Sharpie reinvents the pen with liquid pencil | Hacker News Reader

Sharpie reinvents the pen with liquid pencil

wired.com

175 pointsmcantelon78 comments

I don't have any need for this in particular, but for some reason this is the most exciting thing I've read all day.

What's the difference between these and Pilot's FriXion pens and highlighters? They have been out for 1-2 years and I've been using them for over a year now. They are truly erasable by friction with the included rubber tip (not like previous "erasable" pens that leave the inks permanently if it's not erased immediately). You can get them at major stationary stores in US like Office* and Staples. But it's a shame since they are not promoted like they do in Japan (not to mention Japan sells the latest ones in different styles and colors and writes a little better than the older ones in US).

Turns out that the FriXion ink is still there after being erased, but it's on the other side of some kind of (reversible!) phase transition. Any kind of heat makes it go away, and cold makes it reappear, as this video shows:

http://www.jetpens.com/jetpics/?p=172?

Very cool ink.

Hmm, interesting! The way I guessed these FriXion pens work is the ink is actually liquid plastic and by friction, the plastic inks gets rubbed away when "erased". I guess that explains my curiosity of why there isn't any "ink residues" after the ink is erased away.

Still, I'll much prefer these friXion pens over the new Sharpies since under normal usage, writings usually don't get exposed to tremendous heat. So to me and perhaps normal users, these friXion pens are more like erasable pens since they are not subject to the 3 day rule the new Sharpies impose.

The only question remains is if these new Sharpies' "liquid graphite" writes like a real pencil, in which case, it would have a totally difference use and market (art, drafting, etc.). Since it says it's available already, I'll probably grab some and find out for myself. I'm cited!

I discovered the re-appearing part when I left my notebook in a place where it froze. All my corrections came back. It was a little disconcerting to see erased ideas pop up like ghosts behind the new ideas.

I was wondering about this as well. In my (Japanese) office, all of us use erasable pens. They come in a variety of colors, erase cleanly and easily and as far as I can tell do exactly what this new sharpie pencil does.

Or am I missing something amazingly obvious?

For the record, the papermate erasermate worked with any eraser, not just the one on the end of the pen itself as the article describes. It would get harder to erase after a while, but not this dramatic, so kudos to sharpie, this is an improvement!

But the ink would also rub off onto the facing sheet of paper, I have a whole high school worth of unreadable notes from this (not that anyone wants to read my high school notes after 20years!)

and hands, especially if you're left handed

I had a lot of illegible writing in high school exactly for this reason. Teachers demanded writing "in pen" for the sake of contrast/readability and I gave it to them, but I wasn't about to deal with the hassle of a non-erasable method. But being a left handed writer, the side of my hand inevitably ended up blackened as I rested it on old text and smudged it in the process. So my works in erasable pen ended up less readable than the ones in pencil.

I found myself having to place a piece of paper under my left hand to prevent incessant smudging. This, coupled with a desk designed for right handed students made for less than enjoyable marathon note taking sessions.

As a sinister southpaw myself, I've never understood why fellow left-handers grip the pen in an unusual curled-round fashion such that their hand rests on what's just written.

I hold it like a right-handed person would. http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/hand-holding-pen.jpg But mirror-imaged. Is it because these left-handers are set on the wrong path by right-handed teachers who don't know better?

So does anybody still use pen and paper outside of school? It seem to me that the entire school supply industry is propped up by old school methods of education.

uh, I draft plenty of complex code on paper. The code I wrote today was drafted on 5 sheets of a legal pad yesterday.

I've tried to just draft stuff in a text editor but it doesn't work the same.

I do. But I never use anything but a pen, anyways, so I don't see why I'd need this.

Obviously not a real (ie mechanical) engineer. One of the most annoying things is when you are forced to write with a pen (legal reasons) instead of the beloved pencil.

