Blog:: Craig Pringle

Those TabletPC Guys- James Kendrick and Marc Orchant  - have released the first instalment of their new podcast.  

"This show features a special guest- the newest Tablet PC MVP Warner Crocker and covers a range of topics about the Tablet PC.  Marc fills us in on his decision to order the new Gateway Tablet PC and Warner discusses how he uses his Tablet PC in his job at the Wayside Theatre.  It is a great show and we hope you enjoy OnTheRun with Tablet PCs.“

Check it out.

When checking out the article about the Mobility Kit for Lawyers I previously posted about I spotted another gem.

Dennis Kennedy has a great re-post of an article he wrote in 1999 – An Introduction to Mind Mapping. Check it out.

James Kendrick points to a great article by Dennis Kennedy on assembling a mobility kit for Lawyers.

After opening with some words of wisdom…

“In mobile computing, the idea is not to assemble a set of 5-star reviewed devices, hot gadgets or status items. You want to have the tools that help you get your work done, often when you are under pressure, up against time deadlines or in other stress-inducing situations.”

Dennis explores options for the bag, the laptop/tablet choices, communications devices, accessories (must have, recommended and special) and provides some hints and tips.

Though written for lawyers specifically there is good stuff there for the rest of us too. Well worth a read.

Do you run or help run a Tablet User Group?
I run the TUG in Wellington, New Zealand. It has been running for ~ 5 months and is charging along.
To ensure that I am able to provide my members with fresh and interesting content going forward I would like to establish contact with others running TUGs. The ultimate goal is to form a network of connected individuals that run Tablet User Groups.
This will allow TUG organizers to:

• Share and reuse content
• Exchange ideas
• Exchange contacts for 3rd party organizations
• Provide mentoring and support to people setting up new User Groups

Respond via this thread on TabletPCBuzz.com:

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC ID=29816

With November fast approaching it is time for another Tablet PC User Group Meeting.

We have an excellent line-up of speakers and content for you this time around.

 The Agenda:

• Getting More From OneNote: Edward Robinson(Intergen)
• Collaboration with a Mimio and a Tablet: Marcel Ollman (Waterman)
• Pen Tricks: Craig Pringle (Gen-i)
• Prizes
• Beer & Pizza

When:

Starts at 18:00 on Thursday, November 10, 2005 (get there around 17:45)

Expect it to go on for the evening

Where:

Microsoft Wellington

Microsoft, L12 Mobil on the Park, 157 Lambton Quay, Wellington
Click here for a map

RSVP:

Also we have launched the TUG website – http://www.tabletpc.co.nz . Keep an eye on it for new features and announcements. If you would like to attend TUG meetings please register on the website and you will receive personalised invitations to this and all future TUG events, which you can then RSVP to online. 

 Note: All TUG announcements will continue to be posted on my blog too, under the TUG category.

 As always, please pass this message on to anyone who may be interested.

I’ve made a little progress on my BlogPad project over the weekend.  I think the UI looks much as it will in the end and I’m working on some of the functionality now.

Here’s an updated screenshot:

The mode buttons up the top allow you to select pen mode or mouse mode (to make for easier selection and drag and drop editing).  The Categories list will be populated via a API call to the blog server.  I added a couple other buttons to clear the whole form or just the title.  The post to server button will eventually do just that.  Right now it creates a message box with a bunch of XML in it J.

I spent ages trying to figure out how to get access to the alternates that (in theory) the recognition should create when it fires.  I want to be able to right click a misrecognised word in the editing area after it is recognised and be able to select an alternate word.  Not sure I can do this AND keep using the automatic ink to text conversion with the ink edit.  If anyone has done this before let me know via the comments…

I’ve had a problem reported whereby some of the permalinks appear to be broken on my blog.  The symptoms are that if you click on a link in Bloglines, some other RSS readers or on most blogs my blog appears to block the request as coming from a blacklisted server. 

I’m not sure why but there a huge number of events in the logs that look something like this:

This is being generated because my blog was configured to use the Movable Type blacklist and to send a HTTP 404 response to blocked referrals.  As this currently seems to be blacklisting the entire internet I have turned this feature off!

