Five things on Friday #34

Things of note for the week ending August 24th, 2012

A bit later than usual (today is Aug 27th and I’m back-dating this post) as I HAVE BEEN ON HOLIDAY AND IT WAS AMAZING.

Ahem.

Shall we?

1. Evernote + Moleskine
My undying love for all things Moleskine-related is fairly well known around these parts so it was unsurprising to find tags, mentions and emails into their double figures when the Evernote + Moleskine partnership was announced. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Right, let’s make two things clear –

  1. Evernote is your virtual online notebook. You can upload all kinds of things to it, written notes, images, whiteboards, hell – even receipts. It’s basically there for you to store your whole written life and, what’s more, it’s 100% searchable and taggable. Kinda awesome, right?
  2. Moleskine is an actual notebook.

The two brands/products represent opposite sides of the same coin and as such, should be sworn enemies. In fact, they have been for some time. But no more! They are now in bed together and their first offspring is something called ‘The Evernote Smart Notebook’.

From TechCrunch:

The idea is to bridge the digital and analog worlds, allowing you to take notes physically, then import those notes into Evernote.

So the smart notebook uses specially formatted paper that allows it to work with Evernote. In the new version of the Evernote iPhone app, you can take photos of pages from the Moleskine notebook, and then they’re browsable and even searchable in the app. The notebook also comes with special stickers, which tell the app the notebook (the virtual kind) where each page should be saved.

I absolutely love this. Although I’m not an Evernote user (yet – I’m still trying to find my own use case), I can definitely see the benefits of being able to tag analogue pages for easy searchability online. I mean, that’s just ACE.

via RWW

Alas, it is iOS only at the moment meaning only iPhoners and iPadders get to play (for now). However, this is one really cool step in the direction of online and offline integration that I totally adore. More please.

Mark my words: it won’t be long until the Evernote sticker tags start appearing on a whole bunch of other things outside of the Moleskine…

2. Redesigning the America’s Cup

I don’t know if you know much about the America’s Cup, I certainly didn’t. What I mean is: up until about three years ago I didn’t.

Back in September 2009, as part of the final leg of the Lucozade Energy Challenge, we were flown out to the Caribbean for some yacht-on-yacht America’s Cup style racing… with actual America’s Cup winning yachts (see above and wikipedia).

Since then, the history of the game has fascinated me (seriously, it’s great – read up) and well, a recent turn of events are leading me to believe that we’re about to enter a whole new era of America’s Cup awesomeness —

When you win the America’s Cup, you get to decide pretty much all the details about how, where, and when you get to defend the trophy. It’s a little bit like H.O.R.S.E. crossed with Capture the Flag, a soapbox derby, being President in a game of Asshole, and lots of saltwater. After Ellison won the 2010 America’s Cup, hosted in Valencia, Spain, he wasn’t just interested in steering the ship, so to speak: Nope, he made like a nautical engineer and decided to redesign the whole thing.

There’s more over at Grantland, and keep an eye on this one – it’s going to be big.

3. POP
Need a universal charging station? Look no further. POP has been pulled together by an old sparring partner of mine and I actually really like the look of it (if my DT-600 ever fails, I’ll be first in line). There’s only a week left to buy one, so go get [kick-]started.

4. Facebook Mobile Gets Better
And Read Write Web have published a really well written article about how.

5. That Holiday (and CARNIVAL!)
Last Friday my girlfriend and I packed up our things and headed off to the island of Sal, for a week of sun, sea, sand and sangria. We spent seven days literally doing nothing, every day and it was amazing. Cape Verde is beautiful and this was pretty much what we woke up every day –

From a tech perspective, being able to use my Nokia 808 PureView underwater was pretty ace and I’ve got a ton of video to upload from that at some point (the images aren’t bad though).

Geekiness aside, it was exactly what we both needed and it was book ended perfectly too as – on the work front – a client win landed just as I was boarding for take off and then, when we got home, we were just in time for my first ever Notting Hill Carnival too – amazing!

2012-08-26-0504

I’ve got a ton of blogging to catch up on and a helluva busy four day week ahead.

Hope y’all had an awesome week.

Whatley out.

 

 

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Author: James Whatley

Chief Strategy Officer in adland. I got ❤️ for writing, gaming, and figuring stuff out. I'm @whatleydude pretty much everywhere that matters. Nice to meet you x