Outsource Your Thank You Notes to a Robot
Oct. 9, 2013— -- Writing thank you cards after a wedding, graduation, a birthday or other big occasion is time consuming, boring and often stressful, especially if your handwriting looks less like calligraphy and more like chicken scratch.
Bond Gifts, a New York company, has come to the rescue with an app for a writing robot that lets you follow up properly on those special gifts with a handwritten note sent straight from your iPhone on the company's embossed stationery.
"I have terrible handwriting, usually don't have stationery readily available, and don't even know how to create a wax seal," said Bond CEO Sonny Caberwal on Bond's website, explaining the inspiration behind the company's handwriting robot.
"I find myself saving handwritten mail I get from others. They make my day," said Caberwal.
Unlike a printer, the robot manually moves a pen back and forth and scribbles a 255-character message in cursive. Rob Leuschke, a freelance font designer who lives in Missouri, said that connective script fonts need to be carefully planned and thought out.
"There are always going to be inconsistencies in spacing with a connecting script," he told ABC News. As a result, the final word may be different than a collection of its individual letters. "In the word 'for,' a font might combine the 'o' and 'r' into a single character called a ligature," he said. " 'O' to 'r' is a difficult connection to make, but by using a ligature, it ends up connecting properly."
Bond's handwriting robot appears to add an additional human element to its thank you messages. In the company's video showing what the robot is capable of, each "l" is written differently. A spokesman for the company said that its handwriting robot did take different handwriting styles into consideration, resulting in not every letter turning out the same.
Bond is willing to try to win over any skeptics who may question whether a robot is truly capable of taking on that aruduous thank you note task. The company is allowing customers one free robot-written thank you note.
If that note passes the handwriting version of the Turing Test, which tests a machine's ability to act like a human, you may want to give the robot a shot. Keep in mind that even though the first note is free, each note afterward will cost $5.
