On this episode, Brad and Myke revisit an old topic they hoped they would never need to again: The Visionnaire. Things are getting ugly in Visionnaire land, and no real answers are to be found. On a more positive note, we talk about brick and mortar pen shops and two worthwhile causes that need your attention.
Guest Starring:
Ana Reinert
Links and Show Notes:
On this episode, Brad and Myke revisit an old topic they hoped they would never need to again: The Visionnaire. Things are getting ugly in Visionnaire land, and no real answers are to be found. On a more positive note, we talk about brick and mortar pen shops and two worthwhile causes that need your attention.
Links for this episode:
Sponsored by Squarespace (use code TALLYHO11 for 10% off) and Doxie's new Doxie Flip
Hello and welcome to episode 80 of the pan addict on five by five weekly show where we discuss pens paper and the analog tools that we love so dearly my name is Mike curly and I'm joined by the crown prints of the sewing machine. Mr Brad daddy that's right and got a new. New venture ahead of me i'm gonna be a master scene star like my my partner jeffrey at knock so yes i'm getting some work done behind the machine this weekend it was pretty cool we had a good time. Good time working on the cases this weekend so it's going well so excited i know i know they're looking good to look at real good and i still didn't even come home with a sample for myself we're just trying to we're trying to get it done. I can't believe that you just doing anything all day can i know we made lots of cases is just you know i don't wanna. I don't need one yet i'm still using like my phase one prototype so yeah it's going it's going real good crazy show coming up today. What is that little stuff loads of little stuff and it's actually a bunch of stuff that right after our episode ended last week i feel like i've been like hanging on to a lot of these topics for since the towards the end of last week so. I'm but they're still still pertinent today of course it's just lots of things i wanted to talk about and it's i don't know it may not even be like a normal episode for us but i guess it kind of is we just talk about anything that that comes across our screens and you know unfortunately we'll start it out with the. I don't say bad news but uh little questionable uh questionable topic that we've covered here before the visionary pin on kickstarter i might just for. I didn't check with you beforehand we still a backer of this project yeah yeah i'm i'm all in on it just simply because of as i mentioned before you have the people that have. I'll throw into the show notes maybe some of the episodes where we gave. A little back story on this yes yes so definitely check those out and i was gonna mention that in the act i don't have episodes in front of me but they're actually in the. We talk about it like a couple weeks in a row and just talk about i had a lot of concerns about the. Origins of the pen design feeling that it was you know probably a very inexpensively made chinese pen that you can get for just a few dollars and it blew up on kickstarter i think you sell them for thirty seven dollars each there would i thought that there wasn't anything original in the design that i was just pulled pretty much off the shelf. Of a chinese manufacturer and absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that except that you're overpaying by about thirty dollars for this pen that was mine that's pretty much the complaint in a nutshell i'm. So you know we address those things we talked about a lot of those things and you know we discussed how the pin you're gonna get probably gonna be just fine it's just that the it's kind of i felt that it went against you know the spirit of kickstarter. And that it's really not any type of new new design and shit it's basically just a resell of an existing you know mass market chinese fountain pen. I'm so we left it at that you know a couple months ago well now it's come out that on alibaba dot com which is a it's a huge website you can find anything on there. I'm at the vision air i mean it's not called a vision air but the exact vision air pin is showing up on there for purchase from different chinese manufacturers and get them first cheap as a dollar. So that was brought up to morgan who is the founder of the vision air kickstarter project the creator. I'm and as morgan is want to do in my dealings with him in the past and his public answers he talks a lot without answering any questions. And i thought it was pretty telling this time that there are a couple points you know i wanted to. Point out that he is in his response number one he didn't deny that that was the vision air pin. At all i thought that was very telling that he did he never said that's not this pin here's why. You know he said his answer was in which was the obvious answer and the answer that i knew was gonna come was well they knocked me off. They took my design and now they're selling it you know this chinese manufacturer selling it and they still my design saying this in the comments is that where. Yeah yeah he's got a comment i think a link to that specific comment. I'm so basically saying how you can't you know prevent other people from counterfeiting his design blah blah blah and he can't afford to. You know to go after him and things like that which that's the obvious answer right i mean that's the answer that i expected. Of course that's what happened morgan they stole your design and now they're selling it as a one dollar pen. I'm one dollar yeah. Well actually eighty five cents if you get you know the right the right quantity. Oh what's going on so how how like convinced. Are you there. That it's the same pen yeah. Ninety nine percent. I want you to look at put in a new link so okay so what happened was this came out and everyone was linking to this page on alibaba showing this pen and this manufacturer offering up this pen the exact pen. You know in black in the chrome and everything like that. Well yesterday that link went down. Which. Is interesting. Um. What does that say what is what say the fact that the link went down like i on what side is that. It