What it is: A competitor to Evernote, a note-taking / photo-note-annotating / voice-reminder service.
Where it falls short: In the Android app, inline style attributes that are available in Evernote are missing; in the desktop app, Evernote adds a ton of inline style options as well as various export abilities while Keep on the desktop keeps its minimal inline style options, and loses sharing options -- that last one is a bit odd. You can't group notes as you can in Evernote, with different notebooks.
Where it comes out ahead: Keep's Android app checks your device for services you use then adds them to the list that you can share a note with. Once you share a note with one of your device's services, it turns it into a de facto share button.
Keep also allows you to add it to your lock screen, so that you can easily add new notes without unlocking your phone; this might also be seen as a negative, but because it's optional, I don't see it as necessarily bad.
Visually, notes can be colored, although it is limited to 8 colors.
Verdict: Keep could be a big competitor with Evernote, but not now. It reminds me of Google Docs Drive, in how Drive Documents falls short on creating inline styles (though it has improved somewhat), and how there are just small annoyances that force you to use Open Office, etc.
Imagine if they used customizable tags as in Gmail: then you could have colors as well as tags to help you sort out, much as Evernote's notebooks do. Practically speaking, this is the biggest obstacle to switching from Evernote to Keep.
Well, another obstacle (at least for me) is TRUST. If Keep doesn't earn $, can you trust that it will stick around? I'm still reeling from the death of Reader.
Thus, the best workflow I can discern: Use Keep to create notes easily and rapidly; share them with Evernote; edit them and sort them appropriately in Evernote. Keep is your front line note-taking app, but Evernote is your actual workhorse.
Your alternate workflow, is to export into Drive. But once you open it up with the Documents editor, it'll create a separate Documents file with the same name. The upside is that you'll have full inline style editing; the downside is that you'll have two different files with the same name, which, I'm guessing means that most people will take the extra step of killing the originally imported file. Now you see why this is the alternate workflow and not the best one.
Your alternate workflow, is to export into Drive. But once you open it up with the Documents editor, it'll create a separate Documents file with the same name. The upside is that you'll have full inline style editing; the downside is that you'll have two different files with the same name, which, I'm guessing means that most people will take the extra step of killing the originally imported file. Now you see why this is the alternate workflow and not the best one.
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| Visually, all your notes are cleanly organized into two columns. |
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| You can choose to view as a single column, too. |
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| You're currently limited to 8 colors. |
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| Keep searches for installed services that you can share with. |
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| Share with an app, it turns into a quick-share button. |
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| After importing into Evernote, you can further modify and organize. |
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| There are several options for widgets in Android. |
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| Meh. Desktop app (online) isn't so pretty as the Android app. |
An update: After playing around, it bugs me that I can't move the notes around like tiles, while in portrait view, but I can when I'm in landscape view, on my tablet and phone. Weird.
A second update: Hmm, well it works now. Before it just wouldn't move in portrait, but now it does. Oh well, maybe user error! :D
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