Thanks very much to Warner Crocker and to Michael Segal for bringing this issue to my attention.  To all those who experienced issues browsing to posts on my blog recently my apologies and please keep coming back and linking to me.

At the prodding of Darryl Burling of Microsoft NZ I download and installed Beta 2 of Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition.  I also downloaded and installed version 1.7 of the TabletPC SDK and installed that.

As I previously blogged I carefully followed a tutorial that walked me through creating a form with an Ink Overlay.  The Ink Overlay lets you ink on the form.  The net effect was that I made a gray box that I could write on.  Needless to say I was very excited.

I have now embarked upon a second, more serious TabletPC development project and I will be blogging about my experiences here as I progress.

The Idea

The idea for the project I’m working on actually occurred to me quite some time ago when the blogosphere was awash with talk of blogging in ink.  Several people posted in ink using Outlook –like James Kendrick here -  or screenshots from OneNote.  While this certainly looks cool it has a major limitation.  In both cases ink is converted to an image and posted to the web.  A rather undesirable side effect of this is that that text is not searchable.  

We all drooled over the rather ingenious blog of Philippe Majerus that renders ink if your browser supports it and text if it does not.

Once the initial excitement faded though, it occurred to me that I only really cared about using ink to create the content because it is easier.  However the purpose of my blog is to convey information and both my handwriting and not being searchable would only hinder that goal.  Thus I asked should we be blogging in ink?

I also suggested that Infopath could be used to make a simple blog client.  However after tinkering with this for a while I found that if your blog uses an API based on XMLRPC then this is not at all easy to do.

My idea then is to create a simple blog client that allows for content creation in ink and converts it to text as you write.

Introducing BlogPad

My project is called BlogPad.  The concept is quite simple.  Clicking on an icon in the system tray brings up a form.  The user writes in the text field and the application converts the ink to text as you write.  When finished composing the entry is then posted to the server via the MetaWeblog API.

I have started putting this together and while this is far from what I envisage BlogPad to ultimately be here are a couple of screen shots the ink entry in action.

Figure 1: Ink Entry in a InkEdit control

Figure 2: The converted text and some plans for more features.

The ink edit is a really cool control and I will blog about its features and capabilities in more detail later.  The way the ink to text conversion works though is nice.  The user inks anywhere on the ink edit control and after a configurable delay (without more pen strokes) the ink is converted to text.  Other that that capability it seems to be much like the traditional rich edit control.  This means that you can paste images and text into the ink edit, so rich blog posts should be possible.

What will be in BlogPad v1.0?

Here is a list of features I am planning to include in the first version:

• Ink to text conversion (done)
• Correction of converted ink (not yet implemented)
• Post to server via MetaWeblog API (not yet implemented)
• Support for post categories, pulled from server (not yet implemented)
• Support for post titles (not yet implemented)
• Configuration page to specify username, password and the url of the API (partially complete)
• Support for pasting images and text in the post body (Partially complete)
• Support for hyperlinks in the post body (partially complete)
• Support for attaching an ink drawing. (not yet implemented)

The Promise

When I get all that into a package that works I promise two things.

1. I will make the application available (though perhaps not the source) to the TabletPC community free of charge.
2. I’ll buy this t-shirt and wear it with pride.

If you are a student an using Mind Manager (good for you) then the guys from MindJet want to hear from you.  They are looking for student users of MindManager to use for case studies.  Better yet if you are selected as a reference then they will give you a MindJet MindManager thank you package. 

Check out the full story here: http://blog.mindjet.com/2005/10/seeking-student-mindmanager-users-for-upcoming-case-studies

Michael Segal has pointed me to a couple of cool photos he posted of a Motion Computing LS800 being carried in a sports jacket pocket.

The cool thing about these photos is that they really convey just how tiny this device is.

“The photos convey the fact that you can walk around with an LS800 in a sport jacket pocket and take it out conveniently when needed.  Indeed, walking around with the LS800 in this jacket pocket for several days at a conference was far more comfortable and convenient than carrying the usual tote-bag or briefcase.”

Very nicely done.  One thing I would not recommend though is pocketing the LS800 while it is running.  As several bloggers have noted (myself included) the price of the LS800 being so small is that it runs quite hot.  Walking around with the device running while pocketed would probably cause it to go into thermal shutdown eventually.

