Blog:: Craig Pringle

Tablet MVP Stephane Torres has posted a very detailed review of the Acer C200 Tablet PC, including a video and lots of great photos.  The review is in French so you will need to run it through one of the many fine internet based transation services.  I used babelfish and got the jist of it.

The innovative C200 uses a sliding track hinge instead of the traditional pivot hinge.  The C200 also has an integrated optical drive which will be a welcome addition for many users.

Via Jk

I'm heading off to the ALGIM 2005 conference to help man the stand my employer is running. ALGIM is a local government focused IT conference.

"This is the premiere technology event for Local Government. If you are working in the areas of Finance, Management, IT/IM, GIS or Communications then you should be attending this conference."

No stand would be complete without toys! I've got some cool ones to play with and show off to people.

• Motion LS800 -one of my favorite tablets! Remember my review?
• iTech Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard.
• Panasonic Toughbook 18 rugged tablet

I'll have more to say about these next week.

I'm holding off on further development of BlogPad.  I am getting a copy of Visual Studio 2005 to work on it with.  Since I know that is coming I have held off installing the RTM version of the Visual Basic Express Edition.  I've taken the opportunity to have a bit of a code tidy up, but I'm holding off writing new until I get VS 2005.

It's not dead - it's just resting. 

I have lots to do as I was going to use a library someone else had already written for some of the blog API communications, but it is just too limited.  I'd have to write extensions to handle some of the missing functionality of it so I might as well just write my own so I have control of all of the source.

And BTW jk - yes I will support TypePad.

I'm just about ready to burst.  I downloaded and installed the Office 12 beta.  I'm using it in anger on my main machine (OK I did a custom install and kept the previous versions - but I'm using Office 12 as a first choice).

There are lots of cool things in Office 12 that I would love to be blogging about right now.  But I can't.  Because of this statement on the Welcome page of the beta site:

"Agreeing to these terms is your acknowledgement that you will not disclose any information about a product including, but not limited to; the product, beta newsgroup content, Web site documents and other content, or the content of any beta-related e-mail to persons not covered by the agreement. Failure to abide by these terms could result in removal of you and your company from Microsoft beta programs."

*Sigh*  Come on guys!  That's cruel!

Tom Clarkson – creator of the Orange Guava desktop and the ActiveWords InkPad – has been quietly creating cool stuff again.

Tom spotted the RSS Subsrciptions feature in the beta of Office 12 and decided that it looks pretty useful.  He also decided that entering in each feed one at a time is a pain in the butt.  Not to be put off he has written a tool to import OPML into Outlook 12!  Sweet Tom – you just saved me about an hour.

Office Beta Testers can read all about it and grab the download here.

My wife and I have remarked to each other lately that there is never anything good on TV.  There seems to be an endless stream of TV shows where someone is voted off each week, people teaching distraught parents how to control their demonic children and extreme makeovers for everything from people to houses to harleys.

It seems that the TV, too, was fed up with the tripe that is being aired.  There was a pop,the screen went black and there was a faint burning smell.  I can only assume that the TV could stand it no longer and decided to end it all.  Oh well - he's in a better place now.  (Because our lounge without the constant stream of drivel is a better place...)

I've found out there is a NZ distributor for Fujitsu tablets.  They are PB Technologies - headquartered in Auckland with branch offices in Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin.

They have the P1510 listed on the website, but with Windows XP Pro.  I made initial contact to see if I can get my hands on some products for evaluation, then started writing this post.  They rang me before I finished writing it - great service.  It looks like it will not be a problem to borrow something - I'll see if I can set something up with the local office.

 

The mini Fujitsu convertable is now available for order with the tablet OS.  AFAIK this is the first touchscreen device to officially ship with Windows XP Tablet Edition.  Update: What I meant is the first tablet with only a passive digitiser since MS stated that it would allow OEMs to ship tablet edition on devices without active digitisers.  Very cool.

Via Rob Bushway and Warner Crocker

I suffered from quite a big outage last night (NZ time) because the ISP I have an account with and the telco from whom I purchase phone services are in the process of terminating their commercial arrangement.  Rather than send me an email telling me that this was going to occur and that I would have to change my arrangements the ISP (www.paradise.net.nz) decided the best way to inform me was to lock my account out and force me to call them.  Brilliant.

As if that is not bad enough they decided to do this at 4:55 PM - just before anyone who knows what is going on goes home.  By the time I got home, had dinner and did the dishes all intelligent life had well and truely left the building.  I rang the helpdesk and after waiting 25 minutes to get my call answered only to be told that all was fine and I needed to turn off my ADSL router for 5 minutes, turn it on again and call back.  I told the guy that was totally pointless and that the router could be forced to resubmit the credentials simply by hitting the submit button on the configuration page you enter your credentials into. I also pointed out that I could not log into webmail over my EVDO connection in my laptop.  He assured me that all was fine and even told me that he had just logged in with the credentials I proveded him - a bare faced lie as I was later to find out that the account was disabled!  Anyway he refused to budge and assured me that powering off the ADSL router for 5 minutes would fix it.  I doubted it but decided to try it and call back anyway.

No surprise - the restart of the ADSL router did nothing.  I rang back and got a different guy who I suspect was actually a shaved monkey.  This one told me that they were no longer supporting people who have thier phone lines with Telecom and that I needed to change my phone to Telstra (who incidently own Paradise).  I advised him that since they are not even currently providing the service I am paying for now is not the best time to sell me more.  He told me that I needed to talk to customer services and they were not in until 7 am the next morning (by this time it is after 9pm).  I explain to him that I need this fixed sooner.  He tells me that he is not a customer service rep (which I say is obvious) and that only the faults people are there.  I point out that the service not working is a fault.

The next morning I ring and get a person that is sort of helpful.  The first thing I learn is that the customer service people are not in until 9am (not 7am as I was told) and that I don't need to talk to them at all.  She explains that the password was disabled to ensure that I would ring them prior to the cut-off date.  She re-enables the account - which the shaved monkey could of done 10 hours earlier!!!

Needless to say there will be more outages - I'm changing ISPs.  I am in this for the long run - if there is an outage over the next week or so as I move please bear with me.

 

I’ve been working on this post for a while.  It has grown so long that this is going to be part 1 of a 3 part series of posts.  The concept of this post was initiated by the blogger discussion that Lora started with her questions – which first got you interested in Tablet PCs  hardware or software and what more do you want from Tablet applications. 

Several people chimed up with their thoughts and wishlists including Rob Bushway, Warner Crocker, Marc Orchant and Colin Walker - who has a nice summary of the early discussion here.

The post that really go t me thinking was the one by James Kendrick in which he muses:

“Maybe the killer Tablet PC app is not a program at all. Perhaps we should be discussing what the killer "feature" for Tablet PCs might be.”

I think James is on the money with this thought and I have a suggestion as to what this killer feature may be.  I’m going to call it a killer attribute though – because it is not really a feature as such.  In a word it is flexibility. 

To me the Tablet PC is a remarkable hardware platform and people have written some amazing software for this platform but it is the flexibility that makes them a really powerful tool.

There are two main areas that need to be explored to fully understand this flexibility.  Not surprisingly these are the same to categories Lora refered to in her question that started this whole conversation – Hardware and Software.  I will dedicate a post to exploring each of those two things in more detail, but in this post I’ll at least give an overview of each and explain why they are important. 

Also bear in mind that if one of these does not gel with user on the first tablet they see it has a huge negative impact on their first impression.  This is particularly true with the hardware.  How often do you hear people saying that Tablet PCs are slow or under powered?  Often when you explore that you find that perception dates back to the early models that shipped with Transmeta processors and slow disks.  When I introduce someone to the Tablet platform I’m usually using my Motion M1400 or my work HP TC1100.  I take care to make sure that they are aware that there are tablets with optical drives, big screens, high resolution, longer battery life, smaller screens keyboards and more.

The hardware flexibility is delivered firstly by the dizzying array of device choices available and secondly by the extra functionality inherent in the platform.

The software flexibility is typically delivered by applications written to take advantage of the extra features in the Tablet PC operating system.

If flexibility is the killer attribute of the Tablet PC then we are in for some interesting times.  The range of hardware devices is increasing at an astonsishing rate.  As more developers begin to understand the Tablet an increasing number of applications are either being made ink aware or specifically developed with the tablet in mind.  As more developers move beyond mere comprehension and truly embrace the Tablet PC I would expect this to accelerate even faster than the hardware.

A couple of people have asked if BlogPad will support posting ink as an image rather than turning it into text.  Rob's comment on my previous post is a good example.

"By allowing a post in ink, you could keep the ink part and generate it as a graphic, then also store the recognized text as alt text and text that goes along with the post for google search purposes. A user would just need an ftp account in order to reference the graphic."

It is something I will experiment with and I may include it as an option you can select.  But I don't want to rely on FTP - most blog APIs seem to support including an inline image so that would seem to me to be the way to do it.  Also there is an application that does this now - check out Julie Lerman's BLink.

Rob goes on to say:

"The way it is set-up right now, I wouldn't see any benefit over just using the TIP with just a blogging tool like BlogJet."

Firstly I am not attempting to replace full featured blogging clients - I want something simple to allow me to create short posts quickly with a pen.  If I want to create a lengthy post with lots of formatting or to compose a post offline I'll use something else.

The benefit of this approach over the TIP (not well demonstrated in the screencast I will admit) is that you get a bigger writting area.  You can full-screen blog pad and write anywhere in the body window.  I often find the floating TIP is too small and the docked TIP is not always comfortable to write in at the top or bottom of the screen.

Lastly - I've created a BlogPad category for those who are interested.

Wow – I’m a very happy little blogger today!  The BlogPad tool I’m working on got a mention in the latest onTheRun with Tablet PCs podcast.  This is a great show (not just because they mentioned me) as Marc Orchant and James Kendrick are interviewing Robert Scoble.  For me the coolest thing about being in this show is the calibre of people who were also discussed (and the calibre of the people doing the discussing!)

I would like to clarify a couple of the points that were discussed in the podcast.

Firstly BlogPad is not going to actually put the post on the server as ink.  This is for two reasons. 

The first is that though it is technically possible it requires a control on the server to render the ink and you would probably give a lot away in terms of cross browser support.  You would also be severely limiting the number of servers you could post to as the target server would have to have that control installed. 

The second reason is that when I sat down and gave this some thought I realised that the purpose of a blog post is to try and communicate my thoughts.  Being in ink gets cool points but it does not actually add anything to that goal and may even detract from it (if you’ve seen the screencast with my handwriting on it you will know what I mean).  Thus what I really wanted in an ink blogging tool was the ability to easily pen a post and post it in the format that has the best chance of being interpreted as I intended – text, maybe with some ink embellishments (as images) where they add value.

One of the questions asked during the podcast was will the ink be searchable.  It will be – because it will have been recognised and posted as text.  Searchability was something I would absolutely not give away – even though Google sent my boss to a lingerie retail site when he was looking for my blog. J

Another question asked in the podcast was will I be supporting the major blogging engines – absolutely!  I’m starting off getting it working with the MetaWeblog API for the first release.  I plan to add Blogger and MovableType after that.

Just to set expectations – there is still a fair bit to do so it may be a little while before I have a release.  Some outstanding features include:

• Category support.
• Improve the correction interface – I want the alternates in the context menu so I don’t need to rely on the TIP.
• RTF to HTML conversion – this is a biggie.  Right now it only supports text and drops formatting.  I want to have support for formatting and images so you can copy and past text in and paste in snipping tool snips.  Some work to do there.
• Ability to include an ink drawing. Have not even looked at how I will do this yet…

Here is a quick rundown on the TabletPC User Group meeting last night.

We had a bit of a smaller turn out (~13 people I think) this time around but I’m just putting that down to the fact that it is just a really busy time of year.  Those who did turn up were not disappointed for two reasons.  Firstly the sessions were great!  Secondly we had a couple of early departures (flights to catch and children to collect) so at the end of the night we had a perfect 1:1 ratio of prizes.

The first session was presented by Edward Robinson from Intergen. He covered off using OneNote in general and taking advantage of the tablet features specifically. Items demoed included:

·          Entering notes (typed and ink)

·          Organising notes

·          Search

·          Screen clippings

·          Drag and drop of content into OneNote

·          Recording Audio

·          And more….

Following on from Ed was Marcel Ollman from Waterman who provided a thought provoking demo of the Mimio digital capture bar.  These things are so cool! You stick one to the side of a flat surface like a wall, whiteboard, table or floor and it captures the motion of a special pen as digital in on your computer via a wireless link (a gross simplification – check out the Mimio website for more details).  It does not take much imagination to realise that combining a Mimio, a Tablet PC and a projector makes for a really great toolset if you are wanting to get a group of people into a room for a brainstorming session.

I brought up the rear and gave a very brief overview of a couple of pen-centric utilities that really enhance the usability of a Tablet PC in slate mode.  StrokeIT allows you to assign actions to gestures.  ActiveWords (with the free InkPad plugin) allows you to assign actions to words written on an ink enabled scratch pad.  Both are very powerful tools that enable you to become more productive in slate mode.  I’ve blogged about StrokeIt before.  I’ve just started using ActiveWordsand will be posting more on it in the coming days.

The meeting was wrapped up with some housekeeping.  The main points were:

·          If you want to be invited to the meetings in the future make sure you register on the TUG web site as we will be using that as the primary communications mechanism.

·          The discussion forums are more than a little bare at the moment (one category – no posts) so please provide feedback on what areas are of interest to you and we will make it so.

·          The holiday period.  December is a hectic month and in January many people are on holiday.  For this reason neither TUG nor our sister group, the Windows Mobile User Group, will be holding meetings in these two months.  The next WMUG meeting will be in February and the next TUG meeting will be in March.  Announcements will be via the TUG Category feed on my blog and by email to all registered users on the TUG web site.

Many thanks to Microsoft for hosting the event and to Motion, ActiveWords, Microsoft, Telecom and iStart for providing prizes.

I wanted to try out creating a screencast using Windows Media Encoder.  What better way than to provide a quick visual tour of my little pet project - BlogPad.

You can download the video below.  It is short, only about 2 min 30 sec, but you will see the interface in all it's glory and see how text is inserted as ink, recognised and corrected (if need be).

Bp Tour.wmv (522.95 KB)

Update: Fixed the broken link.  Thanks to those who reported it.  Sorry for taking so long to correct it - bit busy with the day job :)

I’ve had a couple of requests from people who live outside of Wellington (as far as the other side of the planet).  They are wanting me to record the TUG sessions and make them available.  Both traditional pod casts and video casts have been requested.

Given the interactive nature of the events I’m not sure that just audio would cut it, but let me ask the questions anyway.  (Asking the question in no way indicates that I will actually do this) :)

1.       If we created a podcast would you download it and listen to it?

2.       If we had an edited video of the session would you download it and watch it?

3.       What about a screencast?

4.     Of the options above, which is the best?

5.       Would you rather have:

a.       One file for the whole session.

b.       One file for each presentation at a given meeting.

6.       Preferred file format?

 

Why do I have the feeling I’m creating a whole bunch of extra work for myself…

 

Lastly – if I were to do this is anyone willing to host the files?

 

Respond via comments, trackback or email (click the envelope at the bottom of the screen).

In a rash moment today I decided to install the latest beta build of Windows Vista onto the Motion M1400 I use for development, testing and demonstration. I'll be posting my findings as I go. So far I can confirm that the blue screen of death is indeed still blue - but hey, it IS a beta. On the subject of dodgy software this is my first REAL post using BlogPad. Don't get too excited though - it is nowhere near being ready for a beta. I still have heaps to do. I just hit the 'build' button in VB Express and I'm writing the post...

If you are reading this then we have definate progress. This is a PoC post from BlogPad.

Update: Holy crap - it worked!

There is another feature that I am just gagging for and it is in PowerPoint.  I can't believe I left this off my other wishlist!

Earlier this year I blogged about a little known but very cool feature of PowerPoint - Presenter View.  This view is very useful from a Tablet PC.  In a nutshell it allows you (the presentor) to have a view that includes the current slide, your notes, the slide sorter and some basic controls on your tablet's screen and just the current slide on the monitor.  Thus your screen looks a bit like this:

One limitation of this is that you can't ink on the slides.  To do that you need to use the cloned screen view where you see the same thing as the audience.

