Forgotten art: Microsoft Origami for Tablet PCs

Lately have been using my Asus T91 MT a bit too frequently, primary to write documents and occasionally to browse the web. Though I  constantly use the tablet, I hardly thought of two things: faster way to login my machine and better touch friendly window title bar and scroll bars. The rest of the elements in Windows 7 appear to be quite touch friendly to me, but not the above mentioned ones.

During the previous iteration of Windows, Microsoft had released a set of tools called Origami. These tools were specifically meant for touch based UMPC tablet PCs. Two of the tools offered by Microsoft Origami: picture password and touch settings have made a pleasant difference to how I use my tablet PC. You can download Microsoft Origami from here. But note that you may not be able to use other Origami tools on Windows 7 except the ones that I have mentioned. With Asus releasing the "most powerful TabletPC on earth" , probably its time to revive origami for Windows7.

Motorola Atrix: super phone with a promise

In a recent post, I had argued for a super phone Software interface that:
"Ideally I would like my smartphone OS to automatically scale its user interface form small portable screen to a large desktop scale screen, handle touch, pen and pointing as well as keyboard, seamlessly. That will make computing on the go painless and computing on desk seamless. You will always need only one device: your personal super phone."

With the release of Atrix, Motorola seems to be heading in exactly this direction. Probably a way to acheive this on a phone is via virtualization. That, I guess is how   Motorola is implementing it. With the ever improving ARM SoC capabilities and recent announcement of Windows for ARM, we are soon approaching:

"Three screens, One brain and the Cloud"

mantra. One who gets this right will define the next revolution in computing technologies.

Notion Ink: Good startings

Almost an year ago I started following Notion Ink (http://tovganesh.blogspot.com/2010/01/notion-ink-another-attempt-at-making.html). One thing I was pretty critical about the device then was the software stack, just what sets them apart from other android tablet efforts?

Now with pretty positive reviews from Engadget (Joanna Stern), Liliputing (Brad Linder) at CES'11, I must say that Rohan Shravan and team have pulled up quite well. Good beginnings Rohan et al., though there is still lots to be done ;)

Mypaint: An open source painting application

For some time now I have been searching for a good, responsive, free and professional digital painting tool for my Asus T91 and the bamboo tablet (pc). Today I discovered Mypaint (http://mypaint.intilinux.com/) which is an excellent tool for professional digital painting. Best of all it is open source and simply works. The program can also be configured for pressure sensitivity (provided the hardware supports this) and thus provides most natural painting experience. Highly recommended even if painting is just a hobby for you (like me ;-))

T91 MT tip

Random thought

Notion Ink: Another attempt at making a device in India

Wow! Now I am really excited about this one... and I really wish they can come up with a successful business model for tablet devices in India.

In my last post I mentioned about Pi, the e-book reader to be sold in India, and was not very happy about lack of "innovation" there. I also mentioned that Simputer was a remarkable product, but failed miserably in market (to read more about my views on Simputer look here: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/simputer).

Now, a few guys (http://www.notionink.com/Home/about-us) have setup Notion Ink with the intent of creating a tablet for Indian market (http://notionink.wordpress.com/). And apparently they were at the CES.

This is good going. However, again for this to be really successful (as in consumers and developers appreciating it) there are few factors that I feel are important:

- Why would one want this device? A compelling reason(s) on why some one from Bharat will save and spend on this device, rather than just buying a mobile phone.

- The software stack. Merely porting an existing Android will not help. May I repeat, it will not help! It needs to create a whole ecosystem around it. What differentiates it from other Android devices, say for instance what Dell plans to introduce?

- What particular advantage is this device going to offer culturally? As in, culture in India. This is largely a software issue, and I think there is a lot of interesting things that can be done in this space, which address to some extent the above two points.

- Software developers are very important. You have to be able to attract "mindshare" in large numbers and it needs to be specific to your device. This cannot be just off the stock Android.

- Finally, price is a very (very) important issue in India. It has to be very rational.

I really wish that I can work with these guys. These are some of the issues that I would really like to address and seem fairly challenging to me.

(Update: The specs are out now http://notionink.in/adamtechspecs.php, still no news on how the software and sevices will stack up, but the device has quite interesting usage scenarios. The rotatable camera is something that is cool design :) In any case, as of now this is definitely innovative than that Jojoo or Crunch Pad, or what ever...)

Quick Review of iBall Pen Tablet with Vista

Lately I have been bored of using a keypad for entering text so finally got an Ball Pen Tablet. One of the first advantages being the product worked on my machine ( Windows Vista UE) without the need to install any additional software. With a bit of configuration I was up and running and writing this review with the pen. One great advantage of using the pen being that, I need not use mouse or keypad fordoing most of the tasks like clicking and entering prose text. Further, the tablet Input panel provided by Vista is really fantastic in handwriting recognition. It also sports a automated spellchecker. I also used the system with GTalk and had no problem text chatting with it. So far have only one complaint about the writing recognition Software, which is not really able to distinguish my I and J properly. In any case its a big boon for papa who are not really comfortable using a keypad. However if you use a Keypad and are good at typing then you may find any the Pen a bit cumbersome at first, but will definitely enjoy using it. Deleting text is as simple as striking off the word. And using it to Paint Some Stuff is another pleasant job. In all I find this product really useful for people with slow typing speed.  And I must also mention that the Vista's inbuilt handwriting recognition is d really fascinating and enjoying tool to use. Which to some extent is not good as even if you have a bad handwriting (like mine) , the Vista tool recognizes the stuff and you hardly try to improve!