Flash in the pen
How will a company like Montblanc, so storied in its tradition of fine writing implements, embrace the digital future? The possibilities are many, and the Montblanc Augmented Paper offers a glimpse of one of those possibilities.
Essentially, the Montblanc Augmented Paper is a notebook that allows users to transfer handwritten and drawn sketches, doodles and anything else that the hand can compose on paper to a connected app. When using the modified Montblanc Starwalker ballpoint writing instrument on the accompanying notebook (encased with a soft black leather case crated in Florence), electro magnetic resonance (EMR) sensors trace the movements of the wrist and pressures on the pad to reproduce words and images via Bluetooth on your smartphone via the Montblanc Hub app. Now safely digitised, the notes can then be categorised, reformatted, edited and synced with other apps – email, Dropbox and the like.
It’s a digital writing solution that is not the first on the market – Moleskine has tried something similar with its Smart Writing Set, as well as Livescribe with the Smartpen, but Montblanc adds an element of elegance to the quotient. With a price of €650 (RM3,015), the Montblanc Augmented Paper has a battery life of up to eight hours of continuous use, with 100 pages of internal storage. And even if the battery runs out, never fear – the pen and paper still function like normal pen and paper, albeit a pen and paper of Montblanc’s considerably high standards.
