June 4, 2006

• Notes on the train

  If you often use public transport, you likely find yourself with a good amount of downtime.  You can’t spend the entire time talking with friends unless you really have a lot of friends, else you will annoy them away.  And really, even if you were so popular amongst friends, you might upset the passenger next to you more than a little.

  
  

  What happens when you’re sitting there, likely with a phone in your pocket, with nothing better to do?  If you’re like me, you think of things idly, and inevitably you have a few such things that you’d like to write down.  Like an interesting topic you want to bring up later when you next speak to a friend.  Most people satisfy the urge with a pen, but we can do so much better.

  
  

  So, where are we? public transport + cell phone/laptop = opportunity to take notes and increase future productivity.

  
  

  BUT, public transport implies motion and almost inevitably, loss of signal for wireless devices.  Web applications, in the usual sense, are pretty much dead to this terrain, or at least it’s largely terra nova.

  
  

  A few problems:

  
  

  1. Why sketch notes or blog with a keypad if you can just sketch on paper?  What’s so much better about using a cameraphone or laptop?
  2. Why use some silly note-taking application on a phone if it isn’t designed to make your ideas accessible everywhere?
  3. If you have some net-centric private notetaking tool, how do you deal with intermittent connections?

  
  

  These problems are near to the reason we haven’t seen a move towards largely electronic notetaking of the post-it note, back of a receipt, temporary tattoo with a pen, flavor.  I think a killer app is what is really needed to exact the tipping point.  Think a little bit about what a smart notepad might be able to do for you, and how this an ultramobile (blog-connected!), connection-independent mobile version of Ziggy might actually be worthy of your spare time.

  • 9:33 pm
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