was the link that everyone was passing around. That was involved in the project saying hey this is the this is the vision air this is the vision air well now that link's gone. So yeah i i think it's. I don't think it was a fluke put it that way but if if he if it is the same pen. And Morgan. Doesn't have the rights to own it. Then how like how could he have it taken down like what i'm trying to say is dealing with the manufacturers like look you guys are looking bad you guys are making me look bad. He could pay them he could pay them so much more money to take that down like one of the things that bothers me about his kickstarter project is he keeps finding all this extra money. To do these other special things like packaging and different converter and new ink cartridges have you i mean i just sound so bad maybe i shouldn't say this i'm going to anyway have you seen what they look like these extra things he's doing. Yeah no you look i mean none of the all the designers is terrible well no i mean well. Part of it is number one he's saying look i'm putting all this money back in to the project well that's because he has about a dollar per pin in there and he's made. You know that that leaves him lots of extra money and the extra add ons like someone made a comment in the the comments saying he's upgraded the packaging and he's given us extra ink cartridges and he redid the converter like if you added up the cost for all three thing all three of those things is probably less than a dollar. To get those and mass mass produced total. Okay so but the alibaba page has been pulled down so all down so now people have found it. You know i took screenshots of it the other day because i anticipated that would happen so i went to the screenshots of i took but you don't even have to anymore because there's a i couldn't find the cash copy of it was someone's found that. And now someone says if you just go over to alibaba and search ly one two zero it just it's everywhere. So that link i put in i want you to look at that link. Okay so it's an Italian which is interesting yeah well not being that link skip that one oh skip the cash one. Yeah because it's it's a lot huger page and shows lots of extra things go to the one i put in is ly one twenty. And you tell me what you think of that pen and compare it to the vision air. So okay let me open up the vision air page for comparison. So i'll continue to talk while you look you know there's. Morgan we talked about it i did text and email morgan because i have talked to him before he's never responded um it's not surprising. And he has been the the entire time of this kickstarter project i don't know that he's answer a direct question with a direct answer. Oh dear oh yeah should i be higher than ninety nine percent. It's extremely similar isn't it yeah oh for god's sake this is really bad like if this is true. Okay so he's got pictures of people in a factory making them. True kind of makes sense wouldn't it yeah well just like he's got pictures of him in the factory he went flew over to the factory. Yeah i mean it's this looks. So how much are they selling for because they've not got oh yeah eighty five cents. Wait there's an eighty five cents four piece i assume it means eighty five cents each if you buy four. I think so i hope i really hope so because if it is eighty five cents for four of them. Because they've got they're showing like a bunch of pens on the page right and one of them is a fountain pen which looks. Exceedingly similar like really really really similar. Yeah i think it's beyond similar i mean i think it's dead on like we found when we were looking at it before we found some that we thought were close but we know i knew we never found the exact one this is the exact one i'm fairly confident in saying that. I mean do you remember when we were talking before about we were using and trying to avoid the word scam. Yeah because you're still getting the money. This is the scam yeah that word yes you are getting you are buying. A product and receiving a product but. The mark up is incredible right right i mean no wonder he's been able to fly over there to the. To the factory and you know it's it's he's put on a hell of a show. And we said it from the beginning this guy is a marketing master so the thing of people like compared the nib and stuff because i can't i'm struggling to see that. Yeah they don't have a dead on shot of the nib that i can tell from the alibaba page. Yeah miss i don't know if i can get a bigger picture or i haven't looked enough to see if i can get a bigger picture of the shape of the you know the design on the nib. Well i mean all it says is just a really important like it's not you know right now yeah it's a totally generic nib and me and Morgan's admit that but i don't know that i have seen a big enough. Blown up picture to see if it's like the exact same nib i'm waitering it is. I mean it looks like it's got the same like 45 degree angle notch line. You know it's just got like a single line like kind of like a v-shape going towards the opening in the middle of the nib. Kind of the pdf that you provide which is in the show notes that people can download does have a lot more detail in the images. Yeah which are definitely these images are definitely more damning. Even more so yeah brad what have i done i mean in all fairness i would have canceled this if we in me and you have just had this conversation i'll just cancel this but. I simply need to receive this now yeah for the reason of the fact that we have discussed it. Well and yeah yeah and that's cool and what we said the first couple of times we talked about it is your problem you're probably going to get just the perfectly. Fine functional pen you know you're not you're probably you may not have a problem with the pen you may love the pen it may write amazingly it may be one of your favorite pens you know you just overpaid by $30 right yeah more. This company i mean you've probably seen this can make a million of these a month. Yeah so he should have them all done pretty soon yeah yeah no doubt. I can't believe this i mean until now people that have you know i've basically put in