Getting your thoughts into your computer

If you love technology like I do you try to avoid using paper whenever possible. I take notes in Evernote with my laptop or iPhone. I sometimes snap photos of things I want to remember or even take audio notes if I’m in a position where I can’t type or it would be unsafe to do so (like while driving a car). Sometimes though you need to write. The act of physically writing stimulates your brain in a way that typing keys simply cannot. I’m not sure why this is or if it is true for everyone but this has been my personal experience. I carry around a moleskin and a larger notebook with graph pages for jotting down ideas that I get throughout the day. The problem is that I then want to record that written info to my computer. I have a couple of options here.

I can scan it. This is time consuming and since I don’t own a scanner won’t work for me. Even if I did own one, I would have to remember to do this. If this is in my moleskin I would need a flatbed scanner.

I can take a photo of it. Evernote has the ability to search for text in an image of text but it is not too successful at deciphering my handwriting and think others may have the same problem.

I can retype it. This is the least popular option but for most the simplest and easiest solution. If you drew something like a diagram though you can necessarily recreate it this way unless you are an ASCII text artist.

There have never been a really good solution to this problem until now. Below Chris Brogan is giving his review of the new Livescribe Smartpen. This thing is amazing and solve this problem beautifully.