Evernote CEO Phil Libin said today that he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about competition, but he admits that there has been one “age-old rivalry” — with pen-and-paper. Hearing about people who still take notes on paper is “infuriating,” Libin said, in part because he still does it himself.
“This is a fight that many people in the technology space have been fighting,” Libin said. Today, however, “we are announcing a cease-fire.”
Specifically, Libin, who was speaking at the Evernote Trunk Conference (where he also announced Evernote Business), brought Arrigo Berni, CEO of notebook company Moleskine, on-stage with him to announce a partnership on something called the Evernote Smart Notebook. The idea is to bridge the digital and analog worlds, allowing you to take notes physically, then import those notes into Evernote.
So the smart notebook uses specially formatted paper that allows it to work with Evernote. In the new version of the Evernote iPhone app, you can take photos of pages from the Moleskine notebook, and then they’re browsable and even searchable in the app. The notebook also comes with special stickers, which tell the app the notebook (the virtual kind) where each page should be saved.
Berni noted that the collaboration makes sense, in part, because Moleskine’s customers are often very digitally savvy. For example, in a survey, 60 percent of Moleskine customers said they also use a digital device to take notes. He also pointed to the “What’s in Your Bag?” Flickr group, where users, yes, post photos of what’s in their, and where Berni said it’s common to see bags that hold both Moleskine notebooks and iPhones or tablets.
Libin said they’ve been testing out notebooks in the Evernote office for the past couple of weeks, and they’ve encountered one problem — the notebooks are so pretty that you don’t want to write in them. His solution? “Order two.”
Evernote handed out free smart notebooks (the very first production copies, apparently) to all the attendees at the Trunk Conference. If the notebook can actually deal with my terrible, terrible handwriting, then I’m pretty sure I’m going to be hooked. You can preorder your own notebook here. The pricing will be $24.95 for a pocket notebook and $29.95 for a large notebook.
Evernote allows users to capture, organize, and find information across multiple platforms. Users can take notes, clip webpages, snap photos using their mobile phones, create to-dos, and record audio. All data is synchronized with the Evernote web service and made available to clients on Windows, Mac, Web, and mobile devices. Additionally, the Evernote web service performs image recognition on all incoming notes, making printed or handwritten text found within images searchable.
Moleskine® was created as a brand in 1997, bringing back to life the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin. A trusted and handy travel companion, the nameless black notebook held invaluable sketches, notes, stories, and ideas that would one day become famous paintings or the pages of beloved books.
Phil Libin the CEO of Evernote. He is an entrepreneur and executive who has led two Internet companies from the very beginning to proven commercial success, and helped three others through rapid growth. Prior to joining Evernote, Phil founded and served as president of CoreStreet, currently one of the top companies providing smart credential and identity management technologies to governments and large corporations throughout the world. Previously, Phil was founder and CEO of Engine 5, a leading Boston-based Internet...
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