In the last couple of weeks, personal data app Evernote — now 45 million users strong — announced another $85 million in financing led by an international investor; and the full launch of its new Evernote Business product. Today, the company is releasing updated SDKs for iOS and Android to capitalize on those opportunities and more, in a bid to become more of a central hub for your personal information.
The new iOS SDK now offers support for Evernote’s Yinxiang Biji service in China and Evernote Business. And while Evernote has every intention of also adding these into the Android SDK, Evernote says that will only come in its next SDK update for that platform; today, however, the company laid the groundwork by adding a number of other updates.
Essentially, the new iOS SDK now natively supports the bootstrapping protocol, a crucial bridge that means developers can now create integrations with Evernote that work across both the Chinese service and the rest of Evernote. (Although Yinxiang Biji and the main Evernote platform are developed in parallel, they run separately.)
Similarly, now that support for Evernote Business has been built into the SDK, this means that iOS developers will be able to add integrations that can work across both the consumer-facing Evernote platform, and the more premium Business service. As we explained at the time of the Evernote Business launch, people can keep both a regular (or premium) Evernote account, plus a Business account; the new SDK will let developers create a way to interface with all at the same time.
Evernote has big ambitions to become the central repository for your data — be it notes about what you’ve eaten, or read or who you’ve met — and the larger updates to both the Android and iOS SDK reflect that ambition.
Mustafa Furniturewala, the Evernote engineer responsible for the iOS SDK, notes that the update includes utility classes to make it easier to create notes; Obj-C categories for API’s to make it easier to access business notes and shared notes; and more efficient use of our HTTP Thrift layer. There is also sample code for photo notes; Business APIs; and shared notes, as well as bug and memory leak fixes.
Meanwhile, Ty Smith, the Evernote engineer overseeing the Android SDK, also notes that the main aim in rewriting the Android SDK was to make it “easier to use” and “up to par with other Android libraries.”
Among the changes for Android developers, Smith notes, are a number of simplifications and consolidations. They include the following:
- Migrated to Library Project
- Full rewrite of of EvernoteSession in addition to all client class
- Added Apache Maven support with sync to Maven Central
- Moved all blocking requests to background threads
- Updated dependency references with our new consolidated API
- Removed duplicate class libraries
- Updated the interface to the latest Android UI style (Holo)
- Created OAuth activity to handle authentication flow within the app
- Added example functionality to the sample app HelloEdam to show developers what is possible
- Various bug fixes and performance improvements
No support yet for Yinxiang Biji nor Evernote Business, but these, Smith notes, are already being incorporated into the next update. Similarly, it looks like Android will be getting its own sets of sample (helper) code to make it easier for Android developers to work with Evernote.
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