I came across this headline while browsing the net the other day

New Bond gadget? A tiny pen paper shredder with “invisible letters writing”

Being a bit of a gadget freak on the quiet I was quite intrigued and clicked on the link looking forward to seeing what this new pen was all about.

Unfortunately the headline was far better than the blog post which opens with “New from some Chinese company: a manual paper shredder inside a pen.”

1:White led flash light on top
2:Writing ballpen
3:Write out invisible letters.
4:Light the letters with LED light on top and read your secrets.
5:Paper lacerating function.

As for the pen itself it is quite quirky and I think that it will appeal to young boys. They will have great fun pretending to be a secret agent like James Bond.

With this pen they would be able to send secret messages to each other that their teachers cannot read. Then destroy the evidence with the shredder.

I can’t quite see M pulling this pen out of his pocket and giving it to James Bond it’s no way cool or exciting enough.

Although I could see Rowan Atkinson character Johnny English in the spoof spy thriller of the same name brandishing it to impress somebody.

At Tiger Pens were all busy working away when the postman arrived with today’s post at about 9:30am. There is nothing unusual in that as he is a reliable chap who you could nearly set your watch to.

However today he brought us an unexpected parcel containing a Duracell Ultra Globetrotter Bunny. At first this was a bit of a mystery as to why we had received it as nobody knew anything about it.

Further investigation revealed that Duracell had sent it to us as part of a promotion due to the number of batteries we had purchased from them. We were not aware of the promotion when we ordered the batteries so it was a nice surprise to receive the Duracell Bunny.

The bunny is quite cute so we thought we upload a video of him in action.

As this is a promotion I assume that the Duracell Bunny’s are not for sale but if you would like one I have had a quick search for Duracell Globetrotter Bunny on EBay UK which reveals five for sale.

You might remember we mentioned the Pentel movie ticket giveaway earlier this year. Well, it has started and anyone who buys Pentel pens and other products in the UK and Ireland has a chance to win free tickets.

The contest is a little convoluted, but did we mention the free part? OK, here’s what you have to do:

Buy a Pentel product and find the sticker off the package. Scratch it, and underneath, you’ll see a code. Go to the Pentel giveaway site and enter that code (you’ll have to register the first time). Then, you get to play an online scratch-off game. The prize for winners is a pair of tickets that can be used at theater chains like Empire and Odeon.

According to Pentel, they’re good for any movie, any day, any time.

The contest is running for the rest of 2010….for you pen addicts, that’s lots of pens, pencils and markers, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to win.

And, if nothing goes your way in that contest, Pentel is running another one. Called the “Pentel Shootout Challenge,” it’s a little online soccer game. The top scorer gets an alarm clock that looks like a clapper board (you know, one of those things movie-makers hold up in front of the camera and snap when they say, “Action!”). But the real prize may be for the 10 runners-up: a Pentel goodie bag.

So there you go, two chances to get FREE stuff. And free is always good.

Speaking of free stuff, readers, make sure you stay tuned to Tiger Pens because we’re going to announce our own giveaway sometime in the next few days. We’ve got a great prize for one of you.

But more on that later.

Welcome to the 11th Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper, created by Nifty at Notebook Stories. Below you’ll find a collection of submissions on all kinds of great writing-related topics, from fountain pens to quality notebooks.

As always, this month’s posts are brilliant, containing bits of information, thought-provoking analysis and fun for all of us who are dedicated to our writing instruments. Be sure to visit all of the excellent pen and paper blogs and let the penthusiasts know how much you appreciate their work.

Now, let’s get to it.

Editor’s Choice

Tom at Goldspot Pens makes the argument that handwriting is not dead by pointing out that it is…and is leading us to a dystopian future of nebulously managed information. Absolutely spot on.

Dave at Seize the Dave gives us a detailed review of the new J. Herbin 1670 anniversary red ink, Rouge Hematite. In addition to some outstanding handwriting in his review, he tells us that the ink is the colour of blood, and is, in fact, so named.

Pens

Heather at A Penchant for Paper explains why she’s just not that impressed with the Zebra Sarasa 0.4mm Olive.

