Evernote, Moleskine Produce ‘Smart’ Notebook

This is one of the reasons it was a good idea to get up this morning. At the Evernote Trunk Conference, Evernote CEO Phil Libin announced “a ceasefire” between paper note-takers and mobile-only tech-heads.

Together with Moleskine CEO Arrigo Berni, he revealed the Evernote Smart Notebook: a (hopefully) harmonious bridge between analog and digital. The idea: take your notes on the Moleskine, then import them onto Evernote, where they’ll be archived and even searchable.

The notebook uses specially formatted paper that enables Evernote to “read” it in a sense. The new version of Evernote’s iPhone app enables you to photograph those pages, where they’ll then be browsable and searchable. Special stickers also indicate to the app where on the Evernote app each page should be saved.

Libin says the notebooks have been in testing at Evernote’s office for the past two weeks, and so far they’ve only encountered one problem: people find them too pretty to use. His solution: “buy two.” Convenient!

On a more practical level, Moleskine’s Berni called the collabo a sensible one. Moleskine customers tend to be of the digitally savvy variety: in a survey, 60% of customers said they also use a digital device to take notes. And I can’t think of accompaniment more common to a Moleskine in a handbag than an Apple device of some kind, be it tablet or laptop.

Pocket notebooks start at $24.95 and large ones at $29.95. Preorder one here. We can hardly wait!