Steve Dotto here.
How the heck are you doing this fine day?
Me?
I am a bit road-weary if truth be known, having just returned from about a 16-day junket out
to Chicago, New York, Boston, just all places east of where I live here in Vancouver but
home safe and sound and eager to get back to answering your questions today on Ask DottoTech.
Well, we’ve reached the 9th episode of Ask DottoTech.
I am thrilled that you folks are asking me lots of questions in our YouTube Channel.
Now if you have a technical question that you want me to try and answer—I can’t
answer each and every question that’s asked but I do my best—just make sure you post
it in our Comments area here in YouTube and I will do my best to get to it.
I think we should just dive in.
We’ve got lots of Evernote stuff to talk about today and a few other things as well
and that’s good because I’m working on a lot of Evernote things and we’re redoing
our Evernote Made Easy course as we speak so it’s kind of top for mind to me.
So Dave Coleman, who is not really a chimpanzee I don’t imagine even though his avatar seems
to indicate that he is one, “So Steve, I am new to Evernote, two to three weeks in
and still learning and YouTube sites are great for my training, even better than Evernote
is.
But as I am at this moment still a basic user, how do I know how much of the maximum 64 MB
are left for me for this or any month?”
So simple, David, but thank you for asking the question.
If you go into your desktop app for Evernote and you go under the Evernote Menu, going
into your Account info will bring up the status of your account and it will tell you how much
data you can upload for the remainder of this month.
Now I wouldn’t worry too much about your 64MB of space.
I think that’s how much Evernote gives.
The times that I was a free user, I never ever came close to using the maximum.
Now I guess you can and I’m sure there are people that do come close to the maximum but
you can store an awful lot of data in Evernote, the way that Evernote’s structured but if
you are concerned that is exactly how you do it.
Just go into your Account settings under the Evernote Menu and you will be there.
Thank you, David, for that fine question.
Next up is Book Lover, “Thanks for the video.
I have a doubt.”
Book Lover, I’ve got to tell you.
I have so many doubts but let’s deal with your specific doubt, shall we?
“If we clip a web article and the article is removed for the internet, will the article
still be in our Evernote or GONE because there are many important infos saved in my Evernote,
I’d hate to get bad news when I can’t do anything but lose that info.”
So basically concerned that when you’re using the Evernote Web Clipper, that when
you store something, if that information is removed from the web, it will also be removed
from Evernote.
I can put your mind at ease, Book Lover.
It will not be.
Let’s just jump over.
Let’s just go to a site here.
Love this story.
I was just reading it at Social Media Examiner, all about top brands, rediscovering YouTube.
Good for you, Top brands.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Here’s how the Evernote Web Clipper works and how it works in this particular case.
Now while I’m here, let me point out if you notice, I’m in my web browser.
I’m in the Chrome browser here.
You click on the Evernote Web Clipper in order to bring out the Web Clipper.
We’ve dealt with this in the past; sometimes people go, “It doesn’t work for me, Steve,
when I do it.”
That’s because you’re clipping in the Evernote tool that’s been installed in your
operating system.
This is a system tool for creating instant notes in Evernote.
Even though the elephant icon looks identical, it’s different from the one that ends up
in your menu bar of your browser when you install the Evernote Web Clipper, just as
aside.
But here when we click on the elephant icon, bringing up our Web Clipper, here are the
different options that we have for clipping information into Evernote.
We can choose to clip the article which is going to clip this information here.
You can always see it highlighted, the information that’s going to be clipped.
You can clip the simplified article, which strips out all of the advertising and ancillary
information.
You can clip the full page, which puts everything in, or you can clip the bookmark.
This first one, two, three, article, simplified article and full page, if the page changes
or leaves the internet, it will still be retained in your Evernote account.
You will still have all the information.
If, however, you choose to clip the minimum amount of information and just click the bookmark,
then if the site changes, if they change the information at the referring URL, you will
lose that information because all you’ve got is a link.
You don’t have the information actually clipped.
With all of these, you actually have the information clipped and stored in Evernote.
It takes up a little bit more storage, referring back to the amount of storage you have on
Evernote.
It takes up a little bit more space but you will have all the information so you definitely
want to do one of those.
Also, all links and all hyperlinks within the page are active as well in Evernote.
Having said all of that, if you choose a screenshot, that will just take a graphic of the page
but it will be a static image but that will also be retained, of course.
So those are the different options that you have and I have.
Gosh, I’m trapped in the screen capture.
Those are the options that you have, Book Lover.
If you are concerned that you will lose the data, you will not if you choose one of those
first three methods for clipping information from the web into Evernote.
Thank you so much for that fine question.
Next up we have a question from Satyasam108 who says, “Hi, if I do not have access to
the internet, does that mean I do not have access to my notes?
Is there a way I can store my notes exclusively on my tablet with my Evernote?”
Yes indeed, there is and that’s a darn good question.
Let’s explain how Evernote stores information and then I’ll show you how you deal with
it on your mobile.
When we create an Evernote account, we store it in our local computer, whatever host computer
we have and then it’s mirrored to the cloud services on Evernote.
That’s the syncing that goes back and forth between Evernote and this service.
What happens then is that all the notes that are in our Evernote sync services online then
get synced to our mobile devices which traditionally have a lot less storage than do our computers.
