
Sharpie reinvents the pen with liquid pencil - mcantelon
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/sharpie-reinvents-pen-with-liquid-pencil/
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jberryman
I don't have any need for this in particular, but for some reason this is the
most exciting thing I've read all day.

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fuzzythinker
What's the difference between these and Pilot's FriXion pens and highlighters?
They have been out for 1-2 years and I've been using them for over a year now.
They are truly erasable by friction with the included rubber tip (not like
previous "erasable" pens that leave the inks permanently if it's not erased
immediately). You can get them at major stationary stores in US like Office*
and Staples. But it's a shame since they are not promoted like they do in
Japan (not to mention Japan sells the latest ones in different styles and
colors and writes a little better than the older ones in US).

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jcdreads
Turns out that the FriXion ink is still there after being erased, but it's on
the other side of some kind of (reversible!) phase transition. Any kind of
heat makes it go away, and cold makes it reappear, as this video shows:

<http://www.jetpens.com/jetpics/?p=172>?

Very cool ink.

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po
I discovered the re-appearing part when I left my notebook in a place where it
froze. All my corrections came back. It was a little disconcerting to see
erased ideas pop up like ghosts behind the new ideas.

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makmanalp
For the record, the papermate erasermate worked with any eraser, not just the
one on the end of the pen itself as the article describes. It would get harder
to erase after a while, but not this dramatic, so kudos to sharpie, this is an
improvement!

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oiuyhtfrgtjhk
But the ink would also rub off onto the facing sheet of paper, I have a whole
high school worth of unreadable notes from this (not that anyone wants to read
my high school notes after 20years!)

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cubicle67
and hands, especially if you're left handed

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chipsy
I had a lot of illegible writing in high school exactly for this reason.
Teachers demanded writing "in pen" for the sake of contrast/readability and I
gave it to them, but I wasn't about to deal with the hassle of a non-erasable
method. But being a left handed writer, the side of my hand inevitably ended
up blackened as I rested it on old text and smudged it in the process. So my
works in erasable pen ended up less readable than the ones in pencil.

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ralph
As a sinister southpaw myself, I've never understood why fellow left-handers
grip the pen in an unusual curled-round fashion such that their hand rests on
what's just written.

I hold it like a right-handed person would.
<http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/hand-holding-pen.jpg> But mirror-imaged. Is
it because these left-handers are set on the wrong path by right-handed
teachers who don't know better?

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kiba
So does anybody still use pen and paper outside of school? It seem to me that
the entire school supply industry is propped up by old school methods of
education.

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leftnode
I use Moleskin notebooks (go through about 1 a month) full of ideas, drawings,
notes, just about anything. I also keep a stack of 4x6 notecards to hash out
ideas on paper (1 step below talking them out loud to people).

Try it, it's incredibly effective.

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mkramlich
Moleskine user/lover here too. I carry a pocket-sized Moleskine, pen and
iPhone almost everywhere I go. It's faster and more enjoyable to write notes
in the notebook than in my iPhone (the latter increasingly freezes with iOS
4.0 and even without that has lots of annoying UX quirks), and I can easily go
back and forth between text and doodles/diagrams, unlike the iPhone (built-in
apps anyway, admittedly.) If you just want the cheapest paper possible,
Moleskine is a bad choice. But if you want the best experience as a
writer/reader/geek, Moleskine is a no brainer.

~~~
patrickgzill
I have switched from Moleskine to Piccadilly brand (I think this is the house
brand of Borders Books). Half the price, almost the same quality.

The problem with Moleskines is that they got too popular, so they keep
switching around the source for their paper; while earlier (circa 2005)
Moleskines had paper that fountain pens wouldn't bleed through, later ones of
the exact same type do have paper that fountain pens will bleed through.

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Luyt
I love fountain pens. I have bunch of Parker 'Vectors' in a diversity of line
widths and ink colors.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Vector>

The only disadvantage is that the ink stays water-soluble after it dries.

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benofsky
Am I the only one who wants a pen which writes like a pencil, not vice-versa,
maybe I'm crazy...

edit for typo.

