Lots of flowery praise and hype have been bestowed upon this curious looking web organizational planner swiss web army knife tool called Scrybe which currently sits behind a private beta gate at the domain iscrybe.com. While I’ll agree that the video on the Scrybe homepage looks promising, I’d like to read some reviews from people who are actually using it in their business(es). Hands-on reviews from people who are seeing it actually improve their productivity and organization are of much more use than quotes from people who think it looks cool from a first party produced YouTube video.

Rafe Needleman from CNET has seen the Scrybe beta firsthand and writes:

In this first beta, Scrybe doesn’t have enough of its features built out yet to make it a useful calendar (there’s no sharing or inviting, for instance). The Web clipping function in the video demo isn’t in yet. But more importantly, I’m not convinced that Scrybe’s great user interface will be enough to win over users already accustomed to the full feature sets in Outlook and Google Calendar or in upstarts like 30 Boxes.

No web clipping “built out yet” for a web research tool, and yet this functionality is in the video demo? Sounds like from Rafe’s point of view it’s still too early to say Scrybe lives up to the demo — and yet that’s exactly what the title of his article says. Long live paradoxical headlines.

The Scrybe beta phase path shows that sharing, syncing and import/export functionality won’t be along until phase 3, while they appear to be at phase 1 as of this writing:

Now we need to expand the feedback loop to collect information from users who have not been close to the project. The product will be best served by a phased rollout process, where we will progressively invite larger batches of users to test the product. And each phase is focussed on a particular set of tasks.

The same indicates the beta phase is expected to last “6 to 12 weeks” which means full functionality won’t likely be available prior to 2007.

I’m curious if, once finished, Scrybe will be intended to be used as an additional research tool or instead of tried and true existing tools? On the note side, I’m not sure Scrybe — or any other notetaking tool — measures up to OneNote for Tablet users. I’m almost positive Scrybe won’t have any inking capability (none was demoed). I do like the idea of being able to work with a web app in offline mode in Scrybe and then have it sync up with the web when a connection is available but I’m curious how good this syncing actually works? This ‘what about the offline mode’ has been my #1 complaint with web apps and it’s encouraging that somebody in the web apps space trying to tackle this obstacle.

And speaking of syncing, legacy versions of Outlook might already be a problem, the developer of Scrybe writes:

The problem there is that Outlook’s support for ical syncing is really prehistoric.The reasons for which i won’t delve into right now.But i am pretty sure they weren’t purely technical.The good news is the upcoming Outlook 2007 in Jan will address that issue. and you will be able to sync Outlook to ical feeds.

How many Outlook users will be upgrading to Outlook 2007 right away? I’m not sure failing to provide (???) legacy support for Outlook versions prior to the new version which isn’t even available yet (beta aside, of course) is a good idea, if that’s what happens.

Another thing that makes me leery of the hype for something relatively few have actually used is a couple assertions in the self-produced video that states (paraphrasing) “there is nothing else out there like this.” Scrybe shouldn’t be saying this, the people using it should be. Also, why did they name their product something where they don’t own the domain name? (iscrybe instead of scrybe, and iscribe is an entirely different entity) If they put so much thought into this web-based program why was the domain name an afterthought (registered September 10, 2006, last than 60 days ago) instead of an earlier consideration? Or was it like oops, we called this Scrybe and that domain isn’t available, so let’s stroke the Apple crowd by adding an ‘i’ to the front?

(More likely the ‘i’ is for its iCal support)

Lastly, will Scrybe be an ad-supported service or commercial service? I’m not sure where or how they intend to make any money from this product … (?) Showing me ads while I’m taking notes or viewing a calendar doesn’t get me moving away from any existing tools.

I have signed up for the Scrybe beta and am awaiting an invite (not as anxiously as some others, but I’m definitely interested in the phase 3 demo). I’d like to be able to answer these questions for our businesses. If somebody reading has the power to hook me up then please drop me an invite (tdavid+iscribe at gmail dot com).

If you’re already in there and using Scrybe please share your thoughts in the comments below, particularly if you can answer any of the questions mentioned in this post. It seems, however, from what I’m reading and understanding as of this writing that a truly reviewable Scrybe product won’t be available until phase 3 which could be next year. Anything sooner might be too premature to say either way if it’s as good as the video teaser.

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