That’s why we need access to the internet either through mobile services or through
Wi-Fi in order to access our notes when we’re on our smartphones.
Having said all that, before I show you how to make sure that you can get access to your
notes when you’re offline on your phone, there’s a second type of notebook that Evernote
allows to create.
If we go and create a new notebook, let me just show you how to create a new notebook
and show you what exactly happens.
When you go to create a new notebook, you can choose to create either a synchronized
notebook or a local notebook.
You have to do this from this menu.
If you just go to New notebook, it will automatically create what’s called a synchronized notebook.
Now a synchronized notebook works exactly as I just mentioned.
It syncs all of the content through the web services and then it will sync to your smartphone.
If for security purposes, you don’t want the information that’s being stored in that
notebook shared online, you’re dealing with personal information, banking information,
tax information, client information, something that you would be concerned if it got into
other people’s hands would cause you an issue, then you can choose to create a local
notebook and then the information is only stored in Evernote on your local computer.
It’s far less convenient as far as a lot of convenience having access to your information
wherever you are and on whatever device you’re on with Evernote, but it creates an additional
level of security and still allows you to use Evernote.
That’s kind of the basic set up as far as notebooks.
If you do have a synchronized notebook and you want to have access to it say when you’re
on an airplane flight and you don’t have access to the internet, how we do that is
you do that on device by device.
So you go into your Evernote on whichever device, be it a tablet or be it a mobile phone,
you go into Evernote and you choose which of your notebooks you want to have stored
locally.
You want to be careful about this because it will take up memory on your phone and you
can run out of space pretty quickly if you’re not careful about exactly what you’re saving.
But if we go into our Notebooks and let’s say I want to store this Evernote Made Easy
notebook which I’m creating right now—this is my new course, my new online course content—if
I wanted to store that on this device, if I wanted to have all the information available
to us offline, you go into the little three dots down at the very bottom which brings
up your options and you go into Notebook info and there we have a toggle switch allowing
us to make it available online, offline or not available offline.
Now this one, the default is to be not available offline.
That’s the default right there but I, as you can see with this particular one, made
it available offline so even when I don’t have access to Wi-Fi, I have access to the
notes in this notebook.
Does that make sense?
I think it does.
Thank you for that question, Satyasam108.
I think I would like to move off of Evernote for just a few moments.
Let’s talk about a very serious issue.
Let’s talk about backing up our computers.
MarkNF82 says, “First off, I want to thank you for all the support and entertainment
your shows and YouTube’s have provided you over the years.
I’ve been watching since the old café days and I’ve learned a great deal,” my old
TV show, Dotto Data Café, “Fortunately or unfortunately, I have a quick question
about backups.
There’s tech support for a lot of seniors and computer-illiterate people who are rightfully
concerned about the data once I explain to them what could happen.
For years, I’ve been trying to find a set and forget backup option that would work for
them.”
Usually he sets up time machine with an external USB for Mac users, which is a terrific option.
“However, I’ve tried many Windows-based solution that have confused my clients and
usually stopped working for various reasons.”
Well, Time Machine does, too.
If it finally gets filled, you have to be careful as far as that goes.
“Is there any software or hardware-based solutions that you would recommend?
Also where does Time Machine sit in backing up?
Is it a good solution, recommended or just meh?”
Well, it’s more than meh but it’s not the end all be all.
Backing up is a delicate situation and you really have to have, I believe, at least two
backup options going for you at all times.
You’ve got your local backup, which you store usually in the same area as your computer’s
and then I think you have to have an offsite backup solution as well.
So for your local on-site backup, if you are on the Mac, the Time Machine does work well
but you have to maintain it.
You have to keep checking to make sure you’re not running out of space because once it runs
out of space, obviously there’s no place for it to store new files and it’s got to
delete older ones.
There are issues and I’ve had Time Machine working fine seemingly for a couple of years
and then all of a sudden had issues when I’ve gone in to look at it.
So it’s something that you have to maintain and check, I think, on a fairly regular basis,
which is probably not on the sweet spot of your seniors.
So having said that, I think probably for most of us that really want to have just a
set and forget backup system, an online backup system is going to be the best.
There are a couple of different options out there and I can’t speak to which one is
better because I’ve tested out iDrive.
I actually have an affiliate relationship with iDrive, which I’m not going to give
you the link for in this because I haven’t looked at it recently enough to be able to
actually firmly recommend it but I think they have a fairly good reputation and they’ve
done a good job.
It’s a little bit misleading.
It costs about $80 to $90 a year for a proper sized backup, for like 1 TB of backup space.
The other option, I believe, has an unlimited backup space and it’s a well-thought out
solution.
It’s called Carbonite and it costs $60 to $100 a year as well for backing up a single
computer.
If you really want a set and forget system, I think one of these online systems is the
best as long as that you make sure that your clients or the people that you’re supporting
understand how the account works, what their relationship is with these folks and they
have a good robust internet account because the first backup always takes a long time
with these because it’s got to go online to back up everything.
After the first backup, it’s just incremental.
Anything that changes gets backed up but I think these are probably the most reliable
solutions.
I think we will wrap things up now for this week’s episode of Ask DottoTech.
My thanks to everybody who left questions.
If you have questions for me to answer please post it in the Comments area here in YouTube.
I read those comments each and every day and if I can answer your question, I will do my
best to get it here on the show.
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Until next time, I’m Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle!