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Google Keep review - How good is Google's Evernote rival?

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Evernote who? Google is taking on the perennial digital note-taking favourite with Google Keep, a service that lets you store quick notes, checklists, web links, and photos for things you need to remember or keep track of. (See also: Get started with Evernote.) Google Keep is currently available as an Android app and Android tablet app for Android 4.0 (and up) users, and in your browser at drive.google.com/keep. (You can find out more about Android apps in our Best Android Apps microsite.)

Even though Google is offering a way to get at your notes from your PC or laptop, don't be fooled into thinking this app was designed for both the desktop and mobile devices. The current version of Keep is all about creating notes on your Android smartphone or tablet and then accessing them from anywhere. You can certainly create new notes using Keep on the desktop, but the Web version for PCs comes with limitations the mobile version doesn't have. That's not to say Keep works fantastically well on Android, but the mobile app is far more developed than the current Web version.

Google Keep: Into the Keep

Google is billing Keep as a digital replacement for the swarm of sticky notes strewn across your desk, monitor, and refrigerator. The major digital advantage, of course, is that you can access your notes and reminders from anywhere you have Internet access since all your notes are synced to Google Drive.

Once you've got the Android app installed, creating a note in Keep is straightforward. At the top of the screen you have an icon menu allowing you to create a text note, checklist, audio note, or snap a photo. One handy-dandy feature transcribes audio notes into text, with the original recording being embedded in the body of the note. Photo notes include a spot for adding text if you wish. You can also add a quick text note by tapping the "Add quick note" area above the menu icons.

Every note you create is searchable and displayed right underneath the menu bar using the card metaphor that Google utilizes for Android services such as Google Now and a rumored Play store revamp. By default, your notes are displayed in a grid view, but a single column view is available as well. Tapping on a note opens it up in full screen view, and swiping a note to the left or right in the main screen archives it. You can view your archive by tapping the three-square icon in the upper right-hand corner and selecting "Archived notes."

Each note can be colour-coded by tapping the colour palette icon when viewing notes in full screen. This can be helpful if you want to separate your to-do checklists from general reminders, or you just want to identify photo notes at a glance. There are currently eight colours to choose from, including basic white.

Pro tip: If you change the colour of your note when using the "Add quick note" option that will permanently change your notes' default from white to the new colour.

Google Keep: Sharing for Keep

Android users can also share their notes with others by selecting the share icon inside a note while in full screen. Keep's sharing function works similarly to the general Android sharing options, allowing you to share notes using the apps installed on your device.

I found sharing notes via the Gmail for Android app is especially useful. Checklists are shared as plain text, using brackets to stand in for check boxes, and photos are sent as standard attachments. Subject lines for shared emails are chosen automatically, using the title of your note.

You can also add notes from other apps using Android's share options. That includes Chrome, which is helpful if you want to grab a Web page for later reading or just plain remember a site.

To add a Web page to a Keep note, select the three-square icon from the upper right corner in Chrome and tap "Share..." Next, select Keep from the share menu, add any extra text you want to the note, and you're done. (The same basic process should work with most Android apps.)

Keep is clearly designed to create a Website preview when you grab a page from Chrome, but it doesn't do a great job of that right now. The app is supposed to display the page's headline and URL, and there is a large space for an image from the page. In my tests, however, Keep failed to display an image for any of my saved pages from multiple sites, including TechHive, The New York Times, and ABC.com.

Google Keep: Desktop version

Keep may be a little rough around the edges on Android, but the mobile version is far more refined than the Web interface. For starters, even though Keep saves your notes in Drive, the service is not yet integrated into the Drive menu, meaning there are no quick links or shortcuts to get to Keep from Drive. Instead, you have to manually type in the URL, drive.google.com/keep.

Similar to the Android app, the Web version lets you view your notes in a grid or single-column view. You can also type in new text notes, create checklists, upload images, search, delete, archive and view archived notes. Beyond the basics, however, there are a few obvious features that are lacking. If you grab a URL from a news story on your PC, Keep doesn't create a preview of the Webpage and saves the URL as plain text--it can't even create a link. You can upload images from the desktop, but there's no option to use your Webcam to take an image. Grabbing a quick Webcam image of a receipt or product you want to remember is a very useful option in the Evernote desktop app. It's a shame Google didn't work a little HTML5 magic to include this option on its Web-based version of Keep.

If you don't have an Android 4.0 device, you could try using the Web version Keep on your device, but I wouldn't recommend it. Keep on the Web did not perform well in my tests using a Nexus 7 running Android 4.2.2. One-finger scrolling was very laggy, as was typing in a new note, making it almost unusable.

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Evernote says security has been breached

 

 

Evernote insists no payment data or personal details were accessed, changed or lost

Online information storage firm Evernote has asked all users to reset their passwords, following a security breach by hackers.

The California-based company, that allows people to store and organise personal data on an external server, is thought to have about 50 million users.

It said user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords were accessed.

But it insisted there was "no evidence" that payment details or stored content was accessed, changed or lost.

Evernote acts like an online personal organiser, with users able to save data such as video clips, images, web pages, notes and itineraries in an external storage system commonly known as the cloud.

In a statement on the company's website, the firm said its security team discovered and blocked "suspicious activity on [their] network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote service".

It added: "While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data remains secure.

"This means that, in an abundance of caution, we are requiring all users to reset their Evernote account passwords."

The firm apologised "for the annoyance" caused by the breach, which it said is becoming "far more common" at other "large services".

In February, Apple revealed a "small number" of its computers had been hacked, but added there was no sign of data theft.

The hack came a week after social-networking firm Facebook said it had traced a cyber-attack back to China after some of its employee laptops were hacked.

A month ago, micro-blogging website Twitter announced it had been the victim of a security breach which compromised the accounts of 250,000 users.

The company's information security director, Bob Lord, said the attack "was not the work of amateurs".

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