the show notes which you can find at 5x5.tv/penadic/80 i've put in the three episodes will be spoke about it and i think people that have listened to these will go back and listen we'll see that i tried had tried to like just. You know say oh you're being you know you're overreacting basically was was my feeling on this was like you know this could be anything but. This i mean this can't look any different any more similar right and the thing i worry about is the the backers who have bought this for their this is their first kickstarter pen experience and things like that and there's a lot of. I don't know there's there's two clear sides reading the comments in the vision air kickstarter page there's ones that are blindly following everything morgan says and. And believe him a hundred percent and there's the other side that says this is clearly questionable and it doesn't nothing nothing about this adds up what so ever so how can i get one of those. I'm sure we can just order from alibaba i guess i think i don't know if there is a couple people might have mentioned that they might be ordering them. Can you buy it delivery twenty twenty twenty five days i don't know what the minimum order is yes that's that's the minimum order on this one page we're looking at it's a thousand okay so that's not going to work. Yeah i don't want a thousand of them i mean i could quite clearly easily afford it if they're in five cents a piece but i don't want a thousand of them. Well it looks like you just need to start a kickstarter and yeah i mean then just sketch out some designs with this great pin that you designed i think i could probably start like an indiegogo for eight to raise eight hundred and fifty dollars to to prove to disprove this. Yeah yeah but mike they knocked him off. Oh i see what you're saying i thought you were giving another revelation yeah i mean. The factory that he seems to have gone to right yeah they they told up they told up to make these thousands of pens to knock off the visionary right certainly seen that way. What is this when they can make ten thousand of these pens a week yeah they knocked him off right. I'm now looking through the the backup pages to see if i can find any images of the factory. Yeah that's on there he's he's got it's in the updates yeah so i'm looking but it's update. It's in here because i just saw her yeah i mean i can see it now but i mean he doesn't have anything away except for the fact that he's in a Chinese factory making some pens himself. Yeah yeah yeah yeah those images were a little strange to me anyway because it made it look like it was just a. Oh i thought it was a huge mistake it just looked like an assembly line yep which is totally not what i want like that one of the images is like just a bucket of clips. It's a bucket of them and i'm like um clearly more than five thousand there why i thought it was a huge mistake to post all these pictures from the factory. You say he's a master of marketing i don't think he is i don't know why you think that. Well the origination when he was doing his video and everything and yeah but everyone drinking Kool-Aid. Well because video is i didn't it wasn't believable to me but reading the responses of people just going oh my god this is the best thing ever. Yeah it doesn't make sense to me it doesn't make it really doesn't make sense how he raised this much money i know. I have no i don't know i don't know how he did it all right yeah so anyway it doesn't look like this is over unfortunately i was hoping we wouldn't have to talk about it again but it's a scandal. It's a scandal yeah this is funny in the big picture if you think about it we're like having conipsions over kickstarter fountain pen projects who would ever thought Mike who would ever thought we'd be in episode 80 of the panatic podcast i know. Well it's like a chilling effect though like i just think it just gives lots of things about it gives it's a these a bad taste and in my mouth and hopefully you know people that are getting into this for the first time buying there's so many people listed that they're bought this is the first fountain pen they've ever bought and yada yada i'm just hoping because pens and paper are a staple of kickstarter. They are now you know it's a great place for that type of stuff right i really don't want that i really don't want this to catch fire in in the mainstream right which it very easily could. Because you know you sites like you know like the next web tech crunch would cover this if it turned out that. This is true right this is a story for them. Guy raises three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on kickstarter this for a product that cost him. Two thousand dollars to make like to make enough shift because he only has to fulfill five thousand of these and we've just found out you can get a thousand of them from. Right hundred and fifty dollars so that is incredible amount of money hang on yep so eight hundred and fifty times by five it's four thousand two hundred and fifty dollars. So he's made what three hundred and something thousand dollars is that three twenty six three twenty four. So yeah before taxes three hundred and twenty thousand dollars hey hey hey hey he's putting a lot back into the packaging yeah drink cartridges and the conductor what is going on any flew over to the factory so this is these are expensive mike yeah i can see where the three twenty one. Yeah i mean he probably needs to buy some more some more drawing and dipping in trees penny right. Yeah i was someone mention that that was funny. Oh dear all right we talk about something that's gonna make us a little more happy please do please do this episode is brought to you by the fine folks over at squares space dot com they are the only one platform that make it fast and easy to create your own professional website drawn line portfolio for free trial and ten percent off your first purchase good to squares space dot com and use the offer code. Tally hoe eleven there is no show that i do on this network that shows the versatility of squares space. Like the panic does because what you've got with us with me and Brad is to people that not only use squares space for a personal site so i have mike early dot net. Brad has the pan addict so yes pan addict com over there but as well as that Brad also has not co which we've mentioned before you will know about this it's not only the website and blog for his. 