Moleskine Writing KitIn the past, I tended to dismiss Moleskine as the brand of choice of for would-be creatives – except that I now know real writers and artists who do use the range. And Moleskine has now rolled out a solution that tries to bridge the gap between its paper offerings and online – the Moleskine Smart Writing Set.

As Moleskine tells it, the Smart Writing Set “is a system made up of three objects – the special Paper Tablet notebook, the smart Pen+ and a companion App – that enable you to digitally edit and share what you create on paper in real-time without taking a photo, uploading files, or scanning documents.” The digital wheeze comes in the Paper Tablet’s paper, which “uses invisible NCode™ technology by NeoLAB Convergence embedded within each page that allows the Moleskine Pen+ to recognize where it is inside the notebook and to transfer all your freehand notes from page to screen in real-time. It allows you to smoothly digitize, edit, organize and share handwritten notes and sketches made on the move for seamless integration between paper and cloud.”

I’ve come across this technology before, and the main drawback I see is that it needs its own special paper to draw or write on. For committed Moleskine users, though, that may not be a problem. The special paper should also ensure far greater accuracy in registering and transferring your ink into digital format. Users have a choice of “the free Moleskine Notes App for iPhone users and Neo Notes for Android users,” depending on their hardware preference.

How much substance rather than style is there to this platform? That’s probably a matter of personal preference, though at $199 for the whole set, it doesn’t come cheap. For anyone already using Moleskine, though, it could be a way to go. I’ll stick to a tablet tablet myself, rather than the paper iteration, but that’s just me.

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