Guest Post - Chris P - Things I want Filofax to Produce (3)

Thank you to Chris for the third of his series of posts on what he would like Filofax to produce.  You can see products 1 and 2 here.

This is a crude mock-up of third thing I want Filofax to do for me. It is a virtual Filofax on my iPad.
Sharp-eyed readers will have already clocked the fact that what I have done is lay my ancient but still operational Pocket Filo on my iPad. Wouldn't it be cool to replace the oh-so-technical iPad calendar and contacts apps with exact reproductions of my Filofax pages?

It would not be particularly difficult to do, although it might take a while to get all the various diary formats into digital form. But, once achieved, every Filofax owner could exist in both the paper and digital domains. The paper Filofax would provide the style and ease of use that we like, and the digital Filofax would enable sharing of your calendar with colleagues and family as well as backing up your life on-line.

Filofax already do software to store your contacts and print them out on Filofax sheets, but this would take the unification of paper and computer one step further.

It might even be possible to upload diary entries made using a Livescribe digital pen, run them through character recognition software and automatically keep your virtual Filofax bang up to date with no extra work, but that might be less easy to do reliably. Especially with my scrawl (which is why I photographed my Filofax with empty pages).

Having my Filofax pages on the web would only be the start, however. The new Little Printer from London-based design agency Berg (bergcloud.com) could print it out for me automatically.

The Little Printer uses the same rolls of thermal paper they use in checkouts at the supermarket to print out your receipt. It is connected to the internet directly (no computer required) and you set it up using your mobile phone.

The Little Printer seeks out publications created especially for it, and prints them out for you to a schedule you set yourself.

So, for example, I could set it to print out the day's diary, to-do list, weather forecast, top news headlines and anything else I might need on the bus to work, and all I would have to do is tear it off the printer and clip it to today's diary page as I sprint out through the door. Brilliant.