I use Moleskin notebooks (go through about 1 a month) full of ideas, drawings, notes, just about anything. I also keep a stack of 4x6 notecards to hash out ideas on paper (1 step below talking them out loud to people).

Try it, it's incredibly effective.

Not to nitpick or anything, but this has turned into a pet peeve of mine recently: it's "Moleskine". Not that I'm a crazed die-hard fan of the notebooks or anything, but they appear to be pretty nice. Maybe I'll try using one soon.

Moleskine user/lover here too. I carry a pocket-sized Moleskine, pen and iPhone almost everywhere I go. It's faster and more enjoyable to write notes in the notebook than in my iPhone (the latter increasingly freezes with iOS 4.0 and even without that has lots of annoying UX quirks), and I can easily go back and forth between text and doodles/diagrams, unlike the iPhone (built-in apps anyway, admittedly.) If you just want the cheapest paper possible, Moleskine is a bad choice. But if you want the best experience as a writer/reader/geek, Moleskine is a no brainer.

I have switched from Moleskine to Piccadilly brand (I think this is the house brand of Borders Books). Half the price, almost the same quality.

The problem with Moleskines is that they got too popular, so they keep switching around the source for their paper; while earlier (circa 2005) Moleskines had paper that fountain pens wouldn't bleed through, later ones of the exact same type do have paper that fountain pens will bleed through.

interesting to know, thanks. I just got into Moleskine a year ago or so. i haven't experienced any bleedthrough with the Pentel ballpoint point I pimped in another comment in this discussion. I think B&N has a store brand they promote too but I haven't tried it yet.

I love fountain pens. I have bunch of Parker 'Vectors' in a diversity of line widths and ink colors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Vector

The only disadvantage is that the ink stays water-soluble after it dries.

Another fountain pen lover here. I got a Mont Blanc for a 21st birthday present with a gold nib. However I've ran out of ink and haven't gotten round to getting some more.

" It's faster and more enjoyable to write notes in the notebook than in my iPhone"

I'm increasingly writing things down on paper then snapping a pic with my G1.

It's just a handy way to capture stuff that is less likely to get lost.

It's weird. I never found notebooks all that useful until a relative bought me a Moleskine as a gift. I can't put the stupid thing down now, there's definitely some kind of "there" there...a kind of delicious physical quality that makes me want to write stuff in it.

I agree. A couple of years ago, I saw someone here on HN praising Moleskine notebooks. I looked it up, and was perplexed at the high price... for a notebook? But somehow that thought stuck in my head, and a few months later I bought one.

It's great. Nicest thing to write in I've ever owned. I just wish I could explain more precisely why.

It's all the little touches. Apple Mac is to Windows PC's a bit like Moleskine is to regular blah notebooks. The former is for those seeking a quality experience. The latter the cheapest experience.

I did something similar. I gave Moleskines as gifts to two people I know. One said it was the best notebook he's ever had. I'm trying to infect people. I want these things to stay in production this time.

Moleskins are the sketchpad of many a great idea. Even in a note taking situation (college) they work fairly well. Pair them with a Pentel Kerry .05mm HB mechanical thing of beauty and you have a lot going on.

edit for typos

Moleskine + Pentel for the win. same here.

Absolutely. I don't write much text with pen and paper, but diagrams, mathematics, music notation... all still much easier for me to do with a pen.

I often sketch out code, short stories, or (to me) fleetingly puzzling mathematics with a notepad and pen. Try it. It's the most versatile note-taking system ever devised.

Also, it has the plus-side of being 'interesting'. People are attracted to scribbles they understand them - but crack open your laptop in a pub or cafe and people will assume that you're a rabidly, uninterruptibly busy, professional. And hell, maybe you are, but whose day isn't brightened by someone asking them what they're so engrossed in?

Depoends on what's on the laptop screen. Usually it's someone's 3Q projection analysis spreadsheet or an academic paper about third-wave-feminist semiotics in Madonna music videos (I live near Harvard). If it's Emacs (and it sometimes is; I also live near MIT), I'd be more inclined to say "Hey, whatcha workin' on?"

Writing math is definitely the killer app for me. For some reason I just can't write math on the computer without scribbling it out on paper first. Everything else works, more or less. Maybe it's because I've done so much math on paper already.

I wrote the first draft of my (unpublished) novel [1] long hand - I don't think there's necessarily a greater 'connection' with my words when I'm writing rather than typing, but I did find it much easier to do (lying on a couch with a laptop isn't as easy) and great for scattering notes (which remain the same size on paper, unlike cascading windows on my screen).

Though I no longer use a pen at work ... I use coloured textas! [2]

[1] http://www.scribd.com/The-Cookie-From-the-Cookie-Jar-2008/d/... [2] http://www.shirlawsonline.com/blogs/136-the-big-picture-show...

I had the impression that a large part of Sharpie's market (for their "Sharpie" permanent markers, at least) is marking physical things (writing your name on your coffee cup, for example). I don't see that market going away for a while, at least until absolutely everything is RFID tagged.

I always do my first draft of any nontrivial large system by writing the code out longhand, after having heard it recommended by multiple people I respect. My perception is that the resulting code is cleaner and better documented, and that my error rate has dropped to almost 0.

Writing your code this way encourages a "write as you would speak" tone in the resulting code, better decomposition, and better documentation. It also means that each line gets reviewed from a fresh start at least twice before making it to the computer.

The biggest problem comes when you're working with a large API you don't know well; you're frequently forced to experiment with it in a manner that this sort of batching doesn't really handle well.

Me. We have a ticket tracking system for customer calls, but I find it's much easier to write out the notes I'm going to enter. Plus, I can do diagrams and charts for the descriptions the customer is giving me.

I get through at least an index card a day doing pomodoros.

The only way I can outline a good presentation is with a sharpie and sticky notes. One concept per note, you can rearrange them easily, have an idea of what the presentation will flow like, and then turn each concept to a slide.

I'll probably stop doing that once someone writes software that can replicate this workflow and integrates with presentation software.

Yes, daily. I can't remember the last time I used a pencil, though, 10 years at least.

I take all of my meeting notes on paper, lists of revisions, to-do lists, etc. I go through about one Mead 5-subject notebook a month. I find it far easier than trying to keep track of it all digitally.

I keep a pad of graph paper next to my desk with a nice pen. I find it useful to sketch out ideas, data structures, etc. on graph paper since the grid lines help keep things lined up.

Am I the only one who wants a pen which writes like a pencil, not vice-versa, maybe I'm crazy...

edit for typo.

As in, varied shades? Try a Bic, you can actually sketch pretty well with them. I don't know what they do differently, but they're the only pens I've found with this quality.

If you mean erasability (sp?), that's pretty un-pen-like in its very nature, though they exist.

If you mean something else, you've got me intrigued: can haz illumination, plz?

I don't do any drawing actually, I just don't think there is anything as fluid for taking notes, diagrams, mindmaps, etc.

Probably not. I'm also a pencil fan, though I've fiddled with other tools, and have a decent Wacom.

The Wacom could replace most other tools... if there were any decent high-volume + organization sketching applications out there with proper tablet support. It's very nice, and I'd love to have all my notes in my computer, but things don't keep up or they look like crap or they have no tablet support or they provide zero tools for sketchers who use sketching as a form of memory.

> decent high-volume + organization sketching applications

What makes for 'decent' in your terminology?

Obviously the primary organization tool is going to be the timeline, but what other organization tools do you feel a need for? tags? contacts? would it need to be able to pull text out of a sketch?

You mention high-volume; what do most sketching apps you've met do that limits the speed and volume of creation?

I've poked around with a number of the Big apps (from Adobe, Alias, etc), and at least a couple dozen smaller attempts.