~~~
Groxx
As in, varied shades? Try a Bic, you can actually sketch pretty well with
them. I don't know what they do differently, but they're the only pens I've
found with this quality.

If you mean erasability (sp?), that's pretty un-pen-like in its very nature,
though they exist.

If you mean something else, you've got me intrigued: can haz illumination,
plz?

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benofsky
I don't do any drawing actually, I just don't think there is anything as fluid
for taking notes, diagrams, mindmaps, etc.

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Groxx
Probably not. I'm also a pencil fan, though I've fiddled with other tools, and
have a decent Wacom.

The Wacom _could_ replace most other tools... if there were any decent high-
volume + organization sketching applications out there with proper tablet
support. It's very nice, and I'd love to have all my notes in my computer, but
things don't keep up or they look like crap or they have no tablet support or
they provide zero tools for _sketchers_ who use sketching as a form of memory.

~~~
olefoo
> decent high-volume + organization sketching applications

What makes for 'decent' in your terminology?

Obviously the primary organization tool is going to be the timeline, but what
other organization tools do you feel a need for? tags? contacts? would it need
to be able to pull text out of a sketch?

You mention high-volume; what do most sketching apps you've met do that limits
the speed and volume of creation?

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Groxx
I've poked around with a number of the Big apps (from Adobe, Alias, etc), and
at least a couple dozen smaller attempts.

The big ones _usually_ keep up with my drawing speed, have nice pressure
sensing, mediocre-to-decent pencil emulation (Adobe is particularly good,
though struggles to keep up at times), and overall proper support for a
tablet. They also come with _squat_ for organization: you're basically just
dealing with files in folders. I can do that in any application; I'm looking
for something which myself and artists would actually _use_. The vast majority
of people I've seen using applications like these launch the files from
Explorer: utter failure of the application to organize the files better, in
other words.

The small ones come in all sorts of flavors, but thus far they've all failed
on the organization front _entirely_ if they support tablets, and are fairly
weak attempts in ones that don't. For instance: I know of _one_ which lets you
browse larger thumbnails with more detail and a more dense display than I can
manage in my file browsers. I know of _none_ which support both tablets and
tags. Heck, I'd settle for a cover-flow-like interface if it loaded quickly,
but the only place that exists is in Finder. Surely a specialized application
can do better and show more relevant info, given that it can make cached data.

Text in a sketch is, yes, very important, and has the upside of making it
searchable: but again, I have yet to see one which lets you search across (a)
folder(s), much less any other method of organization.

Thumbnails are uniformly full-'page' thumbnails: not informative at all for
brainstorming sketches, as they're usually lighter and have more sparse info.

Usually, it's a large break in one's flow to create a new page to draw on;
Alias' Sketchbook Pro did this decently, if I remember correctly. But no
others do, unless they're super-restricted sticky-note clones. They're all:
file -> new -> dimensions + background color + alpha channel + color system +
would you like a goat with that? Surely this can be chosen post-mortem if it
really matters (unlikely for sketchers). Default to a transparent sketching
layer + a background color layer, so it can be separated if I decide I want to
copy my drawings but not the background. There are a couple decent infinite-
canvas programs out there, but I have yet to see them in any pro-user apps,
just for the low end of amateurs who _want_ something restrictingly simplistic
(nice, sometimes, and some of them are _excellent_ , but then we're back to
file management).

Tools are often Photoshop clones: tiny, fixed position, and require you to go
across the screen to change basic properties. They also take up _space_. We've
got gestures on our _trackpads_ , but extremely few drawing applications make
use of _any_ kind of gesture (a few radial menus, but usually they're "dumb"
with poor feedback and zero adapting for slightly off / too far / too short
aim, especially ignoring pressure with a tablet). Which is particularly
strange when you consider all the gesture tools for _mice_ , and then squat
with a _tablet_.

\-----

I should write a blog entry / post some of my more-developed thoughts on this.
I'm a little bitter :) I'm also an application-testing-extremist, and I'm very
likely reaching 10k applications across two OSs (many short-term, yes, but
I've been at it for 15 years), so large-scale oversights / annoyances across
entire genres which are solved in others bug me.

If you know of any sketching / drawing applications, I'd be more than happy to
try them out, I've been away from them for a year or two and have no doubt
missed hundreds I've never heard of.

~~~
NinetyNine
Definitely write up something more specific. Sketching programs (and graphics
in general) contain some of the most interesting challenges imho, but there's
very little benefit to going up against Adobe / Autodesk. I expected this
reply to be longer, but I'd say write up a lead for one of the many hackers
here and Reddit to jump off of.

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alok-g
I love this! I frequently annotate books I am reading, and often have to use
eraser for correcting typos etc. With (non-erasable) pens, downside is that I
cannot erase. With pencils, downside is that I can erase anytime. Almost never
do I have a need to erase something two days after writing. Would be buying
shortly.

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jessriedel
The real question is whether it actually feels as smooth as a pen. The
erasable pens were not pleasing to write with.

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jrockway
The erasers tasted really good, though.

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sandGorgon
apart from this, is'nt a pencil almost unequivocally better. Assuming you have
a soft-enough lead and with the right thickness, a pencil is almost always
better than a pen.

Is marketing and sex appeal a large part of the charm of a pen ? For example
there is no "Mont Blanc" for pencils...

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jamesbritt
I have a feeling if you spoke to some artists/draftsmen you'd hear about the
"Mont Blanc" of pencils.

Also, you might find such a thing here: <http://www.penciltalk.org/>

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sandGorgon
But I am not talking about draftsmen - the "Mont Blanc" exists _per se_ not in
some specific demographic.

I like penciltalk, because the other site which I have seen -
davesmechanicalpencils - has good reviews, but invariably all the pencils look
uncool. I am sure it's not the poor bloke's fault - rather that companies dont
make pencils with sex appeal.

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bradendouglass
Although the effort from Sharpie is great and will ultimately purchase a few,
I think a lot can be said about a geek by their pencil. My fave at the moment
is Pentel Kerry. Amazing mechanical pencil that feels phenomenal in hand, what
is everyone else rocking?

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scorpioxy
Pencil? What's that?

Seriously though, I don't really write any more except very rarely. I've been
trying to get rid of anything paper based for the past 5 years and I think
that I am slowly getting there.

So what does that say about me as a geek?

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thenduks
Nothing at all. Differences in personal preference are as vast as the options
available.

For example: I don't _write_ anything, but I sketch out interfaces and ideas
all the time, usually with a pen. Lots of people (my past (and maybe future?)
self included) prefer pencils because they can be erased or just feel better
in their hand/on paper.

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Marticus
As someone who commented on the original article stated, I'd like to know
whether or not the device works on scantrons.

If so, that would be a high school / college godsend.

This is also awesome.

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tseabrooks
The office depot ad says the pencil is #2 equvalent.. so I'm thinking it does
work on scantrons..

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Marticus
Oh baby.

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pmccool
I was struck by the parallel with blue-black ink (chemical reaction for
permanence + dye to see what was written in the meantime).

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htsh
I've been using pen-tech liquiphite pencils for nearly a year now. How are
these different?

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Groxx
Do they go permanent after X period of time (in this case, 3 days)? That seems
a pretty important feature if it's trying to be a pen, methinks.

(haven't used those, don't know if they do or not)

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mkramlich
The best pen I've ever used is the Pentel RSVP BK91 Medium point. I love them
so much I buy them in bulk, both to save money and to ensure I have a large
supply in case they ever stop producing them. They are that good.

And I don't care that they can't be erased. I can always linethough/overwrite,
and I'm not an artist, just a writer/notetaker.

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konad
Shame it's more plastic to end up in an dead albatross' stomach in the Pacific
Gyre.

