Evernote with Moleskine

When I'm in meetings and need to take notes, I tend to use a small paper notepad. If I'm working remotely on a headset, then I'll type directly into a laptop, but it seems rude to put a big piece of technology in front of me when I'm talking face to face.

I know this attitude is changing, and there's use of laptops, Blackberries, iPads and so on in most meetings, but they can also mask an escape to email or other disengaging activities. We've all seen those sessions where everyone has the lid opened on a machine as a kind of plastic shield to hide behind.

Of course, the direct input to a machine has its place. Maybe in a lecture setting or for a notetaker in a facilitated workshop. The key for me is that the technology shouldn't be an inhibitor to the engagement with the session. I'll use a phone as a notepad sometimes or handwriting on an iPad through Notability.

Because I tend to revert to paper for basic note taking, I thought I'd try the newest version of the Moleskine notebook, which has been my weapon of choice for years. It's small and even smaller when using the thin cahier version.

An obvious factor is that the notes are saved on paper, rather than into electronic storage. I therefore use it as a short term scratch pad more than for longevity.

My experiment is with the newest version of these little notepads, which have dotty lines and a camera friendly contrasty paper. It lets me make notes and snap them with my iPhone, straight into Evernote, which then decodes my handwriting and makes it searchable.

My handwriting isn't usually as big as the example above, which I've done for this blog. After I'd snapped it into Evernote, I typed 'coincidentally' as my first search term, and Evernote found it straight away. Text searching of handwriting - perhaps useful?

I'll see how I get on.

Further example: Searching for "eve" on the page finds "event" and "evernote"