First things first:
- I absolutely love Delicious. Â I’ve been using it for ages and it saved my life several times. Â I’d easily pay for it if there was an option.
- My move to Evernote has nothing to do with recent rumors that Yahoo will shutdown Delicious. Â I know that that is not true – they will probably just sell it or find some other way to chop it off, but they won’t shut it down completely. Â And even if they would, someone will always start a clone. Â And there are no worries about data export what so ever – Delicioius was always excellent with that.
Now that we got those things out of the way, I can relax and tell you what’s going on. Â Yes, I am moving all my bookmarks from Delicious to Evernote. Â I already moved the large chunk and I’ll sort out the rest in coming days. Â So, why do I move? Â For a number of reasons.

First of all, there was just too much hype to ignore. Â I kept hearing about Evernote from all sides. Â That alone, of course, wouldn’t push me to move, but it made me look closer. Â I looked and I liked. Â Here are the things that I liked:
- Notes. Â I love how Delicious handles bookmarks. Â But bookmarks aren’t the only type of notes that I have. Â Sometimes I just need to jot something down. Â Sometimes I have a picture. Sometimes a file of different type. Â If it wasn’t on the web, I couldn’t save it at Delicious. Â I had a local application (gnote) running on my laptop for such things. Â But my laptop is not always around. Â I needed a web notes application forever.
- Web clipper. Â Collecting bookmarks for several years, I only now realized the risk of losing all that data. Â Bookmark stores the URL only. Â Maybe the title of the page. Â And a brief description at best. Â But if the bookmarked page will disappear, bookmark becomes useless. Â With web clipper though it’s a different story. Â You select full page or a part of it in your browser, press a button, and it’s clipped to your notes. Â So even if the source page will disappear, you still have a copy.
- Tags and folders. Â Delicious was the first (or one of the first) applications to bring tags mainstream. Â And tags are great. Â But they aren’t perfect. Â So are folders. Â But a combination of both can take a long way. Â Evernote organizes things into notebooks (folders) and tags. Â That’s way more convenient and flexible.
- Document indexing and image recognition! Not only this has tremendous practical value, but it brushes on my geek nerve. Â It’s just elegant use of technology. If you upload a PDF or some other document to Evernote, it will index the text in that document automatically. Â And you’ll be able to find the document by the text it has inside. Â But what is even better – it’ll do the same for images. Â Just imaging drinking out somewhere. Â You order a bottle of something absolutely breathtaking. Â But you’ll never remember how it’s called tomorrow. So you just snap a picture with your mobile and attach that picture to the note. Â Evernote will analyze the picture, find any text on it, and will make this picture searchable by that text. Â Brilliant! Â We need more applications like that.
Those things got me thinking. Â So I did a little test run. Â I used Evernote for a couple of days, to see how it will hold up. Â And the more I used it, the more I loved it! Â I started migrating my bookmarks from Delicious not because I wanted to leave Delicious, but because I wanted to have this data in Evernote.
By the way, a few words about the move. Â There is no direct import from Delicious. Â There are some scripts and converters which would tell you how to export data from Delicious, convert it, and then import it into Evernote. Â And I tried some. Â But my problem wasn’t with the data conversion. Â My problem was with the data itself. Â As I said, some bookmarks were pointing to non-existing websites. Â Some moved to different locations and had to be updated. Â Some simply became obsolete – like bits and pieces of technology news which I thought were interesting at the time. Â So after trying to fix data automatically (and I did some), I said that this collection is too valuable for me. Â And I went manually. Â One by one – checking the bookmark, clipping whenever possible, filing and tagging the note in Evernote. Â Care to guess how much of the material was outdated? Around 35-40%! Â With any kind of automated migration, I’d be inserting a lot of junk into the system that I was only starting to use. Â I didn’t want that. So manual it was.
Somewhere in the middle of the migration, I got myself an Android phone. Â Immediately a mobile app was installed which, given Internet access, brought all my notes so much closer to me. Â The only thing that I wanted to have now was some way to synchronize selected notes to my phone, so that I’d have them even if there is no Internet connectivity. Â Turns out that Evernote can do that too. Â But for premium users. Â For around $35/year you get the VIP goodies. Â Offline synchronization is supported on the folder-level. Â Just pick some folders and say that you want them on the mobile no matter what. Â And you’ll have them.
I wanted to write this post for a few days now, but my migration isn’t completely over and I was stalling. Â So what did finally push me to write this before I even finished migrating? Â The new version of the Google Chrome extension. Â One of the new features is as elegant as Evernote’s image recognition. Â From now on, Evernote has an option to suggest notes next to your search engine results. Â That just solves another big problem of mine.

You see, the thing is that even if I have something useful bookmarked, I often forget I do. Â I run straight to Google and try to find it again. Â Works most of the times, but not always. Â Now, whenever I search Google for something, Evernote searches my notes in the background and lets me know if I have any notes matching.
By now you must be thinking that there must be something wrong. Â Evernote sounds perfect, but we all know that that is impossible. Â So, OK, I’ll tell you a few things that I don’t like.
- Import from Delicious. Â Even though I’d still chose to import manually, for many of my friends that won’t be the case. Â There should be a simpler procedure to import data.
- User interface. Â It works, but it needs polish. Â Again, I myself don’t mind too much. Â But it’s a bit awkward to show Evernote to certain people.
- Social. Â One of the greatest benefits of Delicious is that it’s a social platform. Â You can link with your friends, follow their bookmarks or tags, share bookmarks, and even send interesting bookmarks to your friends using Delicious. Â In Evernote you can share a folder (with RSS feed). Â And that’s about it. Â There is no easy way to follow shared notes from my friends. Â There doesn’t even seem to be a concept of friend yet.
These are the biggest concerns for me. Â But they aren’t big enough. Â As I said – the service is awesome. Â The technology is fantastic. Â And it doesn’t even matter if you are running on free or premium account. Â Have a look at it, try it out, and let me know what you think.
P.S.: I have several public notebooks, but since I’m still organizing everything and moving things around, I won’t link to them at this time. Â I’ll write another post with all the yummy links when the dust settles down a bit.