Editing The Pen Addict 351/transcript (section)

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'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Today's show is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is incredibly important if you are a freelancer, if you're someone who sends invoices, tracks their time, needs to file or expenses, which is, I expect, quite a lot of people. If you work for yourself in any regard, you should be using FreshBooks. They can save you time. They can save you aggravation. They can save you hassle because they simplify all of these tasks. They make it easier for you to send your invoices, to track your expenses, and maybe most importantly, to get paid online as well. So, FreshBooks has drastically reduced the amount of time it takes for over 10 million customers to deal with their paperwork. I actually had to sit down in FreshBooks this morning and send out some invoices. I'd love how easy it is to do. The things that were taking me time during this whole process was just my own accounting entry. Like, it wasn't having to deal with FreshBooks. Like, if I would type in a couple of characters and it would pre-fill what I needed, right? So, I'd type in the first two characters of the company I'm sending the invoice to. Done. Send a couple of characters for the line items on the invoice. Done. And it's all pre-filled for me because they just save all of that information so I don't have to keep entering it over and over again. And then when I've sent that email out, I can track the whole thing. So, I can see when it's been received, when it's been opened, and then every time somebody goes back to that invoice. So, I can understand where it's sitting in the kind of the payment flow with my clients that I'm working with. Like, I really, really, really love FreshBooks because it's simplified some just very important parts of our business. Because if I was having to track this in any other way, it would be basically untenable for me to be able to just track these invoices and understand when they've been, try and, like, track down when they've been received and then, like, oh, and then I can't even fathom the amount of mistakes that I would make if FreshBooks wasn't saving all of this information for me and just helping me pre-fill it. So, I absolutely love it. We've used it for five years and you should try it. If you ever send invoices to anyone, go try it out. They're offering a 30-day free trial for listeners of this show with no credit card required. Just go to freshbooks.com slash penaddict and enter the penaddict. When they say, how did you hear about us, they say the penaddict podcast. So, it's freshbooks.com slash penaddict. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, throughout the years, we've covered or discussed all of the digital, analog to digital conversion methods that have been attempted, right? So, you have a pen with built-in mechanisms to track your writing and then that writing gets saved to whatever software or app, you know, gets that it's part of. And we've always been fascinated with it just because, at least I have, just because I want to know if it works well. You know, that's what people who listen to this podcast are more worried about the analog side. Do the pen and paper work well? And can I have some type of variety? And is the software piece, you know, good enough to do what I need to do? And I think generally, over the years, we found out that no. Like, pretty much all of it is terrible, right? We found the Moleskine notebook a couple years ago at the Atlanta Pen Show. We felt that one did a good job.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It was the first one that I'd seen that actually did anything compelling and also did what you were expecting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Like, it was not fussy. Most of these things are really fussy and annoying, at least the ones that I've experienced.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it was called the Smart Writing Set then, right? If I'm remembering correctly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's correct. Correct. So, and then I've talked about recently, like, that Remarkable tablet that's come out in the past year or two and it gets a lot of press in the tech press. But it looks like a genuinely terrible device and it's really expensive. And so, like, I made a statement in Refill, I don't know, sometime this year that I think we're, like, five to ten years out from this actually being a viable concept. Like, to where we feel comfortable using this type of input in analog to digital tools. And then I saw yesterday Moleskine and Adobe came out with an announcement saying that this new Moleskine product will go directly into your Adobe Cloud account, right? The input into this notebook and this pen will go directly into the Adobe Creative Cloud, which for Adobe professionals, that's kind of their home, right? Like, you know, you open up Adobe Illustrator, all your files are there and having this notebook handy and able to just dump your ideas in there and then work with them digitally, I thought was pretty cool. So then, it still makes me think, right? If you're a graphic designer, let's just say you're a graphic designer and you're in the Adobe ecosystem and you have a creative account and you're an Illustrator most of the day, aren't you using, like, a Wacom tablet or Wacom? Which, I don't know how to pronounce that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it's Wacom.