Anyone Using Smartness? I Have A Neolab's N2 - I Like That It Syncs With Evernote

[richiwalt]

I wrote a sample of the pen's ability to have stroke data transferred to the iPad here on my blog. However, it was SHORTLY AFTER obtaining a smartpen that I discovered fountain pens for the first time. Not sure what I'm going to do with this device.

 

EverNote does a great job capturing and correcting camera parallax in their app - and with a premium account, anything you write (given it's neat enough) can be searched instantly ... so it's become easy to just whip out my phone and take an image of anything I want to toss up into EverNote for later retreival via search.

 

I know this is the opposite end of the spectrum for classic fountain pen users ... but, it seemed appropriate to bring up the subject for discussion.

 

 

 

Questions about how the pen works? Ask away, I was very active in their forums and even selected as a Beta Tester there ..

 

thoughts anyone?http://www.richimages.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/IMG_6954-1102x350.jpg

Edited July 16, 2015 by richiwalt

[msolok]

I have recently purchased one as well. While it certainly won't be replacing my fountain pens it still has it's place. At the moment I am mostly using it for my work meeting notes, in conjunction with audio recordings. I will sit in the meeting and take notes on what I have to, sync it with my Android tablet when back at my desk and then send the notes through to OneNote (I prefer OneNote over Evernote, and it works perfectly with my Surface Pro 3). The brilliant thing about it is I can send the notes through to OneNote as either the inks as on the page, or as Transcribed Text. This makes sharing my notes as needed, making to-do lists and keeping track of what I am doing so much easier. The different ink colours you can set in the app make going back and revising my notes super easy as well.

 

I'm also looking at using this tool in my story writing process in the future. I envisage my process becoming writing my first draft with my fountain pens and notebooks. When done I then use the N2 to write up my second draft based on the first. From this my notes will all be synced into OneNote, organised, and readily transcribed to text for me. No need to retype everything I have written.

That's not even mentioning the ability to use multiple books to write notes on characters, events and locations, and have them Synced into the correct locations in OneNote.

 

Honestly the potential this pen has to help streamline and refine the writing process is immense. Sure you can just use the Evernote app and take photo's of what you have written, but this is messy. You need to line up the camera, make sure lighting is sufficient, make alterations to the picture in order tog et it looking ok, and (in the end) still end up with what looks like a photo of a page in Evernote. And then when it comes up to doing this for multiple pages it all becomes simply too difficult.

There are some negative things about the pen, of course. It is only a Ball point after all, and the refill is not great. But it is a D1 refill, so plenty of decent options out there. And you do have to use their special paper, but it's not terribly expensive and I find it to be fairly good quality (nice and smooth, and it actually handles Fountain pen ink well. Would love to get the Professional journals down here in Aus though). I honestly don't think it's something you would want to use for scribbling and Non-Essential notes, but for things you are going to want to have digital copies of it is brilliant.

[richiwalt]

I like your thinking ... :-)

 

One small correction: you don't have to line up the camera for Evernote at all. You don't have to zoom in to trim the edges, in fact you don't even have to push the camera button. Evernote app overlays a green square perfectly while reading "capturing" over the top of the paper (even at a slanted angle). If you haven't used this - you should try it !!! It seems flawless !!! Next it performs the internal necessary projection math to the image to perfectly "square" (and trim) the buffered video into an image - all without even pushing the camera button. It does this in "auto document" mode as soon as the camera view detects the photo is a document. All you need to do is place the paper on some darker background so that it recognized a contrast between paper and backbround. Try it - it's effortless.

[msolok]

I like your thinking ... :-)

 

One small correction: you don't have to line up the camera for Evernote at all. You don't have to zoom in to trim the edges, in fact you don't even have to push the camera button. Evernote app overlays a green square perfectly while reading "capturing" over the top of the paper (even at a slanted angle). If you haven't used this - you should try it !!! It seems flawless !!! Next it performs the internal necessary projection math to the image to perfectly "square" (and trim) the buffered video into an image - all without even pushing the camera button. It does this in "auto document" mode as soon as the camera view detects the photo is a document. All you need to do is place the paper on some darker background so that it recognized a contrast between paper and backbround. Try it - it's effortless.

 

Hey. I get what you are saying, but I don't agree it is effortless or of even close to the quality of the Neo N2. Sure you don't have to zoom in on the page as Evernote will do the cropping, but if you want the result to be semi decent you have to make sure you are fairly close to the page. Same with being straight on, Evernote does an OK job at straightening and flattening the image, but I would say it is a far cry from great. And then you have to do the same thing for however many pages you want in Evernote (God help me if I ever had to do 10 pages in this manner).

The real issues with this method start to come up when you paper isn't 100% flat (say you are on a page mid way through a hardbound journal so the page slopes up towards the spine). Evernote can't correct this so that is always there affecting the quality of the scan.

Then there is the quality of the document that makes it into Evernote. It honestly looks like you have taken a photo of the document with a camera. It can looked washed out and low quality.

Then we get to the Transcription features in Evernote. Or more accurately, the lack of them. Yes you can do a search in Evernote for words and it does a reasonable job of finding them. However there is no way to transcribe entire pages of notes and copy the text out. It is simply there for searching. Not overly helpful to be honest.

