Logitech io2
Originally posted 2005-10-14 14:10:23
A few weeks ago, I bought a Logitech io2 Digital Writing System. Now that I’m in management, I attend numerous meetings, I take copious notes, I jot down multiple to-dos, and I have to use my notes later and complete all the tasks I accept.
For awhile, a short while, I tried using my PDA to take notes and enter to-dos, but I just can’t input text fast enough on a Palm. Toting my laptop to every meeting sounded too painful to contemplate. Scribbling on paper with a rollerball, while quick at the moments that required quickness (i.e. during meetings), meant that I consumed too much time transfering to-dos to Outlook and lost too much information because my notes weren’t searchable. I was swimming through my synchronous work and drowning in the asynchrous tasks.
Two Benjamins later, I walked out of CompUSA with the promise to scribble notes on paper and find them in Word, and jot tasks on a notepad and find them in Outlook. The wow factor impressed everyone in the office, but I was finding that the Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) needed schooling. Also, the Outlook tasks weren’t nearly as seamless as I expected: I had to highlight the graphical representation of my notes that I wanted to convert into a to-do, and it made the picture of my words an attachment to a to-do. In other words, I couldn’t look at my list of to-dos and read what exactly it was that I had to do. I had to open the attachment to each item individually to read each task. Unusable.
I checked online for any software updates. Good move. The latest software had a new feature called ioTags: placing annotations in the margin by to-dos (and calendar items and e-mails) automatically creates those items, as text, in Outlook. You can even create custom ioTags, though I haven’t ventured this far yet. Now we’re talking!
I also finally took the time to train the ICR. This has improved the automatic text conversion significantly, though I still have to scan my text for \”typos.\”
My io2 Digital Writing System (well, I just call it a pen) has quickly become indispensible. You’ve got to get one of these things!