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All right so when i changing the topic completely but i'm still still a little bit of a i want to say a downer topic but i think there's some positivity to come out of it there was a article i got sent a bunch of times last week on npr there was a radio spot and then they they have the article on the online. The the title of the article is no room for a racers as technology deletes pen businesses. That's such a that's such a debbie downer title i mean i don't instantly don't believe it i know i know and it was a little bit overly dramatic title you listen to the story the audios three minutes and forty nine seconds but they actually cover. It's pretty much the transcript in the in the written part of the of the audio so if you don't want to listen the audio just read the written part but basically they're pointing out. That the old school brick and more mortar pen shops are going away and i don't think that's news to anyone you know who's a regular fountain pen you know pen purchaser. There was me a few months ago where art brown in new york which is one of the one of the oldest stores around it shut down. And this article is about dailies pen shop in milwaukey um and they point out how. Um you know businesses dropped fifty percent and you know because of all this new technology and smartphones and everything like that i mean it's kind of you know it's nothing new or novel to anyone who's who's done this but it was interesting to hear they talk to the owner of dailies pen shop. And my biggest question when they when they talked about it or talk to him was well how does the online business does the online business make up for any of this and they just kind of gloss over it and they said that it. At cuz i've ordered from dailies online and they have a really good they have a really good stock i think i ordered. My retro fifty one was the what was the one with the knock i always forget the name of that i don't know. Yeah whatever you know y'all know which one i'm going to have a conversation on twitter snapper weeks ago yeah i remember a few weeks ago we were trying to have this conversation on twitter between a bunch of us and. Yeah came to the conclusion that retro fifty one of terrible name. Yeah maybe so anyway um dailies has a kind of a really good online business and that wasn't they weren't talking to this at all they're just talking about how his. Brick and mortar businesses you know down fifty percent and he's had to move locations into a smaller location um but it. I mean there's validity to the overall point but i think this is just like you know lots of businesses that you know this is never going to become an obsolete business it's just the business model is going to have to change yeah that's just like. Business these days right right so i didn't think this was like. A super dramatic thing i mean i think dailies is going to continue to be in business in some way shape or form hopefully gosh i hope so because i mean it's a it's a well known name in the fountain in industry in the fountain business but um yeah it was just be moaning the fact of the the traditional brick and mortar is going in that you can't walk in and. You know speak to someone and and maybe necessarily handle the goods or you know i have that conversation with someone about the about pens and things like that so anyway i thought it was a good article if anyone hasn't seen it it's definitely worth checking out worth listening to. I don't i disagree with the with the the premise behind the the title of the the article because i think pen business is doing pretty well is it. You know as highs it was in its peak when you know there was no online and there was no smartphones well of course not but there's companies that are handling that in different ways now and i think. A lot of them would agree that business has been as strong as ever if you talk to a lot of our you know favorite vendors online like jet pens galay pens colt pens all of these people i think they're probably. And i certainly don't know but i would wager that they're doing pretty good you can just kind of you can just kind of tell from you know. anecdotal information you can just pick up on it that you know things are going pretty good in the in the pen industry i think it's just a different business model is totally because of us. Oh it's absolutely we're gonna lay claim to all that yeah yeah to all the all over yeah i better not say that i'm gonna get some nasty grams. I have become that guy now i'm like the bitter old man guy you said this and you shouldn't say that you get the sort of emails. Sure yeah i did most of them are you know none of them are mean or anything but it's just like. Yeah i have i have lots of conversations and now i just i tell people like it is and that's it but flying in the face of this. Yes this has me excited beyond belief and it's the complete antithesis of what we just talked about our friends brian and lisa anderson from Anderson pens are opening a brick and mortar store. Yeah they are so what does that tell you about what they believe this business what you can do in this business they're moving. From online to brick and mortar i mean obviously the online component stays um brian and lisa are the busiest people in show business i do not know how they do it. They travel the entire fountain pin show circuit all across the country from their home in Wisconsin drive to all of these shows i mean drive from Wisconsin to Miami which is just. I don't want to ever make that drive in my life and this is what they do like every month sometimes twice a month they're traveling somewhere across the country to go to a pin show. Brian still keeps his full-time job somehow they're opening a brick and mortar pin store in Appleton, Wisconsin. And they are they're just killing it i mean they are willing to the show notes of their their