 

Keep in mind there might be some differences between the iOS and the Android Evernote apps. I used my Samsung Galaxy S6 to take 'Document' pictures of a page I wrote with my Neo N2 to compare the two. The Evernote quality is really poor compared to what you get from the Neo N2. Evernote is OK if you have single pages you want to have a backup of, don't what digital text and the quality doesn't matter (and I honestly think in this case you are better off with a Desktop scanner, the quality will be far greater). The Neo N2 is for if you have lots of stuff you want to get Digitised, want it in good quality, and want to get the Transcribed text out easily.

I do get get the appeal of being able to use a fountain pen with the Evernote option, but the results are so much poorer and so much more difficult to get that I honestly can't see it being a viable option.

[richiwalt]

You may have a point about bent up pages not being scanned correctly from a photograph method EverNote has implemented, (I've never tried, as my pages are always flat).

 

But this method is certainly effortless. The image below was automatically captured at a strong slant; It's a worse-case scenario - I tried very hard to write exceptionally small on purpose (note the nickel coin and the size of letters at the bottom of the page - I had to restart several words from how small I was writing - using a Japanese fine nib)... I did this on purpose to see if the capture would miss the details. This was an effortless scan, auto squared, and took less than 5 seconds to capture - I could easily do 10 sheets just turning pages and aiming a camera. Of course pages are not written that fast for sure - so capturing them as they are written is certainly easier.

 

Now, the transcribe-a-whole-page thing is also a good point that you're making. I certainly agree with that. But I find that when I am neat, the OCR search is much better than hit and miss.

 

So, bottom line, you are right - it really depends on what you are wanting for your archiving purposes ... as for me, I'm willing to trade my N2 for a fountain pen of comparable value - used for used. :-)

 

 

http://www.richimages.net/Penmanship/IMG_7122.PNG

Edited July 29, 2015 by richiwalt

[msolok]

Here's from my testing this morning.

 

In this one I lined my phone up, made sure it is reasonably straight and flat and then hit the photo button (the auto scan feature doesn't appear to be in the android version). It turned out OK-ish, but i can get far better results from a desktop scanner for not much more effort.

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/m510/msolok/Evernote%20Camera_zpszklr0bz2.png

There is a fair curve at the top and bottom of the page which it couldn't sort out.

 

Here one which I took from a bit further away but still front on. It has done some cropping and straightening, but not much. Looking fairly dodgy at this stage.

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/m510/msolok/Evernote%20Camera%20Slight%20off%20-%20Copy_zps22vkji8o.png

 

 

And now I have one which I have taken at a bit of an angle at about the same distance as the last one. I honestly can't see Evernote having done anything for that image.

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/m510/msolok/Evernote%20Camera%20really%20off_zpsdcoudosp.png

 

So I think it's clearly that for Evernote to produce OK-ish documents you do have to try and line it up in the camera, fairly close and straight or Evernote won't cope. This might be somewhat different on iOS (I only have Android devices ATM) but in just about all cases I think you are better off using a scanner. There is a fair amount of fiddling required to get it just right.

 

And then we come to the N2. I think the image speaks for itself. Crisp, clear, clean. No issues with lighting, or non-flat pages. No work at all getting it into Evernote (simply launch the app on my tablet, it will then sync with the pen and sync that into Evernote).

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/m510/msolok/neonoteimage_zpsugur2wnu.png

 

I definitely think that the reason you want to get the backup. To be honest, I really don't rate Evernote photo util very high. Microsoft Office Lens works MUCH better, at least on Android. The image quality is far greater, it picks up the page and writing so much better, does it straightening and cropping much better, and sending the text Transcription is on it's way (i think you can already do it on iOS and Windows Phone).

[richiwalt]

Wow ... I agree ... You're not getting the results that I'm getting plus your pages are much smaller (I think) my pages are very large (Larger than a full-size college composition book lengthwise) and my writing is very small. I'm wondering if there's something that I'm getting about Evernote subscription that you're not; do you have the premium version? I paid $49 for year (the bargain price) for Evernote premium.

 

And I will mount wondering what phone you're using it's camera resolution. I'm using an iPhone 6 Plus.

 

Else it's a difference in android and iOS.

 

At any rate I enjoy riding with fountain. So much, and the ease of my phone and they auto scan for documents is making me want to replace the neolab N2 smart pen.

 

But I can see where you're coming from with your results. I'm just getting better results of the scans than you are - i've never had a problem. Even colored inks do well. :-)

[richiwalt]

FWIW ... I am enjoying this thread ... and thinking about keeping my pen ... You have me re-thinking this one ... :-)

[msolok]

Hey. I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 which I am using for the Evernote Document scanning, so the Camera is more up to the task. Using the Microsoft Office lens app I get far better results. I find it to be a far better tool than what Evernote offers.

 

I am also using Evernote Premium. I got 3 months free with my Galaxy S6 and I also got a 12 month Subscription bundled with my N2. So I should get getting the full range of features and quality.

 

I would suggest keeping the N2. It's a brilliant little tool. Far greater quality they taking pictures of paper, so much better for archival purposes and text transcription.

Sure it's no Fountain pen, but get yourself a better quality D1 refill and it's much better (I now have a Cross refill fitted which is far smoother and better consistency than the Zebra 4C they include with the N2). Take a look here for both the recommended refills from NeoLab and from users: http://www.neosmartpen.com/forum/index.php?/topic/490-everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-our-ink/

I'm going to try the Montblanc refill at some stage as they seem to be ranked fairly high.