I don’t know about any of you, but I’m scatterbrained.  I’m one of those people who can’t remember their own phone number, I get dates confused, I forget to make calls (even important ones), sometimes I read an email and then forget to respond, and I have a hard time putting a face with a name…  much less remembering how I know someone or what information they have shared with me.  This never really bothered me until recently when I went through my email contacts with the goal of sorting everyone into categories. I quickly discovered that while a categorized contact list may sound efficient, they do absolutely no good if you only recognize about 1/3 of the names on the list.

The email contact fiasco occurred several days ago and I’m still not done cross-referencing and scouring the internet trying to put names to email addresses.  During all of this digital madness I started thinking there had to be a better way to keep track of all my contacts (especially my genealogy contacts).  I was in this state of mind when I ran across the Evernote Hello app.

I had used the Evernote Hello app before and found it completely useless, because I had no idea how to use it.  The first time I used the app, it appeared to be nothing more than a duplicate of my iPhone’s contact list and it was quickly deleted.  However, once I downloaded the app again with the intention of using it as a database to keep track of genealogy leads, contacts, and distant family members…  I began to see the beauty of the application.

Why am I now singing Evernote Hello’s praises?  Several reasons.  The new interface of Evernote Hello is awesome.  It appears like a regular contact list on the surface with all the basic information you would expect to find: names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and photos.  However, once you look under the hood…  you’ll find four things that make the app worth using:

1. Connection to your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.  If you link Evernote Hello to Facebook or LinkedIn, you gain the option to connect your contacts to their respective profiles on both sites.
2. Facebook Relations.  Facebook relationships will appear in Evernote Hello if you have related individuals in your contact list – it’s really beyond amazing for those of us who are keeping track of living relatives.
3. Note taking capabilities.  Each contact I have stored in the app has a notes section that includes how we know one another (or our relation), a small family tree for distant relatives, a list of information they have passed to me, questions I need to ask them, or photos they have passed along to me.
4. Evernote Hello syncs to Evernote.  I use the Evernote website daily (it’s literally always open in the background of whatever I am doing), so being able to access my contact notes while going about my regular research is a godsend for me.  It’s also really cool that the Evernote Hello app can associate Evernote’s notes to the appropriate contacts if you use the tag options.

I have hardly been using Evernote Hello for a week and I’m already completely dependent upon it.  I find myself increasingly thankful that there is an app out there for those who are as scatterbrained as I am.

Do you use Evernote Hello too?  I’d love to hear how everyone else keeps track of who is who among their living distant relations.