progress of their they're working on the space and they've been doing some more updates it looks like a cool space. And i could not be happier for two of the nicest people you ever meet in your life and i'm so excited like i would give anything to like fly up there for their opening day just that's how much i believe in them that's how much i support them and that's how much i want this to succeed for them and i think it will know in them the way those two work. And the way they treat people and the way they act um you know with customers and the whole the fountain community as a whole i can't say enough nice things about them and i'm i'm jealous i'm excited and i'm thrilled and i wish them all the best luck so i don't know how. How this this topic you know super imposed with our last topic you know what are you to believe right. And they also have a podcast which i'll put in the show notes yeah and i think i have another thing that they do. Yeah i have a podcast and hopefully i will get to brian and or lease on here one day i think that would be yes that would be excellent they are. They are good people they are just they're the best and i wish them all the luck with this retail store like i i think it's just gonna be cool i mean they know they know this business um you know they have an understanding of what needs to be done to take care of their customers. And i think this will be just nothing but a success so hopefully npr if you're paying attention maybe you can go up there and see why you know this is not the end of the writing industry as we know it. What is it there's a title in there but it's it's maybe too long. Not the end of the writing industry as we know it so i have a request to the listeners of the show so i bought a new i pad today. And you i pad mini with the retina display and i want a case for a pen addict. So basically i want one of those i think the call folio cases like where it opens up you know yeah that's a good term for so it's like a book and it opens up and i have my i pad mini on one side preferably the right side actually for me but whatever it doesn't matter. I could probably turn upside down that's true what these i could probably turn upside down there. Actually no i would probably need it to be on the right hand side and then even ideally i would like to be able to insert or like tuck in field a field notes book in there. Really that's i would like to be able to put my field notes in there in some way even if it's just one right because probably only fit one in that to be honest. Yeah probably just one so maybe it slides in you know i could could tuck in the side like i was talking about with the one star level. Item from last week of the fall up on that kegan from one star level said it that i mean this was i should have asked him he will make the pen loop larger if you need them. Oh good so if you are you are holding off last week because of what i was saying about you know i couldn't get some of my favorite pens in there if you just tell him you need the pen loop to be larger maybe give him some dimensions if possible he can do that. How that's great so he made me to let me know what he apologize which i thought was ridiculous but. He did that is nice guy but i just thought that just popped in my head then yeah so basically i would like that you know such we have to talk a food notes in a maybe have like a pen loop as well. Basically i mean in this if if you've seen something that isn't exactly like what i described that has you some sort of cool notebook integration with a case that's kind of what i'm looking for. It sounds like you need a custom not co pen case i did think of you actually but i was i was thinking it said i was like maybe i could just get braid to do it but then i thought that it might take. A lot more work cuz you have to have some sort of mechanism for keeping the i pad in place. Yeah we totally plan on on doing things like this yeah we just you know not in a not in the timely fashion that you need it. No i mean if you can be great but you know yeah these these types of products are on our radar and we've had some you know initial discussions like about what we need and things like that so. Anyone who who says i wish i had a case for this. Shoot us an email and these are the type of things that we want to work on and type of things that we're actually set up to do so cuz it's just little things about that like securing the i pad into the case. Mm hmm that has to be flawless yeah because if you don't do that and then i open it my apples on to the ground smashes i'm going to very upset a bread daddy. Yep so you know that's a yeah if you've seen anything guys if you come across anything send me on twitter i'm at i'm like i am y k e i would love to hear about it and then i'll probably end up buying 40 of them and talking about that. Have you ever looked at the dodo cases. I i have um i don't know if they're set up this way i that would that's my only guess off the top of my head to look at yeah i don't really. Like that this is a book yeah it's a different style i'll give you that i'm not really a i mean you don't really need that you just need something with the i pad and then have a little bit of additional storage for your field notes in all honesty. This is like pretty much exactly what i need it's not but it's not a field notes it's like their own. No book mmm so i mean that is something right so there's one yeah ideally is in the rain the refills right and it's just yeah i don't like prepared i don't yeah. Ideally like what i'm looking for is to be able to use my field notes like that is is is number one in all honesty because then i can just. Then they're independently i want the two things to be independent of each other so the field notes in the i pad is independent so if i want to take the field notes output my pocket because then it becomes my notebook. Right but i mean sure that is an option you do that looking one i think our listeners will come up with something yeah i was gonna talk about this on another show that you called the prompt which is more apple focused but. Hit me that these that are listeners on this show might actually