will put them in the limelight. Like I said before, KakaoTalk is a virtual unknown here in America if you’re not Korean, and the South Korean company would very much like to change that.

It’s still unclear what form Evernote will make its presence known in KakaoTalk’s app, but it’s safe to assume that the mobile app across all three platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows Phone) will come to support the Evernote integration.

KakaoTalk is a free download at the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Another simple but neat Evernote hack that came out of the 24-hour Disrupt NY Hackathon earlier today was Squirrel. Created by coder duo Zainab Ebrahimi and Jabari Bell, the hack turns articles that Evernote readers have saved for reading later into a personalised newsletter. So, unlike the average email newsletter, Squirrel is populated with content the user actually wants to read. A sort of anti-spam if you like.

Bell explained he uses Evernote for saving articles to read later but wanted to come up with a neat self-reminder that resurfaces content which he hasn’t gotten round to reading yet. The problem Squirrel is attacking is the sheer volume of new stuff that’s clamouring for our attention online, drowning out the good stuff we genuinely want to pay attention to.

Squirrel creates both a neat summary of articles an Evernote user has earmarked, and acts as a gentle reminder to dive in and read them. With so much digital content being generated, great stuff easily gets buried, said Bell. Squirrel digs it back up. (The name of the hack is a clear reference to how squirrels store nuts for eating later by burying them in the ground — yet oftentimes forget where they buried them so never end up getting to eat them.)

The Squirrel hack lets users set the frequency with which they want to receive an email newsletter, and presents around 10-15 articles per email. While the duo have used Evernote’s API for their hack, it’s easy to envisage other cloud storage services being plugged in. And with so much content out there stored in people’s personal clouds the whole content rediscovery space is looking pretty hot. Add to that, apps like Yahoo-acquired Summ.ly which are designed to help people reduce content clutter and Squirrel’s hack is definitely tapping into a ‘reload my information/information overload’ trend.

Here’s Squirrel’s on stage presentation:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

EverSlide is a basic, but potentially very useful, hack built over the weekend at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 hackathon. As you might guess by the name, the service turns your Evernote notes into slideshow presentations. And it’s crazy simple to use, too. The first line of text in your Evernote note becomes the slide’s title, the second line becomes the slide’s content, and to create a second slide, you just insert a horizontal line from Evernote’s editing menu at the top. Then, boom, instant slideshow!

The hack was created by computer science student Michelle Fernandez and Andrew Leung, who’s currently in between work. The team met at the hackathon, and said they got the idea for the project by reading the Evernote forums where employees had posted ideas for hacks. (And word has it, the Evernote staff here, too, got pretty excited for this idea as well – they told EverSlide’s founders that they talked about the hack amongst themselves for some fifteen minutes after hearing about the team’s plans.)

The service is very minimal right now, given it was built over the weekend in between those midnight Nerf Gun wars and all, but the plan is to add more customization options in the future, including the ability to edit the fonts or colors of the text, perhaps, the ability to add photos, and more.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Online note-taking company Evernote revealed something very interesting via its CEO Phil Libin, who told IDG News Service that his company wants to design hardware products and eventually make them itself. Libin said Evernote will move soon to start releasing Evernote-branded gadgets, which will be co-designed and manufactured by external OEM partners.

Libin didn’t share too much in terms of details around what kind of products we might see bearing the Evernote logo, offering only that they’d look to create devices that are “new and magical” in the IDG interview, instead of wading in to compete with others in existing categories.

Evernote has already done some work with hardware partners and products, like the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine. The book allows users to snap a photo of its pages, which use “specially formatted paper” designed to work specifically with Evernote, and have their handwritten notes converted to a digital format. It seems likely this is the type of product Libin is referring to: ones that uniquely suit Evernote’s vision of a pervasive, constantly connected digital notebook that stores any kind of media.

So while we probably won’t see an Evernote Phone or Evernote Tablet, other opportunities would seem to abound. Image- and audio-capturing devices, for instance, with direct connections to Evernote make a lot of sense in the same vein ans the Moleskine connected notebook.

A hardware ecosystem would probably still be a secondary concern for Evernote, which remains focused on the problem of building apps that work seamlessly across devices according to Libin, but it could be a route toward greater visibility among the general public, and toward greater engagement from existing users.

We’ve reached out to Evernote directly to see if they can share more about their hardware plans, but they did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

[via Engadget]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Productivity app Evernote today is announcing that it is teaming up with Honda and the Japanese mobile carrier Docomo to launch the Evernote Accelerator, a month-long mentorship program based at Evernote’s HQ in Redwood City for developers and small startups from around the world that are making apps using Evernote’s APIs. The move is a step ahead for Evernote in its strategy to build out its business beyond its own-branded products and into a wider platform for others developing productivity services: the company today already sees 6 billion API calls per day, but most of those come from Evernote apps themselves.

Evernote, Honda Silicon Valley Lab and Docomo Innovation Ventures will be providing participants with workspace, living space, mentorship from Evernote engineers, marketing and a living stipend, but the program will stop short of investing directly.

“At the moment we don’t see the need to fund them. The best possible outcome is a successful Evernote product. We don’t need to take a financial stake for them to be a success,” said Rafe Needleman, the ex-tech journalist who moved to Evernote as a platform advocate last year and is helping run the accelerator. “We expect great Evernote products and that will make this a success for our users.” He does add, though, that part of the advantage of startups or independent developers coming into the Evernote ecosystem could also involve making introductions to others who might become backers.

But even if there may not be direct VC-style investment on the part of Evernote, there may be investment in another form: Evernote Food, one of the company’s standalone apps, was first developed during one of Evernote’s hackathons, Needleman points out. Evernote eventually bought the IP to create the service we know today.

Participants will be chosen from among the winners of the 2013 Evernote Devcup, a multi-regional event Evernote holds to encourage more people to use its APIs. The curriculum, it says, will begin in October 2013 with mentorship and development. Then there will be a Silicon Valley-style demo day in November.

While Needleman said Evernote was open about what possibilities there could be for potential apps to run on the Evernote platform, he also directed attention to the two co-sponsors of the accelerator. The API for Honda’s in-car system will also be in the mix, and the Docomo influence will mean that there will be a strong mobile element too. These will result in specific prizes in mobile and transport.

While accelerators have become quite ubiquitous in the world of startups, what’s unique about this one is how Evernote proposes to source candidates. The idea, says Needleman, is to tap people from as far afield as they can, with hackathons held in Tokyo, Singapore, Zurich, and Mexico City as some of the feeders; and then to use a taste of life in the tech mecca as another way to reel them in.

“We are trying to play to startups outside of Silicon Valley,” he said. “It’s really seen as an opportunity to see what’s it’s like to be a part of everything here.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Evernote has just updated its Android app to version 5.0, the same update that recently hit both iOS and Mac OS X. The update brings with it an updated UI, as well as a number of new features such as a Shortcuts page which pops up when you swipe left, and an updated camera.

Page Camera mode, in particular, should be a blessing to those of us who use Evernote to capture pictures of notes more than we do to actually take notes. It lets you snap photos of text, automatically adjusting settings to reduce shadow and increase contrast for legibility. The newly updated camera will also let users snap multiple shots and add them to a note all at once.

Version 5.0 also integrates with Evernote’s Smart Notebook by Moleskin products.

Premium users also get to enjoy some new goodies, namely in the form of Document search. Evernote will now search through attached documents, spreadsheets and presentations from the universal search.

While version 5.0 of Evernote hit both iOS and Mac OS X already, Android is getting a feature that iOS hasn’t enjoyed yet in the form of shortcuts.

Evernote has continued to expand into international waters, but struggled to get its UI in shape. The 5.0 revamp across multiple platforms is a good start, but still laggy on mobile and perhaps too similar to the desktop version. As we all know, services with cross-platform support often need to tweak UIs and features differently on various platforms to meet user needs.

It’s also worth remembering that a recent hack forced Evernote to change everyone’s password. However, it looks like the storm has cleared, so if you’re interested in the Evernote 5 update for Android, click here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Evernote, the popular note taking and personal organizer app, today took another step in its strategy to ramp up its international presence, with news that it has inked a strategic partnership with Deutsche Telekom, the German carrier that also owns T-Mobile. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed — we are asking — but for now the first part of the deal will mean that all DT customers in Germany will get one year of Evernote Premium service — a deal that usually costs €40 ($52) annually for additional storage space and other features. With DT claiming 37 million mobile and 22 million fixed line customers, the partnership potentially adds up to 60 million more users to Evernote’s platform.

To mark the new service, Evernote also said it is adding a new feature to the Premium account: now subscribers will be able to make document searches across Microsoft Office, iWork and OpenOffice documents that are attached to Evernote notes, bringing Premium a bit closer to Evernote’s Business product.

“We are excited to launch this new partnership with Deutsche Telekom, one of the most respected telecoms in the world,” said Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, in a statement. “With it, we have the opportunity to enrich the memories of nearly 60 million DT subscribers with the ability to capture and recall everything that is important to them wherever they go.”

Evernote and DT say the offer is open for 18 months, and while it only gives users one year of Premium service, Libin has always been very confident of the trajectory for users of the service: those who use it tend to want to use it more, he has said, and those who like it will pay to use extra features.

Moreover, although Evernote has been pushing its new Business service into new markets, Premium today is the mainstay of its revenues, according to the WSJ, which notes that today 98% of Evernote’s revenues come from Premium customers.

This is not the first carrier partnership signed by Evernote. Others include Taiwan Mobile, France Telecom, Docomo in Japan, and Korea Telecom, all also involving bundling Evernote’s premium product with subscriptions.

Evernote and DT are terming this latest deal a “strategic partnership,” which could mean that there has been some investment made as part of the deal. (Update: An Evernote spokesperson tells us that DT has not taken any investment in Evernote, but DT will be paying for the Premium account offer. “While it is safe to say that Evernote is receiving compensation for the Evernote Premium accounts being offered to DT’s customers, the financial details of the deal are not being disclosed.”)

Longer term, this looks like it will extend to further products and further service bundles for the pair, as they refer to today’s Premium announcement as the “first part” of the partnership. There will also be a hackathon in April co-sponsored by the pair.

The deal could give Evernote a big boost in the German market, crucial as Berlin-based erstwhile competitor Wunderlist continues to grow out its service. Its developer, 6Wunderkinder, recently recruited a new CTO, Chad Fowler, who had previously been at LivingSocial. It’s also important to grow out Evernote’s customer base in light of Google Note, the new note-taking app launched by the search giant last week. Evernote says that today it has 1.33 million users in the country, out of its overall 50 million users.

At the same time Evernote is looking to scale up, DT is looking for ever more features to sell to customers to differentiate itself from other competitors. Another deal announced last year offered Spotify subscriptions to broadband users. While there was a time among carriers when they would have tried to build out services like this themselves, it seems like these days, they are more interested in partnering with recognized brand names to do the trick.

“At Deutsche Telekom, we count on partnerships to pave the way for innovations,” said Heikki Makijarvi, SVP Business Development and Venturing, in a statement. “Our goal is to offer highly innovative and unique services with the easiest access possible. The cooperation with Evernote is an excellent example of two companies combining their strengths for the benefit of our customers.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch