Evernote Smart Notebook Helps Digitize Handwritten Notes

Evernote CEO Phil Libin made two key announcements at the company's second annual Trunk Conference on Friday in San Francisco. In the first, he announced that Evernote is partnering with Italian stationery company Moleskine to develop a limited-edition notebook--the paper kind, not the computer kind--called the Evernote Smart Notebook.

The notebook's paper is specially designed so that when you take a snapshot of your handwritten notes and sketches with the Evernote iOS app, they are turned in digital files.

The Smart Notebook will be available in both ruled and squared page styles optimized to work with Evernote's new Page Camera feature. "The Page Camera automatically corrects perspective and improves the contrast between the ink or graphite" to create a viewable, searchable, shareable notes, according to the company.

The Moleskine notebooks will come with a set of multi-colored, predefined, and customizable Smart Stickers. Users can apply the stickers to pages in the notebook, and when they take a photo of those pages, the app will recognize and associate it with tag, or place it in an Evernote notebook specified in settings.

The Evernote Smart Notebook will be available in large and pocket sizes for $29.95 and $24.95, respectively, on Oct. 1.

The company also announced that upgrades are available for the iPhone and iPad Evernote apps, including the new Page Camera functionality. Another upgrade: Evernote Clearly, the browser extension that simplifies Web pages for easier reading in Evernote, now has a "related notes" feature that displays links related to that Web page.

In another announcement, the company said it will launch Evernote Business to help small- and medium-sized businesses create, collaborate and exchange ideas across their organizations. The service will enable SMBs to easily save, sync, and find Evernote information across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices, the company said.

"As we grew from a small startup into a global, 200-employee business, we realized we needed to develop a product that allowed us to more easily share information with groups, improve the on-boarding process, and ensure that business data ownership was clearly defined,'' said Libin in a statement.

Features of the service will include the ability to create a directory of notebooks that can be shared; a centralized console for administrators to review and manage user access and permissions; and full ownership over data in users' personal notebooks.

The service will be available in December for $10 per user per month.