Dowdyism at The Pen Addict gives us his detailed and thoughtful review of the new Uniball Uni-Ball Fanthom Erasable Gel 0.5mm. Check it out before you decide to replace your FriXion.

Julie at Peaceable Writer shares her secret: the reliable workhorse Autopoint Big Cat fountain pen that she uses when she doesn’t want to attract attention to her writing instrument.

Inks

The ever-aesthetic Margana at Inkophile reveals that turquoise is the colour of the year, with a list of great inks to celebrate, including her favourite, Iroshizuku Ku-Jaku.

Note Booker, Esq. gives us a look at the samplers of fountain pen inks he received from Pear Tree Pens, from Diamine Umber to Rohrer & Klingner Leipziger Schwarz.

Cheryl at Writer’s Bloc presents the results of an interesting little experiment she conducted mixing J. Herbin Gris Nuage with various other colours to create her own subtle shadings.

Pencils

Lito at the Palimpsest introduces us to Rubinato  CRYSTALLIZED™ – Swarovski Elements pencils. You should see these pencils, they’re gorgeous.

Notebooks

Julie at Whatever shows her ingenuity by hacking the Levenger Circa System Junior Size notebook into her own specially organised planner for tracking inks and letter-writing.

Diane at Pocket Blonde visited the National Stationery Show and presents us with news and photos of Ecosystem’s new notebooks. “The only negative is that they won’t be for sale until the Fall.”

Alberto at Lung Sketching Scrolls provides an amazingly detailed review of the art-worthy Maruman S163 Croquis Pocket Sketchbook.

Cynthia at Journaling Arts takes us inside Daycraft’s Vogue 2010 planners, including both the daily and weekly versions.

Nifty, the notebook expert at Notebook Stories, gives a detailed review of an Ecosystem Architect notebook. Her take: Meh, not bad. But not a Moleskine, either.

So that’s it for this edition of the pen carnival. Don’t forget to send in your submissions to next month’s Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper.

Special thanks to Nifty for allowing us to host this month. We’ve certainly enjoyed it!

The 11th Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper is coming up in a week, and we’ve already got some great submissions. But if we don’t have yours, make sure you get it in by 5 p.m. EST on Sunday. There are lots of great pen and paper blogs out there, so we want to make sure to hear from as many as possible to make for a brilliant carnival.

• So, the U.S. Postal Service is considering eliminating Saturday mail delivery – and chose to make the announcement via email rather than good ol’ hand-delivered mail.

According to the Washington Post, the postmaster general is required to submit his plans in electronic format to the Postal Regulatory Commission, which will make a recommendation as to whether Saturday service should end.

Submitting via e-mail “does not go against the grain,” insisted a PRC spokesman.

Submitting the plans online provides for transparency and accountability and sending hard copies would require the extra work of scanning documents and posting them online, he said.

So the explanation appears to prove a point: Paper mail is increasingly obsolete and inconvenient.

Kind of hard to encourage people to send more letters when even the postal service prefers push-button delivery.

• At least one senior person in the U.S. government still believes in handwritten letters. The Post reports that President Barack Obama makes it a point to read 10 letters a day from the public.

The president receives 20,000 letters and emails every day. His staff weeds through them to find the ones that give him an idea what life is like outside “the presidential bubble,” according to the paper. And:

He prefers handwritten letters to e-mails, believing them to be more thoughtful, with better stories.

Obama responds by hand to five to 15 of the letters each week, writing notes with a black fountain pen on thick white card stock bearing the presidential seal.

• Ramin Setoodeh makes the case in Newsweek that Hollywood is still nursing a strong affection for written correspondence, especially love letters.

In Dear John, a soldier overseas has a gushing, epistolary romance with his girlfriend back home. Letters to God is about an 8-year-old boy with cancer who sends dispatches to You Know Who and the mail carrier who befriends him. That’s not to be confused with the upcoming Letters to Juliet, about an aspiring journalist (another dying breed!) who discovers a lost “Dear Abby”–like note on a trip to Italy and responds with her own advice on love.

Some of this paper fetish has to do with screenwriters showing their age, but most of it has to do with nostalgia. You can’t pack the same narrative punch with e-mails, because we don’t associate technology with voice (unless that digitized voice-recognition-speak does something for you).