come up with with better options for me simply because this is our realm because i want these very specific things but i'm going to start a document in our google drive so. I will stop putting those in there cool so we can keep track and then we can. Hopefully i can be a segment on a later episode yeah that would be good i think that would be useful. So talking about segments we have a we have a sponsor base we are a little bit different so i want to do first is i'm gonna give the list of listeners what are sponsors provided us. But then we're gonna talk about and i'm going to set up in a moment so also sponsoring this episode we are very pleased to have doxy. Now just this is just released the doxy flip is a new kind of scanner not for going paperless but for capturing your creativity in history anywhere. So doxy with the doxy flip is a retake on the traditional flatbed scanners of the past with two twists. It's tiny it's really small it's about the size of a book and it's battery power so you can take it anywhere. And also the doxy flip flips over to allow you to capture old photo albums books and pocket notebooks of a transparent scanning window underneath the scanner so you can see right through so you can open up the flatbed you can see right through to see what you're scanning so you can easily line it up and capture your photos or your notes. The doxy flip is perfect for field notes and moleskin notebooks index cards and everything you thought you couldn't scan of a traditional sheet fed scanner because doxy traditionally they do that sheet for sassy put paper in it goes goes through it scans it. The doxy flip is now available for a hundred and forty nine dollars from get doxy dot com and while supplies last you can buy from doxy directly at get doxy dot com you're going to get a free limited edition doxy field notes notebook of a textured French eighty pound. Cream call to cover. So that's what doxy giving us so go to get doxy dot com is a hundred forty nine dollars but they also they should pull over the world and they have different partners and you can buy from Amazon in the UK for example. So if you're interested like I'm sure you will be go to get doxy dot com but obviously you get that doxy field notes that we spoke about last week on the show. Now the reason I say this is very different is first off thank you so much to doxy for sponsoring you definitely go check this out now want to tell you a little bit about why so. We are typically do this but this product is the type of thing that me and Brad will talk about and we were absolutely thrilled when doxy sponsored and they will also kind enough to send both me and Brad a doxy flip. So we both have one and Brad actually wrote a review about his on the panic so I'm going to put that in the show notes to see you can go and read. Brads thoughts about flip but I want to give some of my own personal experiences some of the things that I like about the product to. But you know I just wanted to make sure that people knew that I mean that was what the sponsor had given us to talk about which is all excellent stuff. And it really sort of sums up the product but we do both have them and now I've used them personally and so I want you to talk about on the show. Awesome so yeah I want to hear you you read my thoughts about it and I did some of test scans and you know kind of ran it through the gamut when through most of the features and things like that so you know some people probably read my review and I'll talk about it some more but I kind of want to get your opinion because you and I have not talked about it one on one. Since since you've received yours. So one of my favorite things about it like I was really surprised that it was actually independent of a computer like I was expecting the idea to plug it in. Because I received the flip without really knowing anything about it. So that that was really cool the fact that it was just independent. My I think my favorite thing about it is there's a little screen on the device that you use to like set like do settings and stuff. That's what I thought it was for I just thought like you would so you can change the DPI for example like you can I think it's like 300 and 600 that's right so I change mine to 600 DPI because why not. Yeah but when it's scanning it updates with a little preview image on the screen the time it's like a tiny little screen is maybe like. Like a three inch screen like oh no it's not 1.5 inch sorry 1.5 inch screen. So it's like a tiny at 1.5 inch screen and like just updates with the image so as it's scanning my field notes because obviously that's why I'm using it for I'm now scanning all my field notes notebooks in. It's it's scanning them and so I know I'm getting it right. It's just cool and it just gives you this preview I'd like that I was on my other things and it's really really light. Like super light like I can't believe how light it is because way I was doing it like I was sort of like just holding it in one hand like holding it closed. So the notebook didn't slide out or whatever so it's just holding it that's cool. The image quality on the 600 DPI is just insane like it scans it like to the images and you can create PDFs out of it. I love that you can so you can you scan all of the images in it takes it took me about. About 10 minutes to do an entire field notes like each side then you you plug it into your computer I'll talk about that in a second and. You open the doxy software and it shows all the scans and you can highlight them all and then make them you can they've got a buttons to staple and it puts them together into a stack. So it puts it into one document so it's like stapling the one book together and then you can upload it to Dropbox and Evernote and like all this loads of others. But that's where I'm putting it so I'm putting it into Evernote and putting it into Dropbox which is just that's exactly what I want. So like I've done it now with one notebook that I have which is for like important ideas and I'm going to start now every time I finish a field notes. I'm just it's going to be part of my process will be scanning it in and then filing it. And then