JK postulates – and for what it’s worth I agree – that next year will be a big one for mobile devices.

“At the heart of the upcoming advances are a number of chipsets with dual cores.  This will be a huge advance for mobile devices of all types, notebooks and Tablet PCs especially, and coupled with the new Robson cache technology that will enable instant-on we are about to see an explosion of ultra-fast portable devices with much better battery life.”

Yup, and you can add to that a couple of other advances that are just over the horizon and things start to look very rosy.

Battery technology continues to improve and fuel cells will take it even further. Some of the new screen technologies use for less power – including the flexible ones. Things are starting to look good for mobile geeks.

First just let me say that Code Monkey is a term I use with the utmost respect to refer to REAL developers.

Darryl Burling blogged a while back in his post about the Visual Studio Express Editions:

“Craig, even you can get this working and become a code monkey...”

Well, that remains to be seen, but tonight I have taken my first baby steps.

I downloaded and installed the VB Express Edition beta and installed the Tablet PC SDK, both available from Microsoft.

The installs complete I very carefully followed Mahesh Chand’s instructions to create my very first tablet application.  Here’s a screenshot:

What’s it do you ask?  Er – that’s it I’m afraid.  It’s a gray box you can write on – but I have big plans!

From Engadget - www.engadget.com via Rob Bushway

We kicked it at Intel’s Destination Innovation event yesterday afternoon, and while most of what we saw there wasn’t Engadget material — we couldn’t care less about yet another way to sort through our digital photos — getting our hands on the Ruby, a concept design for a PDA-sized PC that can run Windows XP (or Vista…), made it all worth while.

The one we played with was a little scuffed up (not by us, we swear), but James Song from Intel’s Systems Technology Lab schooled us on some of the Ruby’s features, like 8 hours of battery life, built-in wireless, a QWERTY keyboard, a low-voltage Pentium processor, the ability to automatically change screen orientation when you rotate the device (not sure how well that’d work in practice, but it’s an interesting prospect), and an active digitizer display so you can run Windows XP Tablet PC Edition on it (or whatever the Vista equivalent will be). They’re also thinking about developing a stripped down Linux-based OS to run on Ruby, but it wasn’t clear how far along they might be on that.

Looks pretty cool - will be interesting to see what comes of it.

Warner Crocker links to this article about a multi-million dollar ad campaign Gateway is commencing specifically to target Tablet PCs to the consumer market.

It is about time that a major brand did this.  One of the reasons I believe that the Tablet PC has not taken off as fast as some analysts predicted is simply a lack of awareness in the market in general.  A major consumer campaign will help to address this. 

What would help more is simply getting more devices into the market.  As per this quote: “What we heard from focus groups was that you really had to see it and experience it to understand it," said Marna Bullard, Gateway's vice president of marketing.”  Yes – putting a Tablet PC into someone’s hands is a great way to get them to understand the power of the platform.

Looks like Tablet PC sales predictions are trending up again.

“With manufacturing prices dropping and Microsoft touting tablet PCs, shipments of the products are expected to hit 9.7 million units by 2008. That's up 708 percent from the 1.2 million units expected to ship this year, according to a forecast by market researchers at IDC.”

Time will tell but I’m optimistic!!

Source:http://www.tabletpctalk.com/newsarticles.shtml#newsitemEEkAZFEApEKJkqhxVE

From Geekzone ...

It’s a screen Jim, but not as we know it!

“E Ink Corporation and LG.Philips LCD have built a 10.1" flexible electronic paper display. The display will be shown at the FPD International trade show in Japan, attended by over 60,000 visitors each year.

Less than 300 microns thick, the paper-white display is as thin and flexible as construction paper. With a 10.1" diagonal, the prototype achieves SVGA (600x800) resolution at 100 pixels per inch and has a 10:1 contrast ratio with 4 levels of grayscale.”

A flexible display the size of an HP TC 1100. Very cool –I wonder what the implications of this will really be for mobile computing?

An interesting post by Darren over on Tablet Minds got me thinking.  Darren asked the question:

“Just curious, do you, as a Tablet PC Blog reader, like to see a photo of the person you are reading?”

