Thanks for the link. Their notebook looks really sharp.

Best regards
 -Ismael

I must try SoonR indeed. Give me a couple of weeks.

Best regards
 -Ismael

Thanks for the information. It looks really interesting indeed.

Best regards
 -Ismael

I have a Blackberry Pearl also, and I just love it, even though it scratches easily and it is a bit fragile. I am using a program called SoonR for connectivity with my laptop, and it works great. It even allows me to use Skype. If you haven’t yet, maybe you should check it out when you get a chance, and let us know what you think.

Just a thought!

-Ryan

Some of the improvements you are requesting have already been realised by XMS Penvision, one of the first companies to develop solutions enabling Anoto functionality in 2001. With the aNotes book, you can e-mail your notes as PDF directly. Through the Web interface you can also convert them into other file types, and export to various systems. Handwriting recognition is done through the VisionObjects technology described above.

-Roy

Thanks for the feedback. I have the same experience using the pen. Free-form handwriting recognition is fairly poor, but all I care about is digital archiving of my notes. Form-based applications tend to work better indeed, and I find myself wishing that I could use some online application to develop custom forms, print them on Anoto paper, and link them to an online database like Dabble DB. For recording things like my dive logs or flight logs, it would be perfect!

Best regards
 -Ismael

-Roy

Writing on paper is still a lot easier and faster than typing so I bet the masses (me being one of them) would welcome a pad that they can scribble on, and capture it electronically.

Voice recognition software is also a great input tool—I use Dragon and it works really great. One problem though—it seems to really aggravate my dog, and Dragon gets confused by barking!

-Ryan

This looks like a very interesting product, and I’ll have to give it a try. It’s a little ironic that the technology finally seems to be getting there to be able to support this, but I would argue that the market for such a product has come and gone. I could certainly get a lot of value out of a product like this, but with the Tablet PC, Palmtops, or mini keyboards, today, my sense is that the masses would consider a digitizing pen passé. This feels like a market that could have been five years ago, but just didn’t quite make it, and possibly never will.

notebook G looks very interesting… Thanks for sharing!

Best regards
 -Ismael

Great article and summary on digital note taking.

Back in 2001, I was an early adopter of the Anoto SDK. I really thought there was some potential with their creative way of digitizing handwriting, and tried to build a product/service to integrate with email. Ultimately, the endeavor was a classic case of being too bleeding edge—the Nokia pen was too bulky; the more commercial Logitech IO was more usable, but lacked wireless capabilities, and the quality of the writing instrument (ink cartridge) wasn’t great considering the target audience would be looking for a great pen-to-paper experience.

Thanks for the link to PaperIQ—it looks like something we were trying to do 5 years ago, which was too early for the market. Personally, I have settled on my own blend of paper and computer-based note taking. For note taking on the fly I use Circa notebooks from Levenger, or the ultra-portable PicoPad. For notes that I want to keep around for a while, I summarize and tag into my own online notebook G. I find the transcription process a good way to get cathartic with the information. The only problem is I lose the doodles.

-Greg

Great idea! Give me a couple of days.

And we should get together for coffee at Oracle one of these days…

Best regards
 -Ismael

This sounds very intriguing. Any chance you could take a video podcast of a simple workflow and upload it on YouTube? The OXFORD site does not seem to have a simple demo/tutorial.

Thanks, and all the best for 2007!

-Edwin

My exposure to JotSpot has been fairly limited so far. I am eagerly waiting for the new release by Google to dive into it some more. I keep hearing great things about it.

Best regards
 -Ismael

I did not try yet.

Best regards
 -Ismael

I will second Bob’s comment. A few years ago, I was using a Logitech pen with the OXFORD pad, and it was working great except the pen was really clunky, did not have Bluetooth, nor any other workflow features. If I remember correctly, the pen was fairly expensive (around $200-$250), and so were the pads (about $10 each).

The digital pen/paper is (has the potential to be) a fantastic tool, as it is the most natural data entry mechanism, but I sure wish prices and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) were a bit lower.

As a sidenote, thanks for Koral. I began using it last week, and it’s working great so far. Have you ever tried JotSpot (now part of Google)? I think it is a great tool as well, in somewhat different ways than Koral.

-Ryan