Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine

I think this is really quite neat. I used to be a heavy user of Evernote, but I found it difficult to reconcile my handwritten notes (90% of my notes at work) with what I'd have in Evernote. As a result, I stopped using Evernote. I always hoped I'd be able to find a good way to record my notes digitally (e.g., iPad + stylus), but at the end of the day, taking notes with pen &#38; paper always wins for me.<p>This could very well bring me back to Evernote. Not sure if it's worth $24+, but if it works, maybe... I do take an awful lot of handwritten notes, and I'd love to digitize them easily.

So far, my experience with Evernote has been watching them make Skitch almost unusable. The app always forgets my Skitch credentials, keeps displaying the startup screen even when I check "Do not show this to me again", and tries to force me into an Evernote account. At one point they changed Skitch to display 10 different things I could do after an upload. They made it a real mess.<p>I assume Evernote's products are overly complicated, but I'd like to know if they just botched the Skitch acquisition. Does anybody have any insight into this?

This is the world crying out for a fast e-ink small form-factor tablet that just saves everything as digital ink. (Then build-up from there.) Simply recording time (and optionally location) associated with each page would make the device awesome. Add the ability to interface with a web app for better processing, as Evernote does, and you'd take over the world.

This should be ideal for someone like me, but unfortunately I can't see myself using it. I have a shelf full of Moleskins (began buying them in 2005) and I was a premium Evernote user from 2009-2011. But I canceled my Evernote subscription because I never used the software - I really dislike their UI. The only thing that could bring me back to them is a UI redesign, to make it seem less like an email application and more like a file-sorting system, which is what it's supposed to be.<p>And the idea of taking pics of my notebook pages with my phone is too clunky.<p>However, I'll grant that this is why this doesn't work * for me * and express envy for those for whom it does work for, since "on paper" all of this seems like a great idea. Having notebook pages scanned and sortable would be wonderful.

Now, for those of us interested in startups - what a perfect example of great product development:<p>- Address existing need that few other products addresses<p>- Helps generating new customers by removing some of the barriers - "I like to create my notes with a pen on a paper"<p>- Involves non-trivial blend of hardware and software<p>- Involves non-trivial business partnership<p>- Serves as a test-bed for bringing the solution to more people by refining unskewing algorithms<p>- etc. etc.<p>Well executed, Evernote!

Not that interested in the Moleskine, but the smart stickers are an amazing idea. A great mesh of the real world and digital.

As an author, it's depressing to see empty books -- stickers and all -- selling for twice as much as full ones.

The feature I would really like to see would be a printed title Box in the moleskin notebook, which would allow me to title my written work and then pass that title into Evernote when it's scanned. You could obviously also extrapolate this feature out to tags or other pieces of metadata to be stored in the digital Evernote document.<p>Just to clarify: this would really be made for those who have awful handwriting (like me), so only a small part of your page would need to be written carefully and eventually digitized to be searchable.

Not really a fan of Moleskine's notebooks, but this is interesting.<p>But, Evernote's Page Camera feature that was added to the iOS app does seem to work just fine with other paper (I tested Field Notes w/ graph paper). It's just 'optimized' for the paper in these notebooks, whatever that means.

Sigh. Looks like Big Commerce (the store Evernote is using) stores passwords in plain-text or at least a reversible hash. They emailed me my password. :\

Yes, but how far is this from just using standard/college/quad ruled paper in the first place? Requiring special paper automatically limits the feature's utility. Once their "limited edition" notebooks sell out this feature immediately begins the countdown to uselessness.

How is this different from taking notes on any physical paper and take a photo of it? My Galaxy SII camera takes real good pictures of papers. They are readable, good focused and sharp.<p>I just see a marketing partnering stunt here?? Am I missing something?

