40. (with egg)

Does you're company have one of these?

It's a super fancy digital whiteboard/printer! I've worked for 2 companies with these things. It was supposed to be a killer app, so to speak, since many of us have had the same thought: wouldn't it be great if we could get a print-out or digital copy of our whiteboard diagrams? Imagine that! So some company invented this contraption with a printer built right in, which could also scan the drawings and save them as digital images. And guess what?

Nobody used it. Not even as a regular whiteboard. Why? Several reasons:

• It was never plugged in.
• Nobody knew how to use it.
• It was small: about 1/4 the size of a "real" whiteboard around which several people could gather around.
• Dry-erase markers acted more like semi-permanent markers, smearing and marring the writing service.
• There was something scary about it. I can't explain it.
• Did I mention that it was never plugged in and nobody knew how to use it?

Note that while I am bashing the digital whiteboard, I'm not bashing the plotter, which does rock, though occasionally print The World's Largest Email when you forget to change your target printer.

Don't Erase That!

At Pivotal Labs we make high-tech digital copies of our whiteboard drawing and notes all the time: we use a digital camera. Before erasing a whiteboard that I want to use, I fetch my Canon PowerShot SD450 Digital Elph, a teeny-tiny 5-megapixel camera, which I have in my backpack at all times (please don't jump me if you see me on the street.) Then, after taking the pic, I run over to the HP all-in-one color printer we have, pop the Elph's SD card into the memory card slot, and print the pic right then and there. When it's done, I tape the print next to the whiteboard and write the date on it. There. Documented. High tech, yet simple. This also works great for marathon UI mockup sessions and you want to reuse the whiteboard: snap a pic, print it right away, and tape it up. And digital copies? 5MP worth!