I want to be able to annotate the current slide in the presenter view and have that displayed on the projector view. 

In response to the comment I made on this post Lora has posed a question on WhatIsNew.com:

“What more do you want? Come on. I know you want more. You always want more. I want more :) I think the applications have only touched the tip of what is possible, even with today's current operating system, hardware, and developer tools. It's our imagination and practical sides that limit us.

So, to borrow from an urge that my father continually uses, "If you could snap your fingers, and right now have what you want, what would it be? What would you be using right now?" (in terms of applications for Tablet PCs)”

 My answer to that is twofold:

 

1) The things I want to see in Tablet PC applications right now include (in no particular order):

·         Native ink support in Acrobat Reader.  And every other application too, of course, but Acrobat Reader is a major one for me.

·         Easier ink on the web.  Sites I interact with I want to be able to do so via ink.  An obvious example would be OWA.

·         TIP-less interfaces.  Does that one sound a bit scary?  If you think about it the Tablet Input Panel is a means of entering ink into legacy controls that don’t support it.  I want future versions of the OS to extend those controls so that they do. 

·         Write anywhere – an extension of the point above… Why should I have to write in a particular place?  As long as the UI knows that I am imputing data – like I told it with a gesture – then I should be able to write anywhere and have it magically converted to text.

·         To be able to create links between pages in OneNote.  I know it’s suppose to be coming but I want it two years ago.

·         Windows Server 2003 R2 has a new replication technology for replicating data between Distributed File System (DFS) servers that only replicates the parts of a file that have changed, not the whole file.  I want that for Offline Files.  (OK that’s not tablet specific, but tablets are mobile computers at the end of the day.

·         On the topic of network synchronisation – Sync Toy should be network aware.  (Oh you’re online – I’ll sync then…)

·         Better ink in Outlook (Will someone at Microsoft please write Josh Einstein a cheque for TEO!)

·         Figure out that I am writing on an angle and just deal with it.  Text is linear and always flows left to right on the horizontal axis – but who annotates documents like that?

·         Speech recognition needs to be vastly improved, particularly the way it deals with background noise (What was that?).  It’s not there yet for most of the environments I work in.

·         A better ink-aware blogging client (but that’s why I’m writing BlogPad)

 

2) Despite my “Application make it” statement there are a number of things I am gagging for on the hardware front:

·         Instant on, or the appearance thereof.

·         Oodles of battery life.  I want 10-12 hours without carrying a spare battery.  And it needs to be in a device not too dissimilar to the TC1100 I carry now.

·         Higher screen resolution on more tablets.

·         Lighter devices (without giving anything away)

·         Lower price.

·         WiMAx :)

 

Sound reasonable to you?

If you have checked out the TabletPC User Group site you may have spotted our great logo.  If not here it is:

This little guy was kindly drawn for by the great tablet enabled artist Chad Essley (aka Cartoon Monkey).  If you have not done so already check out Chad's sketch blog. 

BTW - I added the text and that's about the limit of my artistic ability!

Update: Don't confuse this with the PDC tablet guy.  I've had this mascot for a while - Chad's artwork pre-dates the PDC tablet guy by a fair while.

Last week saw the launch of the long promised home-on-the-web of the TabletPC User Group (TUG).  You can check it out at http://www.tabletpc.co.nz

So far the site is pretty minimalist at the moment, but here is a run down of what is there now.  There is more to come.

The Front Page: The news on the front page is really displaying the RSS feed for the TUG category on my blog. 

Events: This is the seciton that will list upcoming events - though you do have to be registered to view events.  Members can also RSVP to an upcoming event to ensure that we buy enough beer and pizza!  Slight bug with the events system at the moment.  When I create an event I specify that it should be visable to all members, however when a new user joins after an event has already been created they can't see it.  There's a manual work around and I'm working on it.

Forum: The discussion forums.  This will be an area where we can all just post geek stuff.  Right now there is just a general forum, but I want to brainstorm categories at the next meeting.

Join Now: You can register yourself on pretty much any page of the site.  Site membership will be used to manage event invitations and user group newsletters going forward so if you are wanting to stay informed of what the group is doing make sure you register.

