Boogie Board RIP – No Go in my Workflow
Boogie Board RIP (Improv Electronics)
I used to laugh at my co-workers that used their computer monitor to hold sticky notes, “Don’t you know there is a sticky note application”, I would chid. But over the years, I’ve fallen into a similar routine. I tried to use a sticky note computer app, but that requires the computer to be powered on and the app to be open. Also, the power of the one-handed pen still trumps the two handed input of a keyboard any day.
For a while I kept a collection of legal pads with all of my notes and to dos, again, this is pen efficient and is always accessible, but cumbersome when you’re trying to find that one name, number or idea in a stack of pads. Plus, that pad is at my office, negating any value of a reclaiming a great idea or phone number while I’m at a meeting or at home.
Seeking a better mousetrap, I went the digital pen route on two occasions, first with a Wacom tablet and then with the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen.
Pulse Smartpen
Both had their drawbacks, the Wacom required the computer to be booted and the Pulse required a lot of docking, downloading and file management. (as a sidenote, if I was a student attending classes the Pulse would be an absolute essential for notetaking).
My third foray into the digital pen world came in the form of the Boogie Board Rip, made by Improv Electronics (located in Kent, Ohio). I’m a big fan of their original boogie board, which we keep on our refrigerator for notes. It’s kind of like a digital etch-a-sketch, you write with a stylus and the message stays until you hit the erase button. It’s great for quick notes, grocery reminders, etc… The only downside, once it’s erased, it’s gone.
So I was pretty pumped up when Improv released the Boogie Board Rip, it has all of the simplicity of the original with the addition of flash memory and a USB connection to your computer. I was so close to digital sticky note nirvana, I could taste it. But alas, the Boogie Board RIP just doesn’t provide me the perfect solution I was looking for, it’s close, but still requires a few additional processes that make it a less than efficient cousin of the sticky notes that cover my desk.
To compare the BB Rip to my digital sticky note desires, let’s do a quick run down of the requirements…
1. Always On – BB Rip requires that you “wake” it by hitting the wake button before you write. It would be awesome if it woke when the pen touched the surface.
2. Continuously saves all of your notes – BB Rip saves your notes, but again you have to hit a button to save. It saves them as PDF files, which can be downloaded to your computer.
3. Allows you to quickly search all of you notes. BB Rip’s generated PDF’s are easy enough to look through, but only on your computer and only if you’ve downloaded them.
So, I think I’m back to square 1, with a desk full of sticky notes, but I won’t give up the quest for the perfect digital sticky note solution. I’m hopeful there’s a gadget out there somewhere that can wed the efficiency of the sticky note with the power of a computer’s storage and retrieval capabilities.
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