Why it matters to you
Want your kids to color on an actual page instead of an iPad? Get the best of both worlds with The Color Notebook.
Nostalgia, meet technology. The matchmaker? This clever new notebook. Meet The Color Notebook, a new Kickstarter project that will allow your kids to be kids, free from the fetters of technology (at least, for now). But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of technology to share your kids’ creations with friends and family the world over. You see, The Color Notebook is an actual, physical coloring book that comes with eight blank pages for free-form art, two dot-grid pages for structured drawings, and two lined pages for handwriting. But the kicker is that this notebook is actually infinitely reusable and comes with a mobile app that lets you save all your children’s artwork into the cloud or send it via email or text.
The writing surface of this notebook promises to be amenable to markers, crayons, and colored pencils alike, but can be wiped totally clean in just seconds. You can also use dry-erase and washable Crayola markers to the same end — a totally spotless notebook when all’s said and done.
To save your kid’s work, simply pull out your smartphone and open the Rocketbook app. Using its patent-pending image-capture technology, the app accurately and quickly photographs the artwork (or note or anything else) and sends it to your contacts or to Dropbox, Google Drive, or another cloud storage service.
At the bottom of each page of the notebook are magic “buttons” that control the Rocketbook app’s cloud access. Just assign each button to a specific destination, be it a phone number, an email address, or cloud drive. Then, when your child marks a button on a page and scans the page’s contents, that processed image is automatically sent to the right person or place.
In essence, it’s all the versatility and functionality of an iPad, with all the durability and kid-friendliness of a good ol’ notepad.
It appears that parents are already quite eager to share the magic of this connected notebook with their children, as the project has already raised nearly $40,000 from over 680 backers. You can pre-order The Color Notebook from Kickstarter now for $20, with an estimated delivery date of November 2017.