Editing The Pen Addict 238/transcript (section)

== Harry's Razors ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Harry's. Yeah. For decades big razor companies have relentlessly increased their profits at the expense of their customers. So Jeff and Andy started Harry's to fix this. They knew there was only one way to ensure quality so they bought their own factory in Germany and then by selling directly online Harry's are able to offer the blades at half the price of the big brands that you're used to. Harry's have new amazing five blade razors that include everything you need for a close comfortable shave. These five precision engineered blades have a lubricating strip on them and a trimmer blade. This comes with their weighted ergonomic handle a travel blade cover and they also have all the extras you need as well like amazing shave gel or cream. Harry's believes so much in the quality of their razors that they guarantee their quality and they'll give you a full refund if you're not happy. So Brad are Harry's continuing to make you the most elegant and smooth man that you can possibly be?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Absolutely. But I actually have a different Harry story this time. Oh you do? And this is an in-store shopping story that made me think wow I'm so glad I use Harry's right now. So my daughter and I were grocery shopping yesterday or Monday. I take that back. Monday. Monday night. We were at the grocery store and we're going down all the aisles you know big full grocery list and everything and I never go I rarely go down like the I guess we'd call it the shampoo aisle or the you know soaps and shave stuff and all that stuff because I just don't need that much from there. I use Harry's and you know and have all that so my kids needed new toothbrushes. So right next to the toothbrushes are all the razor stuff where it's all locked up you know all that security and extra stuff there and you know I just look at it and giggle and we're looking at toothbrushes and then my daughter looks up and goes oh daddy look we're on TV. I was like it's because the camera was watching the stupid razor stuff next to us and I just started I just started dying laughing I was like I'm so glad I'm a Harry's customer so I don't have to be on the security camera for the razor aisle. I just thought I hadn't noticed that before because I never go down that aisle. I just thought it was hilarious. So oh daddy look we're on TV and I just thought it was hilarious.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Go to Harry's dot com right now and use the code pen addict to check out to claim your free trial set and because you're a listener of this show you'll also get a bonus post shave balm added to your order for free. Harry's believes so much in the quality of their products that they want you to try them out for free. All you need to do is pay the shipping. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com code pen addict to get your free trial set and free post shave balm. Thank you to Harry's for their support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I got notification or I saw a tweet yesterday I guess from our friends at Baron Fig they dropped a new app in the app store which I just downloaded I found this late last night and just sent it over to you this morning so we haven't had a ton of time to play around with it but Baron Fig has a history of doing apps you know to go along with their analog products they have digital products they've done a writing prompt app in the past let me find that name spark is just like an index card writing prompt app you know give you different ideas things like that you know to either write or be creative or whatever then they did a note note taking app called Mosaic which I found to be really really nice work really really well but you couldn't get your notes out of the system and I don't believe it had sync whether that's changed in any future updates I'm not sure because I don't use it anymore but when I downloaded to test it I was like wow this is fantastic except I'm like completely fully pimped into just this so that's their history with apps and they came up with a new one called Codex which was released yesterday it's a notebook and document scanner library that's what they're calling it my first experience Myke went really really well it's basically it'll do what a lot of other apps do or your camera does it'll take a picture of your notebook and put it into their app you know it's more closer to something like scan bot which will detect your paper sizes right it'll it'll you know put a rectangle around the exact paper dimension and capture it that way and then it'll upload it and you're able to tag it which I love the tag feature and then you can then you just have a library of your notes it does sync it's set up for iCloud sync so it's an Apple only product for sync well it's like I said you could export your data afterwards you can dump the PDF get your data out of there so you can get in and out and the tagging I enjoyed so the pricing model and this is like the stuff I want you to talk about more and and I want you to talk about this app more than me because you do you're involved more in this world than I am it's a pricing model first 30 days is free then it's 99 cents a month to use or 999 for a year so that's what the setup is you can take all your notes with you digitally snap them as you go tag them sort them different things like that so what did you think about this app so my first

