
Moleskine Smart Writing Set - joubert
http://www.moleskine.com/microsites/smartwritingset
======
ajarmst
Solving the wrong problem. Moleskine is losing market share to companies like
Leuchtterm because the quality of their products (especially the paper) has
been in steady decline. People who care about writing in journals care a lot.
They buy bottles of imported fountain pen ink. They have long conversations
about paper acidity and copperplate vs. roundhand. They will not buy your
cludgy pen or limit themselves to an expensive journal that doesn't care about
any of that. The "new feature" you're advertising is already available to
anyone with a camera-equipped smartphone. Your only potential customers have
already tried the dozens of cheap high-quality software solutions for
digitizing, analyzing, cleaning up, and distributing photographs and other
digital representations of what they write or draw in their own journals with
their own pens. And they're definitely saavy enough not to tie themselves to
an expensive low-quality replacement that'll be discontinued in two years when
Moleskin decides they're going to try to compete in the presentation
whiteboard space instead.

~~~
keithpeter
I tend not to digitise other than scanning the occasional opening for future
reference and I agree with the sentiments expressed in the parent post.

However I must disagree about specific brands...

 _" Moleskine is losing market share to companies like Leuchtterm because the
quality of their products (especially the paper) has been in steady decline."_

UK: Leuchtterm notebooks cost an arm and a leg here as do Rhodia.

Generic A5 sketch books in arts supply shops cost around £5 for 80 sheets of
acid free 100 g/m^2 paper signature bound in boards or £2 for stapled 20 sheet
booklets with cardboard covers. Not as trendy as Moleskines but very
serviceable and pen-proof - you can even paint in them (by design).

~~~
ajarmst
Yep. I don't need rules or grids for a lot of tasks, so I often just buy bound
sketchbooks. But I was talking about market-share, and a significant chunk of
the share Moleskine has been losing are the former "vrai moleskine" customers
who care not only about actual quality but conspicuous consumption.

------
rloc
I personally prefer paper. The idea is nice but reaching a perfect product is
hard. I won't buy this, some thoughts:

\- the pen is too big and low quality. It makes click noises when writing.

\- you can't use any pen you want and writers like their pen (ballpoint,
etc.).

\- the battery lasts a week or so (not that much). When you use a pen you
don't want to have to think about it (like with watches).

\- not fast enough, sometimes it doesn't start quickly enough so you loose
some words.

\- not worth the 200$. The price is higher than some very capable full tablets
with a pen.

\- you can't use any notebook, you have to use their tablet notebook and buy
it every time for 30$ or so.

\- 229€ vs. 200$ (unfair as usual...)

So there's still work to do but one day this technology will be ready :)

~~~
elsen
These guys: [http://www.iskn.co/](http://www.iskn.co/) Have a similar product
that is compatible with any notebook and any pen.

Not sure how the Moleskine works but this one is an "active system": you need
a device gathering the data while you draw but it's definitely worth taking a
look.

~~~
rloc
Cool stuff (plus they're French !). I wonder how this works with a standard
thick notebook (with hard cover). Can I just put the slate beneath it ? And
you still need to carry the slate.

One concern though, it's only made for Apple iOS gadgets which is a bit
useless because Apple newest iPads (Pro) have this included...

It should just work in the cloud and be available on the web before anything
else.

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guico
We've spent decades trying mimic physical notebooks with electronics -
Moleskine is one step ahead, the hipster of the hipsters, they are already
making paper notebooks "mimic the shape and look" of a digital tablet. What a
time to be alive!

------
pag
It looks like you need to press very hard. I expect that people's fingers will
get tired and stiff.

Why not just take a picture of your paper? Ideally, they could just put some
special markers on the corners of the page, and then a phone app could home in
on those to properly focus and align the page. Problem solved.

The other thing is, why make the pen communicate with the device (e.g. tablet)
in real time? This seems like a waste of power, and not practically useful
[1]. You could simplify it by just having a button on your pen that, when you
click, sends over the aggregated line data.

[1] I suppose one use case is to share in real-time with some kind of
audience, but this is already a solved problem with a stylus on a laptop or
tablet... why add the extra cost of special paper?

~~~
psychometry
You're basically describing this:
[http://whitelines.se/link/](http://whitelines.se/link/)

I've bought the paper, which is nice, but haven't used the app.

~~~
reitanqild
This works excellent.

Another reason to love it is they provide their app for free as well as
downloadable and printable pdfs of their special paper.

Seems they make money on the convenience of buying ready-made stacks of this
paper as well as whiteboard magnet kits that allows you to use normal
whiteboards with their app.

(And yes, I love it and have occasionally used it but I am otherwise
unaffiliated.)

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regularfry
I've got a Livescribe gathering dust somewhere, which is basically what this
looks like. Decent idea, just didn't quite fit the way I work.

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ryanobjc
I had to give up on moleskine because I use fountain pens and the paper is
just awful!

Ironic, the iconic paper notebook is of such low quality paper.

~~~
f_allwein
actually, they're not that iconic:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/books/featur...](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/books/features/moleskine-a-page-out-of-altered-
history-7870099.html)

~~~
takno
I love the way marketers package a complete bare faced brazen lie as "not the
absolute truth"

------
koolba
Because if there's one thing the world needs, it's paper with DRM.

------
fujipadam
I have been searching for the holy grail of note taking for a while now. I
switch from analog to digital and back like a manic note taker. This sounds
very promising.

~~~
elcritch
Same story here... Tried lots of different combos. Nothing was quite right.
Just picked a 12" iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. It's been fantastic! I'm glad I
tried the 12, it's pretty much the size of a piece of paper. Now apps are
still limited but it's a new favorite for me.

~~~
SyneRyder
For a cheaper & smaller alternative, also worth looking at the Samsung Galaxy
Tab A with S-Pen 8.0. Convoluted name, but I love it, and it is dramatically
cheaper than an iPad Pro. I think it compares favorably too, I've tried both &
I don't feel the Galaxy Tab lags too far behind the iPad Pro in latency. I'm
not a heavy writer, but for me it has replaced paper note-taking during phone
calls or webinars, or times when I need to sketch or write an idea out on
paper (sometimes I find typing doesn't help me solve a coding problem, but
writing with a pen does - writing on the Galaxy Tab is giving me that same
mental shift). And of course it syncs with Evernote & you can resize/move
objects you've sketched and all the other good things.

------
efm
You can print your own paper on a color laser printer with their Windows
program.
[http://www.neosmartpen.com/en/products/n_toaster](http://www.neosmartpen.com/en/products/n_toaster)
So, you don't need to use Moleskine, if you don't want to.

The pen, separately, is $170 on Amazon.

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lamby
I actually really dislike the Moleskine pens.. really poor quality, alas.

(Amazon reviews seem to agree!)

------
ino
"A notebook with a distinctive design and rounded pages that project beyond
the cover to mimic the shape and look of a digital tablet."

from
[http://www.moleskine.com/microsites/smartwritingset/descript...](http://www.moleskine.com/microsites/smartwritingset/description)

So ridiculous it reads like an April 1st joke.

------
stewbrew
I think they should focus on making paper notebooks instead of adapting
technologies that have failed many times before.

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darod
so we pay $200 for a notebook and electronic pen to store and notes and forget
about them.

~~~
coldtea
You might be forgetting about them.

For others notes are crucial parts of our workflow and projects.

