The Second Coming of Ukigawa's

In this digital age, we exchange our intimate feelings, emotion and ground breaking news all in same 'fonts.' And because we feel it is too inorganic and emotionless, we decorate them with emoticon, etc. :-(

Back in your school days, I bet you had the experience of more expressively drawing each letters. With pens, you could make some characters bigger, bolder, thinner, taller, shorter, rounder all at your will. Of course, you can emulate that by changing the fonts and sizes of your digital text, but still digital text won't show the 'you-ness.' -- i.e. they are not the characters that are unique to you.

In some way, analog text has more power of expression than digital.

Let's say you have typed "do it by tomorrow!" in 48 pt Helvetica Bold and printed it; I think that sheet of paper is less demanding than your hand-drawn text.

Of course, it is also true that today, we cannot form our lives without the convenience of digital text.

So why not combine both?

That is exactly what '7notes', the latest iPhone/iPad app by MetaMoji is trying to do; best of both world.

On '7notes' you can write text and convert them in to digital text using MetaMoji's accurate character recognition technology.
But this is only half of what '7notes' does.

On '7notes', you can also write the text in ink, choose portion of the handwritten text and insert space between letters, make some letters bigger or change colors of them, etc. just like digital text.
What's even more interesting is you can mix and match the analog and digital text, and send that mixed text message via e-mail; you can also tweet them or post them on your Facebook wall.

I think '7notes' would be an important step toward the renaissance of humanity and would be a one interesting app to keep an eye on.

Unfortunately, MetaMoji is not communicating this vision or bigger objectives behind the product because they are not sure if that helps the sales of the product or because the product hasn't yet satisfied the strict level of perfection Mr. Ukigawa demands. But I believe these are the real value of '7notes' and I want them to succeed.


now a little plug:
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MetaMoji Press briefing: 3pm, Sept. 8 at FCCJ, Yurakucho, Tokyo
If you are based in Tokyo or if you have a correspondent in Tokyo, please come to Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan at 3pm on September 8, 2011 (that is this coming Thursday). Mr. & Mrs. Ukigawa, the legendary IT entrepreneur in Japan and the founders of MetaMoji will be holding a press conference to talk about '7notes' and its future direction.
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I call '7notes', the Second Coming of Ukigawa's.
You might ask what's the First coming. I will explain you below:


投稿者名 Nobuyuki Hayashi 林信行 投稿日時 2011年09月06日 | Permalink