it's like it's just available and I can use stuff like Evernote and like maybe some other like OCR reading apps or whatever to make it searchable. Which is I mean if I can get that like I was thinking about maybe like coupling it with a more advanced application because my everybody knows how terrible my handwriting is. So I'm looking at other stuff to like maybe to do a better job than Evernote has been doing for me because if I can get that searchable. That will blow out the water. I mean I know you would have no problem with it but the way that I write it is actually bad and it's not very clear. So Evernote is not doing a great job of finding it. So that's just awesome that you can do that and you can save them as PDFs to those services. The way that you get so basically everything gets saved onto an SD card on the device and then I can just pop the SD card out and put it right into my MacBook. But something that I really liked is that they ship with a USB adapter in the box so you can get this little USB adapter and you can plug an SD card into it. So you don't need to have an SD card reader. That's why that's really cool because and then there's no cables so you have to just like crazy like cable trading all over the place. That they were my experiences. I mean I'm really really happy like it's filled up. It's filled a part of my paper workflow notebook life that was missing. So I think we've spoken about this a bit in the past. Yeah, definitely. I mean I think it kind of completes that circle to where we've got to ask for practically this whole run of podcasts. What do you do with your notebooks when you're done? Well now we doxy flip them. So I'll echo pretty much everything which you said. All those features are great. The things that impress me the most were the size of the doxy flip. I mean it's so small and lightweight and easy to use. I mean I was just sitting at my desk and just goofing off. I had the best time just every time I'd scan a page of my notebook I'd be like oh this is great and you know and then by the time you get it you know put the sd card in my laptop and use the staple feature to just put my notebook together. I was like oh this is great. There's other ways to do these things that in the end game gets you to the same place. But this is so much easier and so much straightforward than taking pictures with a camera or an iPhone and editing in different ways and moving everything around. This really streams lines the entire process. Like you said you did a whole book in about 10 minutes you know give you a few more minutes to you know just to maybe edit them if you need to and then staple it and ship it off to Evernote or Dropbox. And your notebooks there I mean in you know 15 minutes process you know you have this notebook saved digitally and searchably depending on the services that you use. And I it just really rounded out you know my entire workflow for notebooks so I've gone back and started scanning some of my other books now that I've had in the past. I used to Mike back when I started the Pan addict and all these other people were going through all these pin reviews and things like that I used to throw my field notes away. I would fill one up I would rip it up and throw it in the trash and now I just regret that and you know so I don't have as many saved as as I should. With old information and you know this is this is something that just really fulfills a need for me and it is so cool and easy to use and just the size of it it's just it just works and it gets it all done very simply and very easily I'm ecstatic with it with mine so. I just you know it's just I now have a way to digitize my notebooks about either getting a huge scanner or like taking my notebooks apart. Because that was the other way right was to get like a traditional doxy pulling the staple out staples out and then feeding them through page by page and I wouldn't want to do that plus as well like it would be all out of order. Right yeah I wouldn't like I wouldn't I would have never done that I don't like turning you know my books apart to to capture them I wouldn't have done that. This is a very narrow like a very niche thing yeah but I if you are a person like me and haven't thought of this so I had I have I tend to keep two notebooks with me at a time as I mentioned before I have my sort of my daily field notes and my projects field notes. Sometimes I forget to take them both with me and I've had to make notes in the daily field notes and I've ripped the pages out and slid them into the project notebook. I was able to scan those individual pages together and add them to the stack and staple them all together so it makes one consistent book. So if you took notes across different books and you needed to relate those projects together you could scan each individual page and turn it into one document. That's exactly what I did because I really yeah I have a group of sketches for product sketches for knock while those end up in different notebooks over time so I ended up gathering all those up scanning them and then stapled them together as they're one you know and collected collected them all together into one you know stapled file in the doxy flip that's exactly what I did. So yeah perfect thank you that thank you to them for sponsoring and for being very kind to send us the the scan the scan is very very happy with with it and it's something that I would definitely buy. Yeah totally and if you are interested in this you should do it so go to get doxy.com is the website where I have just said that yeah get doxy.com and you can you can either buy one directly or find out about them. And if you like the product why don't you let them know you heard about it here tweet at them they're at doxy which is doxy. And they're very responsive to they are they're pretty active on their on their social media and they're always have a good time so if you want one of these special edition field notes well it's where you gotta go. Yep and they're 48 pages by the way I butchered that. Yeah didn't yeah I'm a I'm a mo ran. So talking about that that what's that is the pitch black oh nice so I had my two packs come in just