I don’t know that the presence of a picture is going to influence how I feel about a blog one way or another over the long term.  Indeed once I have added feed to my newsreader (I use several) I rarely visit the actual site at all.  Over the long term the only thing that is going to keep a blog in my blog roll is interesting content.  It does not even have to be that frequent.  If more often than not when new stuff appears and I read it and it is interesting then the blog will likely stay around.

Where I think a picture may have some influence is in helping me decide if I add a blog to my feeds when I find it.  I believe I may be more likely to add a blog to my feeds if there is a picture.  Following this realisation I am seriously considering add a picture to my blog – because getting your blog onto people’s radar is half the battle. After all Clive Thompson – as quoted in an unrelated but interesting article on The MindJet Blog - "Information is no longer a scarce resource - attention is."

In the car on the way to work. Don’t worry – I‘m not driving!

Just been catching up on my blog reading backlog and there are several things I’ll be blogging about soon!

Reading in FeedReader (offline) and posting via Outlook. Because I can :)

From an article linked to by Loren:

“Alas, it wasn't my journalistic skills that brought the compliment. It was the machine I was using to ply my trade: a small, slate-like computer using the Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC operating system…

…The Tablet PC I was using last week is the LS800 from Motion Computing, one of a dozen or so computer makers who put out Tablet versions.”

:)

Colin Walker links to a review posted by MiniMage of the petit Fujitsu Lifebook P1510d.

This pint size convertible features a has an 8.9” WSVGA screen – which means it is 1024x600 (anyone – what’s the W?  Widescreen perhaps?”).  The unit is ultraportable, weighing in at just 1kg (2.2 lbs) – that’s the same weight as the Motion LS800.

So how does the touch screen rate?  Well the short version appears to be that the cursor tracking will be missed if you are use to it and the right click experience is a bit different.  The unit shipped with XP Pro and was also tested with the Windows Vista Beta.

“Wanting to experience the P1510 as a Tablet PC, I grabbed my copies of Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 1 and installed it. I tried two different builds. I was aware that Vista makes many more demands of hardware than its predecessor, and I had concerns that the 512mb of RAM wouldn’t suffice, but I found I had no unexpected performance issues whatsoever (there were some device driver problems and application compatibility issues, but this was expected in a beta, and I reported it to Microsoft). I can honestly say that using the Vista Tablet Input Panel on the Fujitsu was a better experience than using the TPCE 2005 TIP on my beloved ViewSonic V1250.”

Sounds promising.  An interesting read – check out the full review here.

Bloglines have added some great new features to their browser based news reader.  These include new “hotkeys” to improve the reading experience, a distinction between articles you have not yet read and those you have read but have opted to keep as new and – finally – the ability to opt to keep an article as new from the great Windows Mobile interface.  I love being able to check my feeds from my PDA when I have a minute but I often found that if I wanted to blog about something I read from a richer client then I could not keep it as unread.  Now I can – Great!  Here then is the news from Bloglines verbatim:

Today we rolled out some new features to help you keep up with all the information that is important to you.

Hotkeys
If you prefer using your keyboard to mousing around, you'll be happy to know we've added these shortcut keys. You will find this legend at the bottom of each feed display page:

On a personal note, I must say these hotkeys rock! If you are like me and seem to get a gazillion articles in your Bloglines every day, these hotkeys are for you. I used to go through a finger stretching, huff & puff ritual before I reached for my mouse and dove in to Bloglines. No more, thanks to Bloglines' hotkeys. My absolute favorite is 'j' which allows me to jump from article to article instead of scrolling. I can now read my Bloglines in half the time, no joke!

But wait! There's more...

Unread vs. Keep As New
There's a difference between "Unread" articles and those marked "Keep as New" (subtle, but distinct), so you will now see two numbers next to your subscribed feeds in parentheses. The number to the left of the colon represents the articles you have not read/seen before, and the number on the right represents the articles you have manually kept new.

Mobile
For those who enjoy using Bloglines on the run, we've added a couple of features from Bloglines to our Mobile edition.

·         First, you can now access enclosure links in blog articles, allowing you to view images or listen to your favorite podcasts from your mobile device.

·         Second, you can now use the "Keep as New" option for articles you have previously read, allowing you to scroll through as many articles as you want and come back to them later.

