To Reuse This Notebook, Just Pop It Into Your Microwave

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Most of the time, crowd funded projects get lost amidst the masses of cat themed clothing lines and apps that promise to make life better. But sometimes crowd funded projects take off. There isn't really a formula that promises a positive response from audiences, or assures the entrepreneur that their product will be fully funded. This is only proven by some of the top funded Kickstarter campaigns to date, which include your average smart watches and other such gadgets that saturate the website, as well as a chilly bin with a built in ice crusher that raised over a cool $13,000,000. On top of this you’ll find a card game called Exploding Kittens that is literally just a cat related Russian Roulette, which raised just short of $9 million. And of course the Veronica Mars movie raised just under $6 million because both Kristen Bell and girl detectives are important things to support financially. Basically anything goes with crowd funding, and whilst the microwaveable notepad, Rocketbook might seem like a pipe dream, it raised $240,000 through crowd funding, which is 1100% of its goal, and so it is becoming a reality.

Rocketbook looks like your average notebook, and functions like your average notebook in that you can write in your own handwriting, doodle, and draw pictures with your own hand, except instead of having to buy a new book once you reach the last page, you can send all of the book’s contents to the cloud, and then microwave the journal for 30 seconds on high, to start afresh with blank pages. Creator Joe Lemay mourned for the days where, in order to materialise our thoughts, we would reach for a pen and paper and jot them down. Nowadays we reach for the nearest laptop to take notes, or open the notes app on our smartphone to remind ourselves of our daily musings. Notepads have become relatively obsolete since carrying the extra bulk is seen as impractical, and we cannot simply CTRL + Z any errors. Still, Word documents and other digital note taking platforms have their limitations. The digital equivalents to the good ol' notepad don't allow the writer to stray from the lines, so mind mapping, diagrams and annotations become inorganic. And it is this need that Rocketbook aims to satisfy.

Users write as they would on your average page, only with a specialised stylus called FriXion that looks and feels like a pen, but uses ink that turns invisible with the application of heat. After filling the space, they touch one of seven icons at the bottom of the page, which sends the document to one of seven locations in the user’s personal cloud. Then, they can throw the whole book in the microwave for 30 seconds, and retrieve a completely blank book. We say worth it just to see witness’ expressions when you cook your book.

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