And here you thought most Hollywood types were barely literate.

• Bad handwriting is the source of a lot of humour, but not so much for Bob Shryock, a columnist at the Gloucester County Times. He has Parkinson’s, which has made his never-that-great handwriting become all but unreadable.

As awful as my handwriting has always been, it worsened in the early part of the century when left-side tremors became my first pronounced Parkinson’s symptom.

On the operating room table for DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation surgery) seven years ago, surgeons had me write my name on a tablet. The result was typically ugly. But four or five hours later, with DBS successfully complete, they had me try again. And, like magic, the writing had dramatically improved. Of course, my improvements are measured in very small doses.

For seven years now, the tremors have stayed away. But while successful DBS eradicates tremors and some other symptoms, it doesn’t derail Parkinson’s progress.

And so my wretched handwriting, a near life-long curse, remains an apparent irreversible stigma.

We feel for him. Become unable to enjoy the simple pleasure of writing a note must be a tremendous loss.

• From Edward Iannuccilli, the author of “Growing Up Italian,” comes a brilliant little essay on why people should still take the time to sit down with pen and paper to write letters.

As the years went by, I stopped writing until one evening when I was watching a great old English movie. There was a scene of someone writing a letter. It was beautiful. The only things in the scene were gleaming white paper, a quill pen, blue-black ink and two hands; fingers steadying the paper in the upper left, and the writing hand caressing the pen as if it were a baby bird. Miss Casey would have given this writer an “A” for the thick, tall, looping letters, smooth strokes. And the beauty of the ink. It brought me back to the days of penmanship, paper, ink and my love of fountain pens. My thought was, “This is what we should be doing rather than e-mail. We should be writing to people on paper with fountain pen and ink. Even broken penmanship can be as smooth as soft summer waves. And the waves can carry the thought.”

Since rediscovering writing, he’s made it a habit to send frequent handwritten notes and letters, crafted with a Parker fountain pen filled with blue-black ink. And clearly enjoys every moment of it.

• As if we needed more reasons to prefer handwritten letters to email, here’s another: A recent study found that participants lied 50% more via email than they did in letters, according to PsyBlog.

In addition:

In some ways a more damning indictment of email from (the) study was that people reported feeling more justified in lying over email than they did when writing with pen and paper.

Across a further two experiments people consistently lied more over email and felt more justified in doing so, even when they were lying to someone they knew and when that person would find out. Participants seemed relatively unconcerned about the damage to their reputation caused by lying over email.

Part of the reason for this seemed to be the impermanence of email and the less personal connections people make online.

…the very last person to enter the Tiger Pens Earth Day Giveaway just hours before the deadline, Lito Apostolakou from the excellent Palimpsest blog.

Congratulations, Lito! You get a new set of recycled pens and markers (and a mechanical pencil) from Pilot’s BeGreen range of recycled writing instruments.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Because of the overwhelming response, we’ve decided to make these giveaways a regular part of the Tiger Pens Blog, so get ready for lots more great contests. We’ll be awarding nifty pens and pencils from some of your favourite makers, including Uniball, Stabilo, Parker and Sharpie.

In case you’re curious about how we selected the Earth Day winner, it went like this: I made a list of all 25 entries on a yellow legal pad using my new free Uniball Jetstream (which I’m going to tell you about next week). Then, I cut the list into little strips of evenly sized paper and put them in a kitchen bowl. A little shaking, a little stirring, and I reached in without looking and pulled out one piece of paper.

It said, “Palimpsest.”

Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t win this time. You’re all invited to put your names in every time we have a Tiger Pens giveaway. There will be another one coming up again soon, so keep an eye on the blog for details.

Thanks again.

We’re all excited today because our little blog – barely six months old – was mentioned in a story about Skilcraft ballpoint pens on the front page of the Washington Post. Of course, it was a very brief bit at the end of the story, but it’s still a big moment for us.

Back in February, we posted a little piece on the US government pens assembled by blind workers. Ylan Mui, a business reporter at the Post, saw it and interviewed us about the pens (and did a great job digging into their history). She wrote an interesting and entertaining article, and it ran in the paper this weekend.