'''Myke Hurley:''' experience was different because I opened it on my iPad and this is an iPhone only application which I think fundamentally is a bad idea I think this should be across iOS because you could take the scans on your phone and then you can look at your notes on a big screen on your iPad so they currently all they have is an iPhone app that can be used on the iPad which is not a great experience because for example you can't use it in landscape so I think that's something that they need to fix quickly to have an iPad app I think it's very important especially when part of what you're paying for is sync that's kind of what you're paying for and all you can do is sync it to other iPhones yeah this would be super

'''Brad Dowdy:''' useful on your iPad I didn't even

'''Myke Hurley:''' consider that there's kind of what you're paying for is basically syncing and you can't sync it to anywhere right now all it does is just syncs to the cloud so you have a backup but that's backup not syncing right the syncing needs to go somewhere and currently it doesn't go anywhere so this is why I need you I also don't like and this is something that a bunch of apps I don't think are doing very well at the moment is the way that they talk about the subscription so you have three options you have I think it's $9.99 a year $9.99 a month or try it for free but when you hit the try for free button what it does is put you on a 30-day trial which will then put you on a plan yes now I don't think that these things a lot of developers are struggling with this right now and to Barron Frigg's credit it says cancel at any time at the bottom but I think it needs to do and this is a thing many people are falling short of right now and I don't know really if this is something that Apple can help improve probably but I think people need to do a better job of explaining that this is a 30-day trial which you will then be charged for now there's an app called Bear which I really like well that's just how it works you don't choose right it just says you're gonna go on a 30-day trial once that's over you'll pay this which I think makes more sense than try it free because you're trying it for free yeah but if you don't cancel it it will you'll end up paying and the canceling these subscriptions Apple sucks at this right now yeah to go to the app store you have to go to your iCloud account in the app store and you can then cancel them like that whole part is a mess right now which is a shame because more applications are going on this model I think the business model is good I agree with the business model for Barron Frigg I love that they're giving a trial but I think it could be made a little bit more clear what that trial results in which is paying right

'''Brad Dowdy:''' which is not necessarily their fault no

'''Myke Hurley:''' it's this is the mechanism right that's

'''Brad Dowdy:''' the mechanism that it's used but they can control the wording and that's what you're saying the difference is the wording between like this and

'''Myke Hurley:''' bear because it says cancel at any time which is great and I think it's really good that they put that on there even though it's in a slightly grayed out font but it's you know whatever you don't want that like fully up in your face but I don't think that when you read that that also means cancel the free trial at any time right you get right you know

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think when you cancel it your free

'''Myke Hurley:''' trial stops yeah now see the thing is the the iOS system pops up to tell you you're going on a 30-day trial and then it's this but I really do believe that a lot of people don't look at those prompts sure and so I think it would be better for their customers if they made it clear before any buttons were pressed because also I downloaded this application not really knowing much about it and it doesn't tell you anything before you try and sign up so you download the app it asks you to create an account and then asks you to pay like I didn't even you just told me check out this app I didn't even know what the app did like I didn't look I just downloaded it so a little bit more I think would be would be nice for the first run experience okay I found that the auto detection works really well and like I was I was scanning a page that had a shadow on it so like one moment it picked up the part without the shadow then with the shadow and I just moved it moved the camera a little bit and it got the whole thing pressed the camera done and it was great and it did all the straightening up and stuff it looked great that was very well done and using tags is a really great sorting mechanism so you can use more than one tag for a note which is great so you can say something is like what right and relay FM for example if I wanted to do that that's really good but there's no way to give a scanner title which seems really weird like you can't name a page and tags aren't a replacement for names tags are a replacement for notebooks I think you still need to title things and I can't find a way that you can which is a very peculiar omission to me right like a tag is not a title right they're different things and I would say that I think this app needs optical character recognition OCR I think for an application where you're paying a subscription I don't think that sync storage and syncing is enough I think that they need to to find a way to build something like OCR in because that takes it from a good app to a brilliant app right then it's an ever note replacement you've got in your hands I think that what they're asking for right now I don't think it's a good enough solution like I could take photos or could buy an application you know I could buy something like PDF pen scan plus or scan bot which is just like a couple of dollars like one time then I could scan these things in and save them to Apple notes and Apple notes does all the syncing across all of my devices and I can tag them in the same way you just give them the tags and you just search and it'll come up I think that OCR would really elevate this product and make it something really worthwhile I think what they've got on their hands is an excellent 1.0 but I think that there's a lot of work that's needed here to make this a really compelling application in the world that they're going for because they are competing against something like ever note here and right now this is not competition for ever note there you go that's my feeling because ever note you can tag everything you can title everything and it does all the OCR they have a free plan right so you can actually truly try it out even though I have a lot of problems with ever note they had a bunch of security stuff recently which is super weird right that but you know I'm just taken into like what is the value for money here and right now I don't think codex has got it I like the design of it so my feelings the design is really good the idea is really good and the technology is great they've got a real good base of a product here and they're selling something which is a good business model that's like for the subscription which they can couple along with their notebooks right good it's all good quality stuff but to really make this like a real no-brainer for a lot of people they need an iPad application they need to do more I think to explain the business model to customers and they need to find some way to try and put OCR into this product which is not an easy task but my feeling is the the auto detection is so good that they've done one of two things they either have got some great engineers or they've licensed something and if that's the case then they can make OCR work yep there you go that's my feeling

