Any paper, any time
July 15, 2008 4:08 PM   Subscribe

Digital pens like the Zpen and the Mobile Digital Scribe are electronic pen and receiver combinations that can capture hand-written text as you write it.

IANAS. I was just watching the gadget show and got a geek-on for this thing. I especially love gadgets that remove boring tasks like typing up notes. Plus, I want to see the device that can decipher my ugly scribble.
posted by chuckdarwin (18 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Does one work with Mac?
posted by jeffburdges at 4:22 PM on July 15, 2008


Bring back CueCat!
posted by Artw at 4:29 PM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]


Neither of these... but there are several other digital pens out.
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:30 PM on July 15, 2008


Seems some bluetooth pens support Macs, but they all use special paper. It seems digital pens that don't require special paper have neither bluetooth nor Mac support.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:32 PM on July 15, 2008


Cheers, Artw, for the history lesson.

CueCat: Commercial failure

The CueCat concept was a commercial failure. Some believe that failure was due to implementation stumbles that alienated early adopters, but others say the device was ultimately of little use. Wrote Jeff Salkowski of the Chicago Tribune, "You have to wonder about a business plan based on the notion that people want to interact with a soda can," while Debbie Barham of the Evening Standard quipped that the CueCat "fails to solve a problem which never existed."

The CueCat device was controversial, initially due to privacy concerns. Each CueCat has a unique serial number, and users suspected that Digital Convergence could compile a database of all barcodes scanned by a given user and connect it to the user's name and address. For this reason, and because the demographic market targeted by Digital Convergence was unusually tech-savvy, numerous web sites arose detailing instructions for "declawing" the CueCat — blocking or encrypting the data it sent to Digital Convergence. The site digitaldemographics.com was also registered through Digital Convergence, which also gave credence to privacy concerns about the use of data.

The company's response to these hacks was to assert that users did not own the devices and had no right to modify or reverse engineer them. Threats of legal action against the hackers swiftly brought on more controversy and criticism. The company's licensing agreement was changed several times, adding explicit restrictions, apparently in response to hacker activity. Hackers argued that the changes did not apply retroactively to devices that had been purchased under older versions of the license, and that the thousands of users who received unsolicited CueCats in the mail had not agreed to nor were legally bound by the license.
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:33 PM on July 15, 2008


I have a LiveScribe Pulse pen, which is really, really amazing. It records everything as you write, so that you can play back exactly what was said when you were writing that particular note. It will be even cooler once the SDK is released next month, and developers can code neat applications.
posted by blahblahblah at 4:33 PM on July 15, 2008


Cool. I'm sure everyone thought of this 20 years ago, but it's great that it's finally available. :)
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:45 PM on July 15, 2008


Actually, these pens have been in the works for years. The core technology behind them is from EPOS, an Israeli company that makes a few other gadgets like a pen that can be used as a mouse.

However, all these types of pens are good for is taking notes and doodling. And don't think you'll never have to re-type the text, handwriting recognition just isn't that good...you'll end up spending more time fixing up your mis-recognized text than it would take to just re-type it.

These pens are useless for filling out forms, since the pen doesn't know where on the page it is; the base station only knows where the pen is relative to it. To fill out forms with a digital pen, you have to have absolute positioning, such as with pens based on Anoto technology.
posted by kenotron at 4:47 PM on July 15, 2008


I refuse to write with anything that feels different from a V5.
posted by The White Hat at 4:57 PM on July 15, 2008


Cool. I'm sure everyone thought of this 20 years ago, but it's great that it's finally available. :)

Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure (by Jerrold Kaplan)
"Kaplan founded GO Corp. in 1987 to develop a pen-based portable computer. He lost control of the company to an investor group that included AT&T in late 1993 after spending nearly $75 million in a failed effort to create a marketable product, and GO's successor company was closed down by AT&T in July 1994. What separates Kaplan's tale from other start-up stories is the insight he provides about dealing with two of America's largest computer companies: IBM and Microsoft. Kaplan negotiated with layers of IBM bureaucracy to get the company to invest tens of millions of dollars in GO, and yet with the downsizing that rocked IBM, Kaplan doubted whether anyone remaining at IBM knew or cared about its GO involvement. GO's relationship with Microsoft evolved from a potential partnership to a fierce competition. As the two companies became more competitive, the pressure Microsoft exerted on the industry to support its own pen-based efforts over those of GO makes one think that federal judge Stanley Sporkin is right in trying to reopen the antitrust investigation of the software powerhouse. Readers interested in entrepreneurial adventurism will find Kaplan's tale entertaining, but the book will appeal most to those familiar with the computer industry."
posted by ericb at 5:19 PM on July 15, 2008


I think that alternative computer input technologies (e.g. bar-scanning, voice recognition, hand-writing capture/pen input) are appropriate for specific applications.

At this stage, though, it appears to me that the use of the keyboard, whether by a skilled typist or a "hunt-and-pecker" (like me), is/will be preferred for quite some time ahead.
posted by ericb at 5:25 PM on July 15, 2008


Oh, if I could take this thing with me and then transfer my writing to Excel (for instance) via OCR or whatever, I would start using it tomorrow.
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:52 PM on July 15, 2008


I use sheets of so-called "paper". It captures my hand-written text perfectly, recognizes ANY type of pen or pencil, requires no power whatsoever and is hacker-poof. Some versions come with lines or a grid to make it easer to align the text relative to the page.
posted by c13 at 6:13 PM on July 15, 2008


I'm hoping for a EEE-priced tablet-type machine, myself.
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:02 PM on July 15, 2008


I'm hoping for an EEE priced EEE, myself.
posted by Artw at 9:01 PM on July 15, 2008


The only thing I want out of writing is to get words on the page via keyboard, to be able to edit it immediately and effortlessly, to save it to any file format, and to do so on a material with the same contrast, readability, and nonvolatility (so that the words stay as they are even without power) as paper.

I want a typewriter that can save files to disk.

The ability to draw on it with a computer-readable pen would be a nice bonus.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 9:41 PM on July 15, 2008


I'm hoping for an EEE priced EEE, myself.

The MSI Wind was recently released.
I'm torn between that and the 901.

Couldn't they implement some type of tracing/outline command, then you could pinpoint the corners of the paper your working on? I'm just thinking out loud, but on the Nintendo DS you can re-sync the screen, with a program, where you tap each corner and the center.
posted by P.o.B. at 11:14 PM on July 15, 2008


I imagine these pens have some trouble finding acceptance simply because scanners are an essential office tool. A scanner plus paper replaces the pen, but the pen doesn't replace a scanner. So buyers should by travelers who need digital notes but not scanning, as portable scanners are not too large.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:58 AM on July 17, 2008


« Older This ain't Ringling Bros.   |   Defender Of The Favicon Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments