Notes from the Future

Moleskine is a brand of pre- mium paper notebooks. Evernote is one of the world’s most popular apps for digital notetaking and archiving. So what is the Evernote Smart Notebook that Moleskine has brought out， all about？ It is a physical notebook – with a difference. The product， in fact， provides a peek into a not-so-distant future where there will be more alliances between the physical and the digital worlds.

Write or scribble anything on this Moleskin notebook and you can instantly digitise it using the note capture camera in the Evernote app. The app tweaks the contrast between the handwritten words and the paper background， so that the image looks like a digital note. You can also add keywords that make these notes searchable. There are other apps that let you do the same like Google Keep launched recently. But for a physical notebook to be made and sold solely for use along with a smartphone or a tablet –along with an app – is definitely new.

Take any phone camera. Most of us use these to only click pictures. But I have found that the best use of the phone camera can be to take pictures of documents we all need to refer to often， such as a list of the monthly bill payments one has to submit to one’s office. Save these photos to Evernote， or Dropbox， and you can access them from anywhere. Alternatively， save important files in digital formats like PDF， DOC or JPEG to these apps and you will be able to access them using a mobile device from anywhere. You do not need a top-end phone to do all this， even the cheapest Android phone is good enough.

Sadly， even those who own very expensive and powerful smartphones do not use these conveniences. The camera on smartphones and tablets is actually like an eye， a portal through which these devices connect to the physical world. And one can do a lot with this eye. Use it like a portable scanner， for instance. Just click and save the pictures or use apps to do more with them. I use a free app called CamScanner HD on my iPad to clean the images of documents I’ve clicked – which makes them look like actual scans. The app lets users organise， share， print and fax. Despite being actually shot using a mobile camera， the image quality is quite good. Paid apps do much more.

Many companies， even banks， have now started accepting digital versions of documents. There are digital signature apps that give these scanned documents another dimension altogether. DocuSign Ink is a superb app that can help add your signature to digital documents. Either click a picture of your signature on a piece of paper， or initialise directly using a stylus or finger on the touchscreen to record your signature. The app lets you call documents saved on your devices or cloud services and insert signatures where needed. I completed an entire enrolment procedure using this app and even filled the complete form using it. The documents were accepted without any hurdles. I doubt if anyone realised that I had not used a pen to write at all.

There will soon be more apps and services using the camera on mobile devices. YoPharma， the new online drug store， requires you to upload a scan of your doctor’s prescription to order drugs. It is about to launch an app with a camera built into it to make the process simpler. Likewise， suit makers in Dubai have started accepting measurements online， again with the help of the camera. To calibrate the measurements， they ask the subject to stand at a certain distance holding a DVD or CD， which has a universal diameter. Cutting-edge technology can be as simple as that.

The writer is Associate Editor， Gadgets & Gizmos