Clearly it is … not all that clear … what Clearly is …
Evernote has a web page at: https://evernote.com/clearly/guide/ that shows you how Clearly works and what you can do with it.
WTGTD?
Given that Web Clipper exists … why does Clearly exist? And do I really need Clearly?
Q. Why does clearly exist?
A. I don’t know.
I *speculate* however, that there is a technology industry programming story novella behind why Clearly exists in parallel to Web Clipper. So, here we go …
In the big inning, was Web Clipper. Evernote *intuitively* understood that they needed an on ramp from the internet. So Web Clipper was developed. I *hypothesize* that Evernote whipped the slaves (in as much as Evernote can whip slaves who the company pays to have employee houses cleaned twice a month) to get Web Clipper done quickly.
This is not that big a deal except, creating Web Clipper created a team with a common bond of being whipped slaves (who have their houses cleaned for free). Programmers anywhere in near approximation to the word TEAM require me to point out the mother of all knowledge-worker-team books PEOPLEWARE by DeMarco and Lister. Because software teams are special, awesome, and if they release a product, powerful in nerd culture.
Then someone not on the Web Clipper team had an idea of making a “more pure” tool to bridge from the internet into user databases.
*Aside*
No. I do not have any leaked proprietary information Evernote. I’ve just seen this happen many times, at so many companies, that the finger prints of this kind of bifurcating product effort, do not even belong to the individual perpetrators. They belong to class events.
For example, I worked for a general manager at HP who built a high performance team around his product. The high performance team got their product (a not-HP3000) to out-perform the HP3000.
Unforgivable.
Sin.
/*Aside*
So, in our novella, the *insiders* are the Web Clipp-istas. And, the outsiders are the Clearly-purists. Once you have true outsiders within a company’s software ecology, you have evolved a new species of team that defines itself in being “not” the defacto internet-to-Evernote team. The result of two software teams doing similar but-politically-separate things is …
Source: Cafe Press Your Team Sucks
For example … IBM’s “black” team (DeMarco & Lister Kindle Book L1849 Chapter 19). A gelled team inside IBM that delighted in making other software teams cry.
Think of the Web Clip-istas as Bill Clinton, and the Clearly-purists as the Republican party. As the republican party develops TRUE differentiation, Bill Clinton would shift to “the middle” and suck out the differentiation’s soul like a dementor …
Source: PrestigeDetail.Ca
So, now we know the ecology of two teams running in parallel inside Evernote, why does Clearly exist? Well … initially, it was because Clearly did something that Web Clipper did not do (stripping out useless screen elements). Today, however, Clearly exists as the reading-R&D function for the Web Clipper team.
Wait, what?
Web Clipper has moved to incorporate the functionality developed by the Clearly team. So now with clearly you have A LOT OF OPTIONS (see red arrows) about what to capture …
… and, Clearly, has few options. When you use Clearly, it is cleaner than using Web Clipper because Clearly takes you right into the “simplified article” view (2nd red arrow above). Usually this works. Sometimes not. When “simplified article” does not work, Web Clipper is head and shoulders above Clearly in functionality.
So, Web Clipper by having Clearly’s “back” is the superset of functionality. And clearly, is the cutting edge.
Back to the question: And do I really need Clearly?
The simple answer is “no.” All a GTD person needs is Evernote Web Clipper. Evernote Clearly though awesome, though powerful, though it be ahead of Web Clipper, is the product of the marginalized software team.
Web Clipper in its myriad options (red arrows in image above) has more capabilities than Clearly. More to learn in the short run, but more simplicity in the long run because you only have to learn one tool.
Web Clipper folk, time to find something more cutting edge to do at Evernote.com! Web Clipper’s product manager is the “Bill Clinton of Evernote” and resistance is futile. Bill will assimilate you.
Bottom Line for GTD people:
Install Evernote Web Clipper, and ignore Evernote Clearly.
bill meade