 

James Kendrick has just purchased a refurbished docking station for his HP TC1100 and he seems to like it.  He’s blogged his initial thoughts here.

 

“Has it increased my enjoyment of using my Tablet? All I can say is Oh my God, yes!”

 

As a fellow TC1100 user I can’t help but wonder how you ever got along without it!  But then I would say that – I’m a “return to base” mobile user in that I will work at my desk much of the time and pop out for several meetings a day.  For me the Grab’N’Go ability a docking station provides is an absolute must for a slate Tablet PC and very much a nice to have for any portable computer.

 

James also likes one of my favorite features of the TC1100’s dock – the modes feature provided by the Nvidia display driver:

 

“The tc1100 uses an nVidia video chipset and HP included a profile manager for those using the dock. There are three profiles available to the dock user, Docked, Undocked and Write mode. The default Docked mode does some cool things with the video setup to maximize the two monitor configuration. The external monitor is set as Monitor 2 in Windows but gets the taskbar moved to this monitor, which frees up the whole Tablet screen for working. The Undocked mode is simply that, it switches back to the Tablet-only video configuration. If you don't like these default configurations you can move everything around while docked and then hit the save button in the profile manager and your configuration will remain like that until you change it again.”

 

But wait – there’s more.  If you customise the modes they remember more than just display settings – they also remember which applications are open.  I have mine configured so that if the phone rings and I want to jot down some notes I pull it towards me to put it into write mode.  As the tablet changes into write mode it will launch One Note if it is not already open.  Very handy!

James Kendrick has just purchased a refurbished docking station for his HP TC1100 and he seems to like it.  He’s blogged his initial thoughts here.

 

“Has it increased my enjoyment of using my Tablet? All I can say is Oh my God, yes!”

 

As a fellow TC1100 user I can’t help but wonder how you ever got along without it!  But then I would say that – I’m a “return to base” mobile user in that I will work at my desk much of the time and pop out for several meetings a day.  For me the Grab’N’Go ability a docking station provides is an absolute must for a slate Tablet PC and very much a nice to have for any portable computer.

 

James also likes one of my favorite features of the TC1100’s dock – the modes feature provided by the Nvidia display driver:

 

“The tc1100 uses an nVidia video chipset and HP included a profile manager for those using the dock. There are three profiles available to the dock user, Docked, Undocked and Write mode. The default Docked mode does some cool things with the video setup to maximize the two monitor configuration. The external monitor is set as Monitor 2 in Windows but gets the taskbar moved to this monitor, which frees up the whole Tablet screen for working. The Undocked mode is simply that, it switches back to the Tablet-only video configuration. If you don't like these default configurations you can move everything around while docked and then hit the save button in the profile manager and your configuration will remain like that until you change it again.”

 

But wait – there’s more.  If you customise the modes they remember more than just display settings – they also remember which applications are open.  I have mine configured so that if the phone rings and I want to jot down some notes I pull it towards me to put it into write mode.  As the tablet changes into write mode it will launch One Note if it is not already open.  Very handy!

TabletPC are being used as part of a system to keep solders safe from snipers in Iraq.  No – they are not strapping rugged tablets to their chests (though that may help).  Rather the rugged tablet PC provides an interface to a system that can identify the source of a sniper shot and the type of weapon that was fired before the shot even hits.

"A person who has a rugged tablet personal computer can see an image," Smith said. "Someone on the second floor, third window from the right, shot from that location."

The system was tested on top of a building where there was a high concentration of insurgent gunfire. Within a few days, American troops were able to use WeaponWatch to return fire more rapidly, Smith said, resulting in a noticeable drop in enemy attacks.

You might think it is a bit late after the shot has been fired, but that is only for the first shot:

"Obviously when the first shot is fired, you can't do anything about it," said George Clark, president of the company founded in 1999. "But what it does do is it allows you to not have a second fired."

"It's quite common for snipers to get off dozens of shots against many different targets before they can be located," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst for the Lexington Institute. "Any technology that helps you find them fast will save lives."

Check out the full article on TechnologyReview.com.

I'm writing this on my new Apache WM5 device.

I'm using Kevin Daly's Diarist - a blogging client for Windows Mobile devices.