A few highlights:

The unassuming pen stamped with the words “SKILCRAFT U.S. GOVERNMENT” in white letters has endured despite quantum leaps in communications technology that have rendered lesser tools obsolete. Taking over from the fountain pen, it has withstood the advent of the rubberized “comfort grip” and the freely flowing gel ink, not to mention computers, instant messages and smartphones. The U.S. Postal Service alone orders 700,000 a year.

Annual production at the Greensboro, N.C., plant has dropped during the past two decades from 21 million pens to about 4 million, but it remains a bestseller among Skilcraft’s office supplies.

And…

Part of the pen’s cult appeal comes from its writing capabilities. Among other things, the original General Services Administration requirements for items FSC 7520 (the ballpoint pen) and FSC 7510 (the refill) dictated that:

• The ink cartridge shall be capable of producing under 125 grams of pressure a line not less than 5,000 feet long.

• Blobs shall not average more than 15 per 1,000 feet of writing, with a maximum of 25 for any 1,000-foot increment.

• Writing shall not be completely removed after two applications of chemical bleach.

We told her more than she probably wanted to know about the differences between ballpoint pens like these and gel and liquid ink pens, and about how the Skilcrafts were used in the US military, but most of that didn’t make it into the paper. What did, however, was a description of how the Tiger Pens blogger made toys out them as a kid.

(He) said many kids showed up at school with the pens, and they quickly figured out how to reconfigure them into pellet guns, pinging one another with ink cartridges.

“It’s one of those things that you just sort of take for granted because there’s so many of them,” (he) said. “You don’t think about the history that’s behind them.”

We swear we’re all grown up now and hardly ever abuse pens that way anymore.

With Earth Day coming up April 22, this seems like a good time to hand out some eco-friendly pens to one lucky blog reader.

Regular visitors may remember last week we talked about the underrated RexGrip ballpoint. Well, now you have a chance to get a set of 5 RexGrip pens and markers for yourself. RexGrip is part of Pilot’s BeGreen range of pens, pencils and markers made from recycled plastics.

From the Pilot BeGreen website:

BeGreen is a complete range of recycled products covering all writing instrument categories.

• The BeGreen range follows the ISO 14021 international environmental standard, concerning usage of recycled material.
• All BeGreen products contain at least 70% recycled content.
• 100% of the Ballpoint pens are refillable.

With BeGreen, Pilot proves that it can produce writing instruments that are respectful of the environment, whilst providing consumers with the best levels of comfort, quality and a high level of design technology.

OK, OK, so what do you get?

1) Pilot RexGrip retractable ballpoint pen, blue ink, medium tip.

2) Pilot RexGrip retractable ballpoint pen, black ink, medium tip.

3) Pilot Green Tecpoint liquid ink rollerball pen, blue ink, extra fine tip.

4) Pilot RexGrip mechanical pencil, refillable, 0.5mm leads.

5) Pilot Spotlighter Twin Hi-Lighter, chisel and bullet tip.

All you have to do to enter is add your name to the comments below (along with a way to contact you, of course). Then, on April 22, we’ll randomly select one person to receive the set of pens. It’s as easy as that. Deadline for entries will be midnight April 21 (London time).

Open to readers anywhere and everywhere.

• Would you believe that the best way to improve children’s handwriting is to have them do it lying on their stomachs? That’s what Channel 5 in Bismarck, North Dakota claims.

“When we lay on our tummies and do writing we`re getting some weight through our elbows and through our shoulders,” said occupational therapist Wendy Graff. “It`s building some of that stability that helps carry over to when you are writing at a table. If you`re standing at a board you are using different muscles to write and more stability is required at your shoulder and your elbow.”

If it works for watching TV and playing video games, maybe it’s the right position for composing perfect letters. Who knows?

• Susan Hanley at NetworkWorld says she’s a prodigious note-taker, which is why she was so excited to try out the Capturx digital pen. But, after trying it, she gave a thumbs-down to taking notes digitally.

