Using a eReader for note taking

[Dulin's Books]

hey that casio is clever!. they use the camera on the device to capture what you have written on the paper other side. one page can be captured when closing the portfolio OR you can prop it in landscape mode and it will capture each page separately as you turn the pages.

another idea would be to put a 10" boogie board rip on the other side. the RIP can save pages http://www.improvelectronics.com/us/...ng-tablet.html so instead of having it save to a card you could have it save to the tablet then you save each page before you clear it for the page "turn"

of course with paper you can turn back a page and re read something. with the boogie board once its cleared it s gone so you'd have to go to the tablet which wouldn't be an issue if everything was tagged nicely as it was saved.

of course it might just as cost effective and less complicated to get the 10" Galaxy Note

[HarryHutton]

Samsung have acquired liquavista, so we could see development of the galaxy note to incorporate an e-paper screen. I hope they aim it at students, my generation needs something like this

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by HarryHutton

Samsung have acquired liquavista, so we could see development of the galaxy note to incorporate an e-paper screen. I hope they aim it at students, my generation needs something like this

Why does it need it? What's wrong with using a paper notebook?

[HarryHutton]

well, one paper notebook is grand to carry around. But ask any student - sorting lever arch files, several notebooks and carrying textbooks, not great when it comes to travel or even revision...
Imagine carrying around all the notes and books you need on an e-notebook - much easier!

[pbarrette]

Hi HarryT,

There are many problems with paper notebooks that can be easily addressed with a suitable digital replacement.

The first issue is the volume of paper. If you take a lot of notes, you quickly end up with a large number of paper notebooks. I'm sure that you've met people who carry around a Moleskine notebook wherever they go. When you next see one of those people, ask how many notebooks he/she has sitting at home, full of information, ideas or sketches that are unavailable to that person because carrying around 5-10 notebooks is wholly inconvenient.

My next problem with paper notebooks is that they are not always easily edited. I'm sure you've seen the old paper based, tabbed contacts/notes systems like the Franklin Day Planner. You flip to the "S" tab, then look up "Joe Snuffy" to find his phone number, address, and other details. When Mr. Snuffy's phone number changes, you had better hope you originally wrote it in pencil. Otherwise you will be crossing it out and trying to write a new one in the margins. Then what happens if you meet someone named "Mr. Snarky"? Did you leave a space between "Snade" and "Snuffy", or is your contacts list going to be out of alphabetical order? Nobody really does that anymore because most people keep their contacts list on their phone, or email, or other digital format. Paper was just too cumbersome to organize, search and edit.

I find that my notes also require revision. I may have recorded an IP address incorrectly, or it has changed. I might discover more details about a subject, or realize that details I had previously assumed were wrong. In a paper notebook, that means striking out the existing information and trying to squeeze new information in. If I have more information than can fit on the page, I had better hope that I have left a blank page after the current one, or I'll have to find a blank page further into the notebook and make a note on the first page that the information continues at page "x". With a digital notebook, I simply erase the old information. If I need more space between items on a page, I just move stuff around with copy+paste. If I need another page, I just insert one.

A third problem with paper notebooks is that they are wholly un-searchable. Now where did I leave that information about SSH data packet encoding? Is it in notebook 1 or notebook 2? Is it near the front of the notebook or in the middle? With a proper digital notebook, I can use tags, bookmarks, or even OCR to search "SSH" and have all of my entries show up. I could even have a separate notebook dedicated to "SSH" and paste in the relevant bits from the RFC, interspersed with my own notes about how my code handles that particular case. Try that with paper.

So ultimately, for me, what's wrong with paper notebooks is that they don't address the issues that I have with portability, editability, or searchability.

pb

[Serena]

Exactly why I love the eDGe. I have each project in a separate file, and I can insert tabs to make it searchable. I also have a separate to-do list, where on my old paper notebook, once I crossed out too many things, I would have to re-copy what was left to a new page, so it didn't get too messy. Now I just delete that task, and either remove the space between them, or cut and paste to delete extra pages.

