Send Handwritten Emails

Posted on August 3, 2010 at 5:55 am

The age of the handwritten thank you letter and invitations with flourishing hand-drawn calligraphy has passed. The personal touch of a handwritten message is lost in our electronic world of Times New Roman and Arial default fonts.

Pilot, the pen maker, has developed a fairly easy way for all of us to send handwritten emails with just a printer and Web cam, digital camera or scanner required.

pilot handwriting logo

To use the service, you must register. Click the key in the top left corner and select create an account from the menu that appears.

key

Provide your name, email address and a password in the box that appears. Click the checkmark when finished.

register

Once registered, click Write by Hand in the top left corner of the page.

write by hand

A tutorial video will play showing how to use the service. Click the right arrow to progress to the next step. Print a paper template by clicking the printer icon between the arrows. The template prints and instructions appear showing to center each letter in the appropriate box of the template.

template instructions

When filling the template, it helps to draw each letter indicated in the very center of the box. Use a pen instead of a pencil, and write the letters clearly. Also, do not print the template on colored paper.

When you have finished drawing each character, you can scan, photograph or use your Web cam to capture the template. Click the appropriate icon.

capture the handwriting

For our test, we used the Web cam just because the method was different than anything we have seen previously. This method includes holding the template in front of the camera and lining the template with red lines on the screen until the program captures all of the letters on the template. The letters appear backwards. It took us several tries to line the template correctly.

webcam2

Once captured, the letters appear on a screen where they can be modified. Click any letter to change the way it appears.

letters

If happy with your font, click the disk icon at the bottom of the window to save it. Give the font a name and click the check mark.

save

You are then ready to type your message in your own handwriting.

font test

Finally, click the email icon and enter the name of the recipient who should read your handwriting.

address

The recipient is then sent an email with a link to your handwritten message.

The idea behind Pilot’s service is a great one, especially for users without tablets who want to write letters in their own handwriting. It would be a better service if the font could be downloaded and installed on our computers.

The Web site uses a gray font on a gray background, which makes it hard to read in places. The template capture process was innovative, but was hard to align just right. Overall, this is a fun tool, but it does have a few bugs.

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One Response to “Send Handwritten Emails”

  1. liam said on :

    Wow, great, incredible!! thanks!


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