The big ones usually keep up with my drawing speed, have nice pressure sensing, mediocre-to-decent pencil emulation (Adobe is particularly good, though struggles to keep up at times), and overall proper support for a tablet. They also come with squat for organization: you're basically just dealing with files in folders. I can do that in any application; I'm looking for something which myself and artists would actually use. The vast majority of people I've seen using applications like these launch the files from Explorer: utter failure of the application to organize the files better, in other words.

The small ones come in all sorts of flavors, but thus far they've all failed on the organization front entirely if they support tablets, and are fairly weak attempts in ones that don't. For instance: I know of one which lets you browse larger thumbnails with more detail and a more dense display than I can manage in my file browsers. I know of none which support both tablets and tags. Heck, I'd settle for a cover-flow-like interface if it loaded quickly, but the only place that exists is in Finder. Surely a specialized application can do better and show more relevant info, given that it can make cached data.

Text in a sketch is, yes, very important, and has the upside of making it searchable: but again, I have yet to see one which lets you search across (a) folder(s), much less any other method of organization.

Thumbnails are uniformly full-'page' thumbnails: not informative at all for brainstorming sketches, as they're usually lighter and have more sparse info.

Usually, it's a large break in one's flow to create a new page to draw on; Alias' Sketchbook Pro did this decently, if I remember correctly. But no others do, unless they're super-restricted sticky-note clones. They're all: file -> new -> dimensions + background color + alpha channel + color system + would you like a goat with that? Surely this can be chosen post-mortem if it really matters (unlikely for sketchers). Default to a transparent sketching layer + a background color layer, so it can be separated if I decide I want to copy my drawings but not the background. There are a couple decent infinite-canvas programs out there, but I have yet to see them in any pro-user apps, just for the low end of amateurs who want something restrictingly simplistic (nice, sometimes, and some of them are excellent, but then we're back to file management).

Tools are often Photoshop clones: tiny, fixed position, and require you to go across the screen to change basic properties. They also take up space. We've got gestures on our trackpads, but extremely few drawing applications make use of any kind of gesture (a few radial menus, but usually they're "dumb" with poor feedback and zero adapting for slightly off / too far / too short aim, especially ignoring pressure with a tablet). Which is particularly strange when you consider all the gesture tools for mice, and then squat with a tablet.

-----

I should write a blog entry / post some of my more-developed thoughts on this. I'm a little bitter :) I'm also an application-testing-extremist, and I'm very likely reaching 10k applications across two OSs (many short-term, yes, but I've been at it for 15 years), so large-scale oversights / annoyances across entire genres which are solved in others bug me.

If you know of any sketching / drawing applications, I'd be more than happy to try them out, I've been away from them for a year or two and have no doubt missed hundreds I've never heard of.

Definitely write up something more specific. Sketching programs (and graphics in general) contain some of the most interesting challenges imho, but there's very little benefit to going up against Adobe / Autodesk. I expected this reply to be longer, but I'd say write up a lead for one of the many hackers here and Reddit to jump off of.

I have a Uniball Vision Elite and it's by far the smoothest writing implement I've used. I can't say it's anything like a pencil, but if it's fluidity you're after, that's your pen.

Pens don't have that same gritty resistance on paper like a pencil. And although most don't do this, you can buy pencils in varying degrees of "hardness" beyond the #2 you've been using since grade school.

I like F and HB grades, they are soft enough to make a much darker line, but don't smear anywhere near as bad as the B-grades. Another advantage of softer grades like F is that you don't have to press as hard to get a dark line, so they are easier to erase. I did 2 years of drafting in high school and worked as an architectural draftsman in the late 1980s. I have used everything from 9H - very, very hard lead for making fine guidelines, to 6B very soft for messy sketching.

You know, I took a mechanical drawing class and I loved it. Wasn't required for my CS curriculum, but just playing with the tools and making these precise drawings was a joy. They eventually switched that class to AutoCAD only. Pity.

My biggest complain when it comes to writing with a pen is the thickness of the lines. I'm a huge fan of 0.5mm lead for that reason.

