Never again feel the twinge of guilt as you throw out your child’s art. This technology is the ultimate Parent-Organizer’s dream.
I suspect that most parents have had to struggle to entertain their children, at some point. Whether you are at a doctors office, traveling with the family, at church or any place a child is bored, your creativity was likely tested. To attempt to circumvent this problem, my wife has created an entertainment backpack for our daughter. She will sometimes tote our iPad Air 2 with Movies Anywhere or ABC Mouse, a Moana doll, a coloring book, plain paper/crayons, etc. Invariably, the page she wants to color will already by colored or we will use all of the paper, and her inner artist wants to doodle. The Rocketbook Color may be that perfect device for our to go bag, the one we did not even know that we needed.
The Rocketbook Color is a spiral bound notebook, which measures 9 1/2 inches tall by 8 inches wide (8 1/4 inches with the spiral). The cover of the book displays four colorful rockets with Tron-style red, orange, green and blue light streams. Interestingly, the creators used the negative space within the color columns to create the white “ROCKETBOOK COLOR” logo. The cover and each of the pages are covered with a waterproof reflective, glossy layer. The reflective nature of the coating proved quite difficult to photograph, but as I will detail below, scanned easily. Opening the book, the inside cover had three main sections. Displayed along the top of the page, you will find the “ROCKETBOOK COLOR” logo but this time in rainbow color. Along the middle of the page, you will find a horizontal property line to write your name. Lastly, the bottom of the page details the instructions of the book. You can use Crayola Dry Erase and Crayola Washable markers on the pages and wipe them away with either a dry or slightly damp cloth. The last line of instructions reminds you that this is not the microwavable version of the Rocketbook, by displaying “DO NOT MICROWAVE THIS ROCKETBOOK.”
Within the Rocketbook, you can enjoy a total of 12 pages, not including the covers. Each of the pages has a QR code along the bottom (left or right) and a series of seven Lucky-Charms-like icons: a rocket, diamond, apple, bell, clover, star, and horseshoe. Even though the pages are the same shape, the first eight pages are blank, two pages are covered with a grid of dots (graph paper), and the last two pages are lined for writing letters. Using dry erase markers, you can draw/write/create anything that you wish on the pages. The ability to have an endless supply of pages is a very useful feature, but the power of this book extends so much further than just reusable paper. Each page is embedded with smart features, further enhanced by the Rocketbook App. The QR code along the bottom helps the app to sort pages for storage, the icons help the app to send the scan to the respective destination, and each page has a black border, which allows the application to find the page on any background.
To use the intelligent features of the product, download the application from the iOS App store (4.4* rating) or Google Play Store. You will need to sign into the app with your name, email and a password. Once you are logged into the app, you will notice each of the corresponding icons and a default source of the email that you typed into the sign-on screen. Along the bottom of the screen, you can choose among three options, history, new scan or destinations. The main icon screen represents the destinations screen. If you touch any of the icons, it will navigate you to a second panel. From that location, you can change the destination, file type, bundle scans, auto send and allow animated gifs. Currently, the app supports Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, OneNote, OneDrive, Slack, box, iCloud, Email, iMessage. If you tap the Dropbox icon, it will navigate to the Dropbox app. You will need to sign into the account and give the app permission to access files and folders within Dropbox, and then allow access to contacts, camera, and Siri/search. The setup for each of the destinations will follow roughly the same steps. You can leave all of them as email, set all of them to any given destination or create seven unique locations inside of a destination like DropBox.
Once you have the destinations set, you can click scan, and the app will scan the page. Place an “X” in the desired icon destination box or place an x into multiple icons to send the source to multiple locations. I found this helpful to send a message to multiple grandparents at one time. The phone screen will flash green, scan the image and then the book image will shift. The app does an amazing job of cropping out the borders and only highlights your page. You do not get a photo of the page! Rather, the app creates a really nice white blank canvas with your image. To test this, I created a funny “I heart my Wifi” slogan. It was originally “I heart my wife,” but she jokingly changed it. I scanned multiple copies and sent them to Dropbox, my email, and to her iMessage. The images arrived at each destination and were incredibly clear. The app lets you choose to save scans as PDF or JPEG. I loved that I could send my PDF files to my Evernote account, which would work nicely for business (Rocketbook Everlast/Wave).
The book conveniently solved the problem of hundreds of children’s pictures as well. As a father of three children, refrigerator real estate was at a premium. With the Rocketbook Color App/Notebook, every image can be stored, sorted and kept nearly indefinitely, without feeling like you have to be a hoarder. My children get upset when any of their material is thrown out. Unfortunately, this means that we have to throw it away when nobody is looking. I am aware that this sounds horrible, but I do not expect my children to grow up to be Van Gogh. However, when every piece of paper fetches huge sums of money, I may change my tune. I am thankful that I found this device, as it will allow us to at least have a digital copy of all of their, amazing to me, drawings. We still proudly display their work, but now we can print the best, save the rest and rotate at will. The Crayola markers worked well; they also proved easy to clean with a dry cloth and minimal moisture. The pages were reusable, the book was lightweight, and the app store the images where I wanted them. I do not think I could have asked more from Rocketbook. I rate the Rocketbook Color 5/5 stars.
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