[StoryEnthusiast]

Originally Posted by HarryHutton

Samsung have acquired liquavista, so we could see development of the galaxy note to incorporate an e-paper screen. I hope they aim it at students, my generation needs something like this

If it's true, then Samsung Note will increasingly be the next phone for me to get.

[Kumabjorn]

I had a device, it is still here somewhere, that was an A4 electronic pad, on top of that you inserted a regular A4 linear note book and wrote with a pen that had these small ink cartridges and the rest of the pen was a transmitter to the underlying pad. Everything you wrote on the pad was saved in memory, there were buttons you had to press when you ripped of the paper and started a new page. It had some IBM software that came along with it.
The thing was that it could handle handwriting recognition for Japanese, the characters are written in a very specific order, but it really had problems with alphabetic writing. It never caught on, partly because the pen lasted such a short time.
Once you finished writing you connected it to the computer with USB (proprietary cable, another no-no) and uploaded to the PC.

[Jmirko]

Originally Posted by pbarrette

So ultimately, for me, what's wrong with paper notebooks is that they don't address the issues that I have with portability, editability, or searchability.
pb

I fully agree, and would add one more important reason: it's far easier to backup handwriting in digital form than it is in paper form. One doesn't appreciate this until losing a notebook with important information.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why does it need it? What's wrong with using a paper notebook?

Because after a while, it gets to be a ton of notebooks. I just bought 8 notebooks to use for this semester, and may need to pick up more later. 200 pages each, that ends up being a crap ton of notes. Plus when you factor in textbooks too, back packs get too damn heavy (which, the textbook industry is one of the worst when it comes to ebooks)

Originally Posted by pbarrette

There are many problems with paper notebooks that can be easily addressed with a suitable digital replacement.

The first issue is the volume of paper. If you take a lot of notes, you quickly end up with a large number of paper notebooks. I'm sure that you've met people who carry around a Moleskine notebook wherever they go. When you next see one of those people, ask how many notebooks he/she has sitting at home, full of information, ideas or sketches that are unavailable to that person because carrying around 5-10 notebooks is wholly inconvenient.

My next problem with paper notebooks is that they are not always easily edited. I'm sure you've seen the old paper based, tabbed contacts/notes systems like the Franklin Day Planner. You flip to the "S" tab, then look up "Joe Snuffy" to find his phone number, address, and other details. When Mr. Snuffy's phone number changes, you had better hope you originally wrote it in pencil. Otherwise you will be crossing it out and trying to write a new one in the margins. Then what happens if you meet someone named "Mr. Snarky"? Did you leave a space between "Snade" and "Snuffy", or is your contacts list going to be out of alphabetical order? Nobody really does that anymore because most people keep their contacts list on their phone, or email, or other digital format. Paper was just too cumbersome to organize, search and edit.

I find that my notes also require revision. I may have recorded an IP address incorrectly, or it has changed. I might discover more details about a subject, or realize that details I had previously assumed were wrong. In a paper notebook, that means striking out the existing information and trying to squeeze new information in. If I have more information than can fit on the page, I had better hope that I have left a blank page after the current one, or I'll have to find a blank page further into the notebook and make a note on the first page that the information continues at page "x". With a digital notebook, I simply erase the old information. If I need more space between items on a page, I just move stuff around with copy+paste. If I need another page, I just insert one.

A third problem with paper notebooks is that they are wholly un-searchable. Now where did I leave that information about SSH data packet encoding? Is it in notebook 1 or notebook 2? Is it near the front of the notebook or in the middle? With a proper digital notebook, I can use tags, bookmarks, or even OCR to search "SSH" and have all of my entries show up. I could even have a separate notebook dedicated to "SSH" and paste in the relevant bits from the RFC, interspersed with my own notes about how my code handles that particular case. Try that with paper.

So ultimately, for me, what's wrong with paper notebooks is that they don't address the issues that I have with portability, editability, or searchability

When you take a lot of notes, searching becomes a godsend. I'm a full time tech, and a full time student. I have two notebooks going right now for work, that I OCR in to a wiki and a spreadsheet, and I fill at least one 200 page notebook per class per semester. The problem is, especially when it comes to math, is that there are certain things that you cannot type out very quickly, such as various symbols.