Evernote CEO Phil Libin

Yesterday, at the annual Evernote Conference taking place in San Francisco, Evernote Corp. announced a host of new features. These new updates, along with improvements made to current features, brings the productivity app that much closer to becoming a virtual extension of your brain.

The seven-year-old productivity app has more than 100 million users and the more than 20 announcements made will likely see that number continue to increase.

Available in both paid and free versions, the software is used to store and organize text, images, voice and other items in the cloud and makes them searchable and shareable from any device.

In a move toward anticipatory computing, Evernote announced its “context” feature will now present external content relevant to what a user is writing or reading about. This is of course in addition to related content from your own notes currently being shown.

This feature is supported by partnerships with the likes of Dow Jones & Co.–the publisher of The Wall Street Journal–TechCrunch, FastCompany, PandoDaily and LinkedIn, and is aimed at presenting a user with relevant and potentially helpful content before they even realise they need it.

“The idea is whenever you are working in Evernote, you’re not doing it in a vacuum. You’re not opening up a blank page. Evernote is finding information that is most actionable to you right now,” Libin said in his presentation.

Also announced is a new “chat” feature which will allow users to have conversations with colleagues or collaborators  without having to leave the app to go to another chat tool. This is not only for work colleagues, but also lets you chat  with anyone you are connected to on LinkedIn.

These new business features as well as a number of other updates will be available in November. There is also a new web client which is already accessible.

Also at the conference Evernote said that it would continue to grow its marketplace for physical goods. The marketplace currently sells scanners, paper planners, messenger bags and other office and productivity items. Mr Libin stated that the marketplace is important to Evernote as it wants to extend its integration with wearables beyond its existing partnerships with Pebble, Galaxy Gear, Sony SmartWatch and Google Glass.

“With where things are going with wearable devices and smartwatches, the people that don’t understand the physical world won’t succeed,” Mr. Libin said.

In its first 10 months of operation the marketplace generated on average $1 million in revenue per month.

With more than $250 million in venture funding secured to date Evernote has said that it is considering an IPO in a few years.

Image credit: Tojosan