like the perfect book really I mean it's exactly what we wanted it's a really nice black cover. Very dark mysterious dot grid black staples. Yes yeah it's you know box of just black staples this the it feels like for a this feels almost too good. For a standard edition. Interesting you know that definitely it just feels like this could have been a like colors edition maybe like a year ago or something you know before they started being like really. Adventurous with them. Yeah and it would have sold out I know it's business. Yep it would have for sure and I agree with you if you let a press I reckon the only reason they have not let a press is cover. Well probably two reasons one is the cost also because then this and Raven's wing would be. You have a distinguishable. Yep for sure. Well good I will get mine soon hopefully and I will test them out. I want to end this show on a very positive note. There's a couple of things that Mike and I want to point out that deserve your eyeballs and your clicks and your love and the first of them. The first of them is coat pins is doing a pins for kids promotion. And in the past I've worked with pins for kids and I've kind of stopped for reasons unknown even to me and I want to get back into it so coat pins reached out to us said they're doing this pins for kids promotion. And it's an awesome thing that they're doing where they're allowing you to order a pack of pins for £1.50. It's a 10 pack of pins. You just order it through coat pins you can order it individually just order the pins you can order it you can add it into your cart as just an add on if you're buying other pins and for every box of 10 pins that you order coat pins will match another 10 pins. And then they ship this all to the pins for kids group who is basically what they do is they package up and then they ship or sometimes even bring these pins to children in need in Africa. It's been a very good experience at times that I've worked with them and I'm glad coat pins is getting involved in this. And you know I've already ordered just some just some pins on my own I didn't order like any any stuff for myself I just went to the pins for kids page put in the quantity that I want added it to the basket and bottom. So they'll be you know I've donated to this cause and and you know if you'll get a chance and if you order from cult pins think about adding one add one to your to your order and you know coat pins will match that and you know they'll they'll ship a big big batch of pins for kids and help these kids that that need these writing utensils seems like a no brain to me look the amount of money that we spend on this stuff. If you're a cult pens just add a stat a box to your car is one pound fifty. I'm going to buy a couple now I think yeah yeah I bought some on Monday and they sent me a nice note and it's easy like if you're in the US there's a you know it goes through the process just for anyone who had questions about it it goes to the process and it puts ship a shipping charge like you're ordering the pins but the charges doesn't go through they back it out and they send you an email saying hey you know we appreciate your order we backed out the shipping charge here's the final here's the final cost just for the cost of the pins and we really appreciate your support so that's that's how it works when I when I ordered mine yesterday so. It's a very very cool idea and good luck to cult pens and hopefully this will be a recurring thing so this will be good yep. The second thing is with the huge huge catastrophic storm that hit the Philippines I know I've got a lot of readers from that area I follow a lot of people in that area of the world that got devastated and this storm and one of the best people online in the pin community is a woman by the name of Lee Reyes y'all probably heard me talk about her because I rave about her pin collection and her artwork and her drawing and everything and everything all the time she's got an awesome pin collection and she is in the Philippines she's a manila luckily for her she was you know spared the brunt of the storm but being in the Philippines she wanted to do something to help support the all the people who have displaced and in all the devastation that that took place because of the hurricane so what she's doing is she is starting on her blog she's doing pins for aid a charity auction to raise money for typhoon high-end victims so she started putting out some of her collection on her site where she's going to sell some of these pens sell some pens and I think 100% of the selling price goes to the Philippine Red Cross so y'all need to check this out I've already put in some bids I've got an outbid I'll have to see if I need to need to up it but she's got two out there that alive now and I think there's going to be more coming let's see what's this one and early more safety with a flexible fine nibs already at $200 and the one I bid on was a platinum shouji which is already at $325 so this is something that affects us all when this type of devastation happens so if you're looking for a good way to help with the cause check out Lee's site and we'll have all the links in the show notes and she's doing an awesome thing basically putting her collection up some parts of her collection and donating all the funds to the Philippine Red Cross relief effort so that is wonderful and I told her she didn't ask me to put this on here but it was a no-brainer that I was going to do it it's like a perfect two for yep yep so check those things out um it's things uh it's our friend Patrick Rhone says things we believe in and we want to we want to support those things so I think that's it for us mate so it's good to me sir right so if you'd like to get in touch of us there's a few ways that you can do that you can go and you can go to panatic.com so we're going to find Brad and he is at Dowdy D O W D Y on Twitter and I am I Mike I am Y K E and other than that Brad I think that we'll be back next week we certainly will thanks so much for listening to episode 80 of the panatic if you need the show notes that's 5x5.tv/panatic/80 until then say goodbye Brad goodbye Brad [BLANK_AUDIO]
