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mattd

Paper_Stacks

A Lawyer’s View

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Paper_Stacks

From Jenny Robertson
Partner
Stevens & Bolton LLP.

I’ve been using TABi for a few months now and I love it.
As a lawyer, managing multiple clients and transactions at the same time, it’s great to be able to immediately flip to the pages for the relevant matter.
It also makes it really easy to get support staff to scan the notes into our online document management system as I can put the file number or brief description and date on the tab for each page.
No more lost meeting notes or random scraps of paper – everything can be found and filed easily.

Note from TABi. Thanks Jenny! A complimentary TABi is on its way to you with our thanks for your feedback.
We love receiving stories from our growing community of TABists. If you’ve got a story about how you use your TABi, do let us know.

The World of TABi

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My son, Josh, who’s a student of anthropology at Durham University, decided to find out what TABi might mean in languages other than English (it was of course made up to combine Tabs with Information – as well as echoing disruptive innovations like iPhones).

Where TABi exists as a word, this is what he discovered (with a little help from Google):

Filipino = side
Hausa = feeling
Hungarian = tab (hurrah)
Ibo = drooping eyelids (oh dear)
Japanese = journey, thick ankle sock with a toe divider, tour
Korean = of course (nice)
Latin = slaver (I’m hoping as in drool not owning slaves)
Malagasy = tab (excellent)
Somali = report (also good)
Tamil = fleeing (!)
Turkish = subject, dependent, subordinate, linked (perfect!)
Urdu = medical
Uzbek = billing
Xhosa = Rabbi
Yoruba = or

So we only have to worry about causing confusion in Japan, parts of Africa and possibly ancient Rome.

Ideas for TABi

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The original 1991 mock-up for recipes

The original 1991 mock-up for recipes

Since announcing the TABi concept, we’ve received several suggestions for customised versions. For example, someone suggested a version for recipes where sections could be dedicated to courses or food types perhaps. Back in 1991, as the picture shows, we had the same idea. Someone else thought it might be useful to have a travel version for keeping a diary. Shopping lists, To Do lists, and notebooks for lectures or collectors have also been suggested. A couple of corporations contacted us to request customisations to reflect their location and product structures.

All of which has set us thinking. Is there an opportunity to provide customised TABis? Do let us know what you think.

TABi finally launches – 25 years after it was invented.

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The original 1991 TABi prototype

The original 1991 TABi prototype

The founder of TABi, Jerry Horwood, a digital entrepreneur with several successes under his belt, first dreamed up the idea for TABi in 1991. He made a prototype, experimented with it, and then assumed the world would go fully digital, making paper notebooks redundant. Turned out he was wrong, at least for the time being. Many people still use paper notebooks today despite the proliferation of laptops and tablets. In January 2017 his invention will finally be unveiled to the world’s stationery and publishing industry in Frankfurt at Paperworld 2017 to find out what the industry thinks of it.

One day the world will look back in amazement at how for thousands of years we used bits of trees to help us remember things. But until then, despite the attractions of digital storage and information retrieval technologies, we seem determined to persist in writing and losing handwritten notes.

So if you’re in the office supplies or stationery business and you happen to be at Paperworld 2017 in Frankfurt between 28th and 31st of January 2017, do visit our tiny stand B22 in Hall 3.0. We’d be thrilled to meet you and to give you a sample TABi to try. We’re excited to find out if it was worth waiting 25 years.