File this under “so close, and yet so far!”
This is the latest of many notebook related Kickstarter campaigns. But for once, I hope this doesn’t get funded! It’s a dumb idea, at least as it’s currently structured. They send you this nice quality notebook once a month, in a gorgeous selection of colors, and supposedly with nice thick paper. You send it back to them in a pre-paid envelope and they scan all the pages into Dropbox, Evernote, and their own cloud storage. But then you don’t get your notebook back! Where’s the fun in that?! What happens to it? Does it get recycled or does it just end up in a landfill somewhere? They don’t say.
The timing seems a bit rigid too– what if you don’t fill a notebook in a month, or fill more than one? And why would they spend the extra postage to send them one by one and warehouse them in the meantime? This whole concept seems a bit half-baked to me– there is a good idea at the root of it, in that many people would like to have a digital backup of their notes without having to spend time scanning all their pages, but I don’t think this is a very good solution to that problem.
Read more at Draft – A Physical Notebook That Syncs To The Cloud. by Marshall & Jon — Kickstarter.
They say the scanning process is destructive, though I still say they could send the pages back.
On one hand, for some applications, getting paper notes into the cloud for reference may be a benefit. I’m thinking less office supply geeks, but more students, researchers, and similar professionals.
On the other hand, both my workplace and my home office have a scanner with a duplexing autodfed scanner and the tools to cut a notebook to make it work in it. If my interest is to archive paper to the cloud, why would I do thing (and have the postal lag) rather than just do it myself? It doesn’t strike me as incrementally that much more difficult.
I agree completely. Nice idea for those that want a digital record and fill a notebook every month but the thought of not getting it back is too much.
I love the concept but I love my notebooks. Although they don’t offer the service to Australia so it’s a moot point, I would pay for a scanning service but only if my notebooks return. The love of paper for me means I do return to my old books for reference and to reminisce. Something browsing a web page doesn’t reproduce.
I scan my smaller notebooks when I have the time. If they remodeled their idea then it could be good. Pay for a notebook with scanning and prepaid psyche for it to be returned?
I completely agree, although for the price it’s not a terrible value to just hang on to the notebooks and never send them back in.
They do show in the video that to scan them they slice through the binding so they can use a scanner with a autofeed for the pages, but Charles is right, they could return the pages so that you could remount them or archive them in some way if you were so inclined.