And finally, the ginsu knives of Bloglines …

Universal Inbox
Continuing the rollout of "unique-to-me" features like weather and package tracking, we've partnered with Astrology.com to deliver daily, weekly and monthly horoscopes, and Lottery.com to bring you lottery winning numbers and jackpot values for any state in the USA.

Please let us know what you think about our new features. No need to send email, just post to your blog and our Bloglines saved searches will pick up your feedback.

From Geekzone:

Date: Thursday 20 October 2005
Time: 6pm (until around 8pm)

Where:
Microsoft, Mobil on the Park, Lambton Quay

Agenda:
6:00 pm Converged Rugged Pocket PC devices (Matti Seikulla, e-Spatial Limited)
6:30 pm Culminis Overview (Mauricio Freitas, WMUG)
6:50 pm Q & A
7:00 pm Prizes, drinks and nibbles
8:00 pm Wrap up

Matti leads the design, modelling and development components of e-Spatial operations. The company develops Location Based Services and will show a service based on Windows Mobile.

Culminis is an international organization representing the culmination of ideas, aspirations, and needs of IT Professionals. By building a partnership between IT Pros and information technology solution providers, Culminis strives to improve the skills, abilities and knowledge of our members along with the technologies they depend on. The WMUG is now part of Culminis and we will show an introduction to this organisation and how it can help the IT Professional.

After these sessions, there will be a general Q&A session where we encourage you to ask questions and talk further about more specific scenarios.

Please register your interest so we can order drinks and food.

Thanks to e-Spatial and Microsoft.

Click here to download this appointment.

Hope to see you there!

Going through the moving house routine includes updating your address details with all sorts of organizations. I was frustrated to learn that this is one of the few things you can’t do online with my bank. However, they do provide a PDF of the official change of address form that you can print and snail mail or fax in.

Now that may be Ok for some people that I want to do it online from my Tablet. This is how you can fill out electronic versions of paper based forms on your tablet.

1. Download the form and open it in its viewer application. Eg Acrobat Reader for PDFs.
2. Print the form using either the OneNoteImageWriter power toy or the Send to OneNote tool from the Tablet PC Education Pack. These are virtual printer drivers that send an image of to document to OneNote as the background of a new page.
3. Fill in the form using ink in OneNote
4. Now here is the trick. If you print or fax the form by clicking on the print button OneNote will print the page header at the top. This sort of spoils the look of the finished product. To get around this go to Print Preview instead.
5. In Print Preview there is an option to print the header on a separate page. Select that. You can also turn off the footer.
   
6. Click the print button now and you get a nice reproduction of the paper form.

From Chris Pratley’s blog – writing about an announcement made at the MVP summit:

“One big smile was when Steven Sinofsky announced during his wrap-up Q&A this morning that Office 12 apps (OneNote included) will support "Save as PDF" natively.”

Great – it will be nice to not have to rely on 3^rd party plug-ins for this at long last!

Warner Crocker has received a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in the Tablet PC category.  Warner is a great contributor to the tablet pc community and deserves the recognition.  Well done Warner!  If you don’t read it already – add Warner’s blog to your list.

Colin Walker writes:

“As you may know, Rob Bushway (Tablet PC MVP) has a daughter Maggie who has cancer. Unfortunately, she is currently in hospital in St Louis (and will be for the next 2-3 weeks).

In order to brighten up her hospital room Rob wants to cover the walls with e-cards. The St Louis Children's Hospital provides an e-card service and the cards are delivered to patients by volunteers.

Whether you have a Tablet PC or not, read Rob's blog or not, then head on over to the e-card service and send Maggie a card to make her time a little brighter. If you've got a blog of your own then why not ask your readers to do the same - it only takes a couple of minutes and will make a big difference.

Send a card here.”

Great thoughts Colin.  I’ve sent mine and I’d encourage any of my readers to do the same.  Lets paper the whole hospital!

I’ve just noticed that i-Toyz have revamped their site.  I-Toyz distribute Motion Computing and Itronix hardware in New Zealand.  They previously brought in Fujitsu notebooks and tablets, but there is no mention of these on the new site.

The site looks good and it is great to see a bigger focus on Motion Computing as it was not obvious that they distributed them on the old site J