The upside:

I am addicted to the Levenger Circa notebooks so I love the idea that I can print my own digital paper and use my special Levenger hole punch to create pages that integrate seamlessly into my existing notebooks. I can take my regular binder to a meeting and take notes the way I’m used to doing, but with the digital pen.

When I connect the pen to my laptop, I can seamlessly download my notes to OneNote.  I now have two versions of my meeting notes – one that can stay in the physical notebook and that I can bring with me to all meetings and one on my computer that can be searched electronically and easily shared with my client or members of my team.

The downside:

The pen is much too fat!  My hands are small and the pen is about the size of a white board marker.  The first time I used the pen for two one-hour meetings, my hand was sore for 24 hours.  The second time, I stopped after an hour and switched to a regular pen to give my hand a break!

I just wish it were more comfortable as a writing implement because it has the potential to become as important to me as my iPod!  After my 4 month adventure with digital note taking, I find that I have mostly reverted back to my $2.00 Pentel EnerGel pen.

She also wasn’t impressed with the plain ballpoint ink used in the pen, instead of a smoother gel ink. Still, the fact that there is now a digital pen that doesn’t require special (and expensive) paper is definitely a step in the right direction.

• An elderly Connecticut woman has been writing letters every week to military service members overseas since the late ’60s, according to the Danbury News-Times.

She picks people from her hometown, located in the Northeastern U.S., and begins a correspondence with them wherever they are, even if they don’t write her back.

She told the newspaper:

Ventres, an 82-year-old eighth-generation Ridgefielder, spends one week a month, from Monday through Friday, six hours a day, sending news from home, pictures, and words of encouragement to military men and women from her hometown.

“Right now there are 52 on my list, the most I’ve ever had, ” she said.

She uses a pen and stationery she buys on sale. “I won’t switch to the computer. Handwritten letters are more personal,” she said.

Thirty hours a week of letter writing! That’s a lot of commitment to the supposed “lost art.”

• You just might be violating the rules of letter-writing etiquette if you don’t have a collection of assorted stationery to fit each writing occasion, according to etiquette expert Lisa Mirza Grotts at the Huffington Post.

A stationery wardrobe is important for both the seasoned executive, newcomers to the world of business, and social correspondence. Like clothing, a stationery wardrobe should reflect your personality and include foundation pieces appropriate for all occasions.

Among the pieces of your “stationery wardrobe,” she recommends correspondence cards and sheets, fold-over notes and calling cards for social letters and separate correspondence cards and sheets and business cards for professional letters. What exactly would go on something like a calling card? Your Facebook address, of course.

She doesn’t address which pens should be used for which occasions.

• Finding an old letter from her late grandfather prompted columnist Renee Moilanen to share her feelings about the timelessness and emotional weight carried by handwritten letters from the past.

The ink on my grandfather’s letter is fading, and the edges have yellowed. But I know I’ll save the letter forever, until the paper crumbles to dust, because it reminds me of my grandfather more than any photograph or memorial ever could.

The handwritten words speak off the page, and when I read the last line – “I love you Renee” – it’s like hearing his voice. The ink might fade, but the words never will.

The whole column, while melancholy, is worth reading.

• The practice of Chinese calligraphy, or at least the pursuit of better handwriting, could be the path to tranquility, as Harry Eyres advances some thoughts on the subject in the Financial Times.

Everything about the way I write bears the marks of an occidental (rather than oriental) approach and education. There is a strange combination of instrumentality and hyper-individualism. Handwriting in the west is regarded as a means to an end, not an end in itself; it’s what you write that’s important, not how you write it. Any way that reaches the goal of intelligibility will do. This allows a freedom that might seem attractive (to many in the east as well as the west), but I am beginning to wonder whether it could be a short cut to expression that ends up impoverishing expression itself.

Having recently returned from Taiwan, where he learned a little about calligraphy, he reckons that striving to return grace and beauty to written words could possibly help us tap into our wells of concentration and meditation.

Calligraphy, or just writing better, might help us find more peace and joy in our lives, which seems a good argument for including it in the syllabus. Sadly it is not one which would ever persuade the utilitarian commissars who control our education systems.

Perhaps he’s got a point. After all, putting a really good pen to paper can sometimes feel like a semi-religious experience, right?