Keeping a journal, diary or sketchbook on actual paper is more enjoyable for me than typing entries into my laptop every day. I like the feel of putting pen to paper and along with that comes my penchant for pens, pencils and notebooks. Every so often I’ll look back through my filled books to find info or relive memories. I’d be crushed to lose them. That’s why I was intrigued by a new Kickstarter campaign called Draft. The idea is that they send you a brand new hard bound notebook every month. You have a choice of plain, dot grid or ruled paper and 5 cover colors. You can fill the notebook with whatever you like and when it’s full, you put it in a pre-paid envelope, and ship back it to them. They will then remove the binding, scan each page and put your info into the Draft cloud, Dropbox and Evernote within 5 days. At that point you will be able to access your info from any computer using their web-based interface. The minimum pledge is $29 for 3 months and 3 notebooks. That works out to about $10 per notebook and includes the shipping and scanning service. Higher pledges get you more months/notebooks at a discount. This is obviously a service for busy (or lazy) people because you can already do this yourself with a camera and Evernote. The fact that a stranger can read through your notebooks is concerning to me and that they destroy the books after they’ve been scanned kills the idea for me. What do you guys think? Would you use a service like Draft? If so, the campaign is open till 11/21. They are seeking $20,000 and have earned close to $6000 so far.
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After trying dozens of Android and iPad apps for notes, I still like the feel, convenience and speed of paper and pens. My current fav is the Moleskine Classic Pocket Size. Draft sounded interesting but would take too much discipline for me to send and receive the notebooks. A Moleskine will last me about 6 months. In referring back to previous entries, books are much more enjoyable than searching online. Think I’ll pass up Draft. And my current favorite pen is the Fisher Police Pro, very tough and writes on everything in all conditions.
@1000Acres I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment about discipline. That’s my problem with using Evernote to back up my notebooks. It’s always “I’ll do it later…” kind of thing. What we really need is something that backs up automatically with no real intervention on our part. Something like Livescribe’s Sky wifi smartpen. I’ve reviewed the Livescribe before, but it had to be manually plugged into a computer to sync the recorded audio/written notes. Now that it has wifi, it might be worth another look. The only downside is that you have you use their pen and their paper.
Thanks, Julie. I had an old Livescribe. It was big and clunky and I didn’t like the special, expensive notebooks and having to download to a computer. It was also a memory hog. The wifi version sounds interesting. Looking forward to your review.
@1000Acres I don’t know if I’ll be getting one. I was just thinking it might make a good alternative to the Draft or taking pix and uploading to Evernote.