I was wondering what y’all used/thought of “smart” notebooks, like Livescribe, Moleskine+, Rocketbook, Thinker, etc… I take an old Moleskine paper notebook and pen with me wherever I go, but not sure how writing recognition and cloud syncing would help me in my workflow…
I used a Franklin Planner organizer (paper) for several years, and later switched to legal pads and 3x5 cards for most of my note taking. When I discovered Evernote I started uploading photos of my notes so they would be searchable. Today I still take most notes on paper and use Scanner Pro to upload everything to Google Drive.
Having the majority of my files with me and searchable has “saved the day” many times. That’s what is important to me.
Do you need a better way to locate your information? Do you need access to your files when you are away from your computer. If so, there is a wide variety of software/hardware choices like “smart” notebooks that can be used to achieve that.
IMO, start by deciding what you need and let that lead you to your method. Good luck.
For handwritten notes, if you have your ipad with you: Goodnotes or Notability.
With Goodnotes, I think you can export the note OCRd and it does a pretty good job of recognising handwritten words.
Nebo converts handwriting into printed text and does a good job but I get a bit frustrated sometimes with processing delays.
Up until very recently I used Rocketbook, but the constant needing to clean the pages and buying of new pens and ink refills lost it’s appeal. The app and upload features are pretty great and the OCR is okay, but after enough uses the coating material on the pages breaks down and the pages become difficult to write on. Now I use either my iPad mini with the Pencil or I take notes on paper and scan them using Scannable to upload them to Evernote.
I frequently carry a Field Notes and pen with me, if I write something I need to digitize, I will typically grab a scan of what I’ve written. It goes into the appropriate app so I can either take notes from it or reference the scan directly. OCR works sometimes, if it’s a sentence or two. Beyond that, my handwriting just falls apart.
It’s decidedly old school, but works pretty well for me.
If you are really interested in that matter, you have to test it with your own handwriting.
With some people those systems have an almost 100% recognition, while other handwriting, like mine, tend more against zero.
If it is not working to a high degree, it took much more time to correct the text after the “OCR”, then to type it, in the first place.
Thanks for that… have been looking at Rocketbook, but it is nice to know that it has a limited-use run…
I will probably end up going that route, as it seems to be the easiest
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Mine skews towards the latter 
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