Evernote 'memory aid' apps recall people, meals

If you have trouble putting a name to a face, or remembering where you ate that delicious morsel of food you are craving - and you have an iPhone - help is now at hand. Evernote, designed as a memory-aid application for storing text, audio and visual notes across multiple mobile devices and desktop machines has launched two new features - the Evernote Hello and Evernote Food apps.
The aim of Evernote, first launched in 2008 and now used by about 20 million people world-wide, is to function as a "second brain" to give people a better memory, Phil Libin, Evernote chief executive said.The Evernote Hello app aims at transforming and modernising the concept of the historic alphabet-based address book, he said.
"Current technology for remembering people is very antiquated," Libin told Reuters in an interview at LeWeb, a conference in Paris where about 3,500 of the world's top digital experts and entrepreneurs from 60 countries meet each year to discuss the state of the tech industry.
"Your brain doesn't remember people alphabetically - you remember them based on what they look like, when you met them and the context."
Evernote Hello requires users to swap phones and add their name into the other person's phone. Users are then prompted to hold the phone up so it can automatically take their picture and add it to their profile.
Evernote Hello can then send each person an email containing the new information. It also creates a record of where they met, a picture of the location, a map and the address.
"The idea is that instead of an address book I get a really visual way of remembering everyone I've met," Libin said.
"It remembers everything that's happened around that encounter based on location, time and keywords and it pulls together all the information into a context." Once added to Evernote Hello, people are displayed within a mosaic of faces.
When it is tapped, a face becomes a profile showing a history of all interactions the two people have shared.
It also shows other people who have participated in the same meetings, location information and items related to meetings from the user's Evernote account such as notes and photos.
The Evernote Food app allows users to track and record social events surrounding meals using pictures, location and text. It can also be used to document favourite recipes and share them on Facebook, Twitter and email. Users can also write restaurant reviews or plan diets.
"Evernote Food helps you remember all your best meal experiences," Libin said. "We are trying to make beautiful experiences around the most important things to remember." Both Evernote Hello and Evernote Food are available free for iPhone and iPod Touch.