Yet, some businesses -- and their employees -- still do use pens and papers, particularly for taking notes in meetings. Why do we capture crucial business information on a data storage medium invented 2,000 years ago? Pen-and-paper meeting notes represent a non-trivial exception to the rapid and profitable advancement in the application of computer systems to improve every aspect of business processes.
I believe there are three reasons why some people still capture meeting notes on paper:
1. It's a cultural habit. Behavior in meetings is governed by corporate and national culture, from how we exchange business cards to how we talk to what we wear. Pulling out a nice pen and taking notes on paper is part of that cultural habit.
2. The company doesn't care. The transition from paper to digital bits and bytes was all about bringing measurable improvements to business processes and the bottom line. Note taking is all about personal effectiveness, not the company's. So when it comes to note-taking technology, you're on your own. Few companies are likely to build electronic note-taking into the IT budget.
3. Every aspect of our "meetings culture" is broken, obsolete, inefficient and costly. We work hard at our desks, but tend to view meetings as long coffee breaks. where we can zone out, indulge the impulse to show off or play politics. Conversation tends to meander, rarely concluding with clear action items and completion deadlines. Letting all the decisions, ideas and information from meetings get lost on individual paper notepads is part of what makes meetings so time inefficient and cost ineffective.
So what can you do about it?
Some people lug their laptop into meetings and peck out notes on it. However, that creates what feels like a breach of etiquette. Placing a wall (the laptop screen) between you and others in the meeting is rude, tapping on the keys is annoying, and the fact that you're looking at your screen rather than paying attention" can be suspicious.
You could buy a tablet PC, but that's an expensive form of overkill for simple note-taking. You could scan, then process, your paper notes with optical character recognition software. But that's more trouble than it's worth.
In a perfect world, you would take notes with a pen, just as you do now, but have those notes magically "captured" as machine-readable text.
The good news is that you can buy gadgets that get you pretty close to this "perfect world." Here are the best of the lot.
Digital pens
The most unobtrusive way to digitize your notes is with a digital pen -- a special ink pen packed with electronics that can remember what you write.
Digital pens aren't perfect. They tend to be thicker, and therefore harder to write with, than ordinary ballpoint pens. They have batteries that must be charged. If you can tolerate those shortcomings, they're the closest thing available to no-compromises writing with pen-on-paper, with the additional benefit of having your scribbles captured.
Digital pens either have a wireless, Bluetooth connection to your cell phone or come with a special USB cradle for recharging and data transfer through your PC -- or both. Once the scribbles are transferred, handwriting recognition software transforms them into machine-readable text.
Logitech io2 Digital Pen
The Logitech IO is a US$149.99 digital pen that captures your writing using a tiny camera. The pen uses real ink, but you have to write on special "smart paper" covered with dots, which costs more than regular paper but gives the pen's camera its bearings.
Handwriting is recognized not on a PC, but on the pen itself. The pen captures both the text, and the "picture," of scribbled notes, so your actual handwriting and doodles are preserved.
It stores up to 40 pages in its 1 MB memory.
A feature called ioTag flags notes for specific actions, such as sending e-mail (if you use Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes) or adding appointments to your calendar. That's right -- you can actually send e-mail with pen-on-paper. A docking cradle connects the pen to your Windows XP or Windows 2000 PC. The pen comes with desktop software with which you can edit, store or save the recognized text.
The Nokia Digital Pen SU-1B
The Nokia pen is similar to the Logitech. It uses real ink and requires special paper, which you must either buy from Nokia or print yourself from a special printable PDF file that comes with the pen.
The SU-1B synchs with your PC using a USB cradle and also connects via Bluetooth to a Nokia 3650, 3660, 6600, 6650 or 7650 cell phone, which enables your writing to be sent via e-mail or SMS. However, it's sent as a picture, not text.
Little lights and a vibrating feature alert you to its battery and "send" status. It also features 1 MB of memory in which you can store about 100 pages.
Digital notepads
Digital notepads work like Tablet PCs in that you use a stylus to write on a touch-sensitive screen, but they cost much less (under $200 instead of around $2,000). To transfer data to a PC, you simply connect the tablet via USB connection and synchronize with special desktop software.
Acecad DigiMemo A502
The DigiMemo A502 is a thin electronic clipboard. By placing ordinary paper on it, and writing or drawing with an included, battery-operated pen (which also writes in real ink), an electronic copy is captured by the device. It can capture up to 120 sheets of paper at a time. Using a "real" pen is optional -- an included plastic stylus can replace it for digital-only note-taking.
Handwriting recognition software called MyScript Notes converts handwritten notes to machine-readable text (this conversion takes place on the PC, not the tablet). The DigiMemo's onboard 32 MB storage holds 999 digital pages of notes, and that storage can be augmented with a Compact Flash card. Both the special pen and electronic notepad run on AAA batteries.
Aiptek MyNote
A new product from Germany, the Aiptek MyNote Digital Notepad lets you take digital notes, which you can later synchronize with your Windows XP or Windows 2000 PC via USB. The tablet is the same size as a standard paper tablet and stores notes on SD flash memory cards. AAA batteries last 20 hours on a charge, according to Aiptek. The device holds more than 180 pages of notes and, for now is Available only in Germany, but should become available abroad in the near future.
Writing on the MyNote requires the special, included, AAA-battery-powered stylus.
Beyond digital pen and paper
Digital pens and digital notebooks are radically superior alternatives to old-school pen-and-paper note taking. But they're not the only options for digitizing business meeting information.
For instance, you can capture useful whiteboard scribbles with your camera phone, and keep the image with your digital notes on the meeting. Digital voice recorders can perfectly capture meeting content (make sure you get the permission of other meeting attendees). And fold-up keyboards can turn your cell phone into a less-obtrusive and quieter alternative to taking notes with a laptop in meetings.
It's time to do something about that last vestige of pen-and-paper business information capture and storage because any information you can't index, search and easily duplicate electronically isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Mike Elgan is a technology writer and former editor of Windows Magazine. He can be reached at mike.elgan+computerworld@gmail.com or his blog: http://therawfeed.com.