I’m a longtime Evernote user. I love me some Evernote. I use all the extensions, add-ins, APIs, and whatever I can to maximize my use of that tool, and my note count proves it: 17,811 as of this posting.
So when I tell you that this latest feature in the Chrome browser extension for Evernote changes the way I’ll be using it for the better, you can bet it’s worth noting. (“Noting.” See what I did there?)
The new clipper highlights the area most likely to be the article, as it’s done for some time now. That’s cool and useful, but that’s not the thing that motivated me to write this. What it now does (well, what it’s apparently been doing since September but I’m just now noticing) is allow you to use your keyboard’s arrow keys to select a larger or smaller area, or move the highlight to another area altogether, in case the clipper’s logic fails on an oddball page layout.
It’s not that selecting an area of the web page is so cutting edge; I mean, we do A/B and multi-variate testing for a living, so we’re pretty darned familiar with named DIVs and swapping their content in the DOM. (Nerd alert!) No, it’s what that added control means to your knowledge management workflow. This gives you even greater precision — quickly! — about what you’re saving for posterity. And with information coming at you like a firehose, it’s important to have every last bit of control you can.
Besides, [meta]marketer is made up of people who love data, but not as much as we love what we can learn at a meaningful level from taming that data. We’re all about using every tool at your disposal to turn the flood of data into meaningful insights. Evernote is like that, but for the flood of random stuff you encounter in your day-to-day life.
If you don’t have a tool that allows you to capture every meaningful thing you encounter at the level of granularity you want to capture it, and with metadata and attributes that provide context for later when you can’t remember why you thought it was important, then you need this tool. Evernote’s not paying me to say this (yet! but we’d love to talk with you about any marketing optimization needs you may have, Phil 
) but we’re such fans that it’s worth making the time to point this out and share it with you.
Here’s to keeping your head above water and not drowning in the flow of your life’s information.