'''Brad Dowdy:''' on it all very cool I have no no arguments there I did enjoy how how fast it was it was fast and snappy but to use it as a long-term solution I'd maybe need a little bit more to buy a subscription so we'll see you know also I'll keep fidgeting around with it definitely my favorite app they've released so far everything they release is very refined and clean and nice I appreciate that in the apps so I'm enjoying it so far and yeah it's I think it's something to keep an eye on and we'll see how it goes from

'''Myke Hurley:''' there I would recommend people go and download it and try the 30-day trial right but just be aware of that if you want to keep it or not just to give it a go because I think that it is an application that is well built within today's world like it is everything about it is smart like the tagging is a smart way of organizing right and yes stuff like that because I was so very surprised that they didn't have some kind of like tie into their products in here so like you saved everything in a notebook that looked like a confidant right and then you opened it up and then yeah so I think they did a really good job of keeping it a light touch which is not what I expected just because they have a physical paper product right I expected a little bit more tie in there but not that I thought that would be a good thing right I actually think that they've created a better system of like the tags and stuff like that because what they're doing which I think is great is it is like understanding what their products really are and most people don't keep them or don't want to file them away or whatever they understand that for many people they're making a product which the people in digital world can kind of get frustrated with because it's not searchable and stuff but like that's why I think that the OCR thing would really kind of just knock this out of the park like if they can find a way to do this like if they can find a way to put OCR in this I will recommend this over Evernote like that's what they're sitting on right here yeah a legitimate Evernote competitor for many people you know that that use Evernote in this way many people do right like scanning their documents in and the reason Evernote is used for this is because it's available everywhere and it has OCR so it makes it like a really compelling thing for people that save their notes in this way right but I think there needs to be something else that does this because I don't like Evernote's business model I like Baron fig's business model but I think it comes it needs to come with

'''Brad Dowdy:''' some more work right and thus concludes this week's episode of connected thank you for joining us Myke Hurley where can people find you our show notes this week

'''Myke Hurley:''' are at relay.fm slash pen addict slash two three eight you can find me I'm at iMike I-M-Y-K-E and go subscribe to my YouTube channel it's youtube.com slash user slash Myke Hurley or I think it's also youtube.com slash Myke Hurley who knows but there's a link in our show notes you can find Brad online he's at dowdyism D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M he is pen addict on Instagram and you can find his work at pen addict.com and it is a pen which is hilarious and also at knock.co and I will say once more thanks to our sponsors this week pen chalet Squarespace and Harry's they help make the episode possible but most of all as always thank you for listening because literally there would be no episode if you weren't here so I'm talking to you directly oh and by the way go bid on my field notes just go do that thanks so much for listening we'll be back next week until then say goodbye Brad goodbye Brad Just follow follow follow follow follow follow

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]