If that's your qualm, take a look at finer pointed pens- step outside the ball point.

I find the 0.5mm leads break way to easily - personally prefer the 0.7mm variety a whole lot better. Especially when it comes to shading in those little boxes while taking tests and filling OMR forms :-)

Check out some of the 0.25mm and 0.18mm (!) pens available from Japan. Really, really fine-lined pens are something of a fetish there. jetpens.com sells a bunch of Japan-only imported pens and other writing tools.

I love this! I frequently annotate books I am reading, and often have to use eraser for correcting typos etc. With (non-erasable) pens, downside is that I cannot erase. With pencils, downside is that I can erase anytime. Almost never do I have a need to erase something two days after writing. Would be buying shortly.

The real question is whether it actually feels as smooth as a pen. The erasable pens were not pleasing to write with.

The erasers tasted really good, though.

Frixion pens are so much better than the old Erasermates it's not even funny.

apart from this, is'nt a pencil almost unequivocally better. Assuming you have a soft-enough lead and with the right thickness, a pencil is almost always better than a pen.

Is marketing and sex appeal a large part of the charm of a pen ? For example there is no "Mont Blanc" for pencils...

I have a feeling if you spoke to some artists/draftsmen you'd hear about the "Mont Blanc" of pencils.

Also, you might find such a thing here: http://www.penciltalk.org/

But I am not talking about draftsmen - the "Mont Blanc" exists _per se_ not in some specific demographic.

I like penciltalk, because the other site which I have seen - davesmechanicalpencils - has good reviews, but invariably all the pencils look uncool. I am sure it's not the poor bloke's fault - rather that companies dont make pencils with sex appeal.

Montblanc make mechanical pencils. As do most of the luxury brand manufacturers (there are many who make more expensive pens than Montblanc.)

This is potentially better then lead in that it's permanent after a while. I wonder how permanent, but it's certainly true that pencil notes on paper don't come close to archival quality.

There's also the appeal of going back to your lab notebooks after six months and not finding them a smear of graphite. To me, pencils feel the best when writing, but the smudging over time is too annoying.

Although the effort from Sharpie is great and will ultimately purchase a few, I think a lot can be said about a geek by their pencil. My fave at the moment is Pentel Kerry. Amazing mechanical pencil that feels phenomenal in hand, what is everyone else rocking?

Pencil? What's that?

Seriously though, I don't really write any more except very rarely. I've been trying to get rid of anything paper based for the past 5 years and I think that I am slowly getting there.

So what does that say about me as a geek?

Nothing at all. Differences in personal preference are as vast as the options available.

For example: I don't write anything, but I sketch out interfaces and ideas all the time, usually with a pen. Lots of people (my past (and maybe future?) self included) prefer pencils because they can be erased or just feel better in their hand/on paper.

That you like to diagram less maths than I do.

Although unless it's super-complex we usually do it on a whiteboard in the house or on the Boogie Board.

As someone who commented on the original article stated, I'd like to know whether or not the device works on scantrons.

If so, that would be a high school / college godsend.

This is also awesome.

The office depot ad says the pencil is #2 equvalent.. so I'm thinking it does work on scantrons..

Oh baby.

I was struck by the parallel with blue-black ink (chemical reaction for permanence + dye to see what was written in the meantime).

I've been using pen-tech liquiphite pencils for nearly a year now. How are these different?

Do they go permanent after X period of time (in this case, 3 days)? That seems a pretty important feature if it's trying to be a pen, methinks.

(haven't used those, don't know if they do or not)

The best pen I've ever used is the Pentel RSVP BK91 Medium point. I love them so much I buy them in bulk, both to save money and to ensure I have a large supply in case they ever stop producing them. They are that good.

And I don't care that they can't be erased. I can always linethough/overwrite, and I'm not an artist, just a writer/notetaker.

Shame it's more plastic to end up in an dead albatross' stomach in the Pacific Gyre.

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