Was excited to hear about this collaboration of Neo smartpen from @eddie_lee today. Basically it's a moleskine branded Neo smartpen, moleskine paper 'tablet' and companion app. I'm a huge fan of this pen and have been since I first wrote with it.
@helencrozier I've been sitting on the fence about this since it first came out - what do you particularly enjoy about the system? I am currently flip-flopping between pen on paper, digitized by camera, and Evernote/Penultimate on the iPad Pro used with the Apple pencil.
@andreasduess my brain works better on paper. Despite wanting it all to be collected digitally I think there is a creative/memory disconnect for me when trying to write on anything other than pen and paper. I've tested the livescribe but that is a clunkier pen and process. The Neo smartpen turns on and off automatically and I love being able to choose different line thicknesses and colours. Moving pages or copying to other notebooks is a breeze too. There's a really nice calendar view on the app which gives links to all the notes you wrote on that day no matter which notebook!
Having a different notebook for different purposes works. I have a personal journal (original moleskine not the new one) that I fill with my morning pages, goals and ideas. I then have a small memo pad that I carry with me at all times. I then also have a notebook for each big project I'm working on. However due to the ability of being able to move things around if I have an idea and I'm without the notebook I can put it into the memo book and transfer or I can just add a manual Evernote note via my phone so all the ideas are in one place.
I hope that helps..... I thought I was going to go the way of the apple pencil but glass seems so cold compared to paper!!
@helencrozier Thanks. The calendar view sounds amazing. Only yesterday I was frantically searching for meeting notes, taken on paper, three weeks ago to finish a proposal. That's where Penultimate shines - I have Evernote create an automatic notebook for every meeting in my calendar (hurrah for IFTTT) - and then just save my Penultimate notes into that notebook, so I never miss anything. But I am not in love with the writing on glass sensation either, and much prefer pen on paper. There's also some fairly solid research out there that just the presence of a tablet on a table reduces the engagement of the people attending that meeting - electronics are a distracting presence.
I've always been on the fence with a love for doodling thoughts in notebooks vs the enhanced GTD elements that cross platform note/to do apps provide.
This product makes that gap much smaller. Love it.
Do you have to have the app open the entire time you're writing or does it store it in the pen like a LiveScribe pen? Seems like something I've been waiting over 5 years for.
@gemmaangelina unfortunately not it needs the coded paper to send data into the pen. It will work with any Neo smartpen notebook and I would be hopeful that Moleskine will increase their range of compatible notebooks in the future.