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Aren't you using a Wacom tablet already? And is this the same thing, you know, at your desk? I don't think so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, see, because, okay, so when I see something like this from a creative field, there's a couple of things going on. One, there are some people that prefer to use pen and ink and then they will scan, you know, into... Yes. Like, and then go from there, right? So, like, the guy... I'd say that's pretty normal. Yeah, Chris, who I've used for the poster stuff that I've done for PodCon in the past, he uses pen and then will bring it into digital form. But I'm thinking, so a product like this for a creative person is, this is a notebook that you have in your bag and when you have that idea, you pull it out and you sketch it in, right? Like, you sketch the little thing that you got, you're in a coffee shop and maybe you're not by the computer. Maybe you don't want to be at the computer, right? But then you can sketch it in and then later on, you can put it into wherever it needs to go, right? Like, so... Because you can still get it in digital form without the requirement to scan it. But again, how much of an issue is it to scan it? I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Like, I'm just... The thing, I'm just not totally in this, you know, world of using these tools. So I don't know, like, what I'm actually getting... Like, is this worth it? Like, am I getting enough extra or, you know, in either efficiency or productivity or creativity to be able to have this notebook and then using the pen, be able to upload into the creative cloud? Am I getting something that I've never been able to get before? And I'm kind of not seeing that. But I still, at the same time, I kind of like it and I find it interesting, right? Like, I talk about these things because I kind of want to learn more about them. Even like, it's clear about the words I'm saying. I don't know a lot about them. And I want this... I kind of want this to be a thing. And that's why I always find this stuff interesting. But I've never been compelled enough to commit to anything like this for any kind of use. So it seems highly specific. It seems pretty cool. I like... Moleskine seems to be the only one that has the money to be able to continue to invest in something like this, right? And getting partnerships with Adobe. You know, maybe we continue working on those tools and partnership. That's like... That's a partnership I can get behind, right? That's two big companies that have clout. And maybe they can deliver something perfect that we're all looking for in an analog to digital combination tool. So I don't know. I find it positive. I find it hopeful. I don't know if it's useful. So I'm always interested in hearing from anyone if they use these types of tools. So please reach out to me. I just find it super interesting. Mostly because I can't wrap my head around it. It's a big head, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I'm a little bit confused as to like, what is the difference between... Their naming, their branding on this is starting to get really confusing. Yes. To me. So there's like, you can get the smart writing set ellipse, or you can get the pen plus ellipse. And then their notebooks that they use are called paper tablets, which is a bad name because it makes me think I need a piece of plastic under the paper to get it to work. So their branding on this, I think, is letting them down a little bit. I don't think that they have clear names for these products. Smart writing set was a better name, like is a better overall name. But you still get the pen. The pen's still called the ellipse. Like it's... I don't think that they have the greatest branding on this, which is really peculiar for Moleskine because they're a branding company ultimately. Right. But I will say, right, like I think it is incredibly smart for them to be investing the money that they're investing in this because they need to be prepared in case this is the future of their business and they're not ready for it. Now for me, like, okay, it's great that they're doing this thing with Adobe and like creative, creative is amazing. But this is great for... I mean, this thing is made for meat and nuts. That's what this thing is made for, in my opinion. Like you sit down, you write your notes in your Moleskine and then you can have them in a PDF afterwards.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But that's the previous product. That's the previous iteration.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, but this new product hasn't changed that for me though.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, right. Like there's nothing... Like that's what's so confusing about this is I want this to be like a real super viable thing that a lot of people use and find worthwhile and I just can't figure it out like from A to Z. Like I get parts of it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, they have actually refined the product though, right? Like the Pen Plus Ellipse is a new version of their smart pen, which is like less bulky, significantly less bulky. Um, and it's great that they're doing this collaboration with Adobe, but I just don't know like if this is what will... I don't necessarily think it's going to push them significantly further, but these are the types of things that they should be doing because really this kind of division of Moleskine feels like what they should be doing is just throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks because it's incredibly experimental. And I think that it's best that they try and keep it that way for now, even if some stuff doesn't necessarily make sense.