"we designed a special dotted paper pattern" - this sounds very much like what Anoto[1] does. [1] <a href="http://www.anoto.com/the-technology-1.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.anoto.com/the-technology-1.aspx</a>

As much as I wanted to use digital notes in meetings, I still take joy in using the beautifully designed moleskine notebooks with a Cross pen. However, indexing and search is always a problem. If Evernote can fix this for me I will be a lifetime paid user of Evernote!<p>In my opinion this is a good glimpse of digital and analog life working in harmony instead of dictating you have to live with either one.<p>Great job! Ordering mine now :)

I could see some use in combining the laptop and piece of paper in note taking. To make this easier I would like a system to help me reconcile the the notes made on different mediums. Probably I'm writing on laptop and would like to include stuff drawn on paper in between those notes.<p>Few things that could make this easier: - Add machine readable page numbering to the notebook - Some kind of annotation scheme, like (1) I could use to refer to the drawings on the notebook.<p>On laptop I could refer to the pictures with &#60;page number&#62;:&#60;picture&#62; style notation.<p>Would be actually nice to follow similar workflow with laptop and iPad. Write text on full keyboard, draw diagrams for the same note on iPad at the same time. Maybe this is already possible, have never tried this.

I don't know much about unskewing, but presumably the dotted lines mean you know how each dot should be placed relative to each other dot. With plain lines you'd have to do some guesswork based on how wavey the line is etc.

I don't mean to be a debbie downer, but I find the idea of taking pictures of moleskine pages really, really clunky. I have done that in the past to take photos of book/magazine pages, and in my experience the picture almost always comes out low quality - a combination of blur, contrast, the curvature of the page and flash reflecting off the paper makes it very difficult to read later. I can only imagine what types of problems these factors will cause for Evernote's hand-writing recognition program. After all, software can optimize image quality only so much.

Great, except that Moleskine notebooks are very costly here in India.<p>Generally in ranges of hundreds of rupees.<p><a href="http://www.flipkart.com/search/a/all?query=Moleskine&#38;vertical=all&#38;dd=0&#38;autosuggest[as]=off&#38;autosuggest[as-submittype]=default-search&#38;autosuggest[as-grouprank]=0&#38;autosuggest[as-overallrank]=0&#38;Search=%C2%A0&#38;_r=n_2yuAC4xgh0SZTuulvAtw--&#38;_l=Tnndui8JdMVk7CZmDKIfXQ--&#38;ref=5c117020-8e31-4c52-af4a-5252943b6eec&#38;selmitem=" rel="nofollow">http://www.flipkart.com/search/a/all?query=Moleskine&#38;ver...</a>

I didn't even look through all the functionality before I made my purchase (#182).<p>I use Evernote for nearly everything I do. Task lists, projects, ideas, goals. Evernote saves me one of my most precious resources: time. I've worked Evernote into my daily workflow for getting things done.<p>And I have a stack of Moleskines I've used for reminders, sketches, random thoughts that I scratch down in a hurry throughout my day.<p>This is the perfect product for my everyday use. Looking forward to when they arrive (they will ship in October). I just wonder if I bought enough of them.

Interesting. And the new app seems great. No more different modes for reading and editing! Hopefully they release an update for Android as well...

Stickers are a neat idea, but why not just some special drawn symbol? Would be way cool if you could define your own.

Is there any reason they can't do this with the Android app, too? Or does it already have this functionality?

This is great. I love Evernote and use it daily but I also prefer writing some things in notebooks (and I use Moleskine ones). I could definitely see myself using it. It depend on how the $ price works out in GBP compared to regular Moleskine notebooks which are about £9.

There are a couple of note books (CamiApp, Shotnote) that have appeared in Japan that are quite similar. I found the design pretty good, though I stopped using them.. I think mainly because I switched form Evernote to org-mode.

Gutted this isn't on Android. Why are so many people still launching apps/competitions/products for iOS only? I could understand it a few years back, but doing it today just cuts your market in half.

I've never gotten into Evernote, but have wanted to for a long time. I've bought these as a way of forcing myself to finally sit down and learn how to use it.<p>Does anyone know of a good intro guide to Evernote?

It's awkward that I can't vote and therefore save stories anymore. So I have to comment even if I don't have anything useful to say. Can't be the goal of Hacker News, can it?

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY. Oh wait, IOS Only? Never mind.

Almost enough to make me go back to Moleskine (love the notebooks, but not being able to easily digitize was a problem.)

Very neat. The only concern I have is to remember take a photo of all the pages and which page I already took a photo.

I'm addicted to moleskine notebooks - I have many, I'll certainly be getting this one as well!

Great work, Evernote! That's pretty darn cool :-)

I never "got" Evernote, but this is trés cool.

the shills will eat this up

i hate evernote

Only a fool would buy $25+ notebook. I'd rather play lottery.

Big -1 to Moleskine. Such a brand and partnering with some tech whatever.

For the hipster in your life...