Tbp doesn't get ink chat. He's kind of right. But to really understand how ink chat fits in, he's going to have to rip his computer away from the wall and hold it in his arms.
When I'm sitting at my desk I usually type in Messenger. It's interesting though, of the half-dozen TPCers that I chat with, we all seem to bounce back and forth between typing and inking in Messenger. If someone sends me a message and I'm handwriting a thought in OneNote, I usually reply in ink. If it evolves into a longer conversation I usually jump back to the keyboard using ShareKMC.
Ink chatting also is extremely natural when I'm away from my desk with Tablet PC in hand. How often do I chat while standing up or moving around? Not very. But the ability to do so is handy. It wasn't long after I had my Tablet PC that I realized how much I wanted this feature. I'm glad Messenger supports ink chatting now.
In terms of MSN Messenger 6's voice and webcam support, these are really slick (although Apple's iChat appears to have the edge). But it's funny, I prefer text chatting over ink because I can more easily multitask. I can work (program, write email, etc) and chat at the same time. So while I'm working, I haven't been using the voice or webcam features of Messenger. I haven't needed them yet.
This weekend though, we passed around the NEC LitePad--equipped with a camera and built-in mike and speakers--and everyone had a ball talking with my brother through Messenger. (So goofy, we had to call my brother to ask him to get on the computer so we could chat with him on Messenger. lol.) You should have seen the eyes light up of one of the women whose only child is about to go off to college. Then there was the small businessman who does a lot of business overseas. He got it right away and called over one of his employees to show him how they could use the Tablet PC in their business.
Here are some drawbacks to ink chatting:
1. Inking is slower than typing.
2. Most of us have poor penmanship.
3. People write big so the messages scroll off of the top of the screen more quickly than with text.
4. Ink messages aren't archived.
5. You can only send ink chat messages to those with MSN Messenger 6.
Ah, and now that Messenger is ink-enabled, there's one thing I'd really like to have: I want to be able to add an "Incremental Blogger channel" so that I can post quick-and-dirty, inked comments to this weblog using Messenger 6. Can someone do this for me? :-)
Posted by Loren at June 30, 2003 12:34 PMHey Loren... I finally got to actually try a Tablet PC at Best Buy for a few minutes, and I posted some thoughts a bit later: http://www.choam.org/tbp/weblog/archives/000030.html
I really do like the platform, I'm obviously just going to bitch when people send me Ink in the future, as Im sure it will happen. :) Does Messenger have a button to recognize what you wrote? I think it's a perfectly acceptable compromise to have it send the interpretted text. It's IM anyhow, and people make typos anyway :)
I totally dig having the option available at the times I need it. I just dont see it being something I would choose to do instead of another available option. Personally Im not much of a 'mobile warrior', more of a code monkey, so you can probably understand my personal bias there. I like devices with thumb keyboards lately.
I work at a library and there are plenty of situations where I think a wireless device of some kind would totally suit the workflow, but it's been an uphill battle to get some of these folks into wanting to use a PDA. I think the Tablet PC would work a heck of a lot better too, but it will probably take some time to get moving on any of that. It's not the librarians that are the problem, it's the "backend" people who maintain the collection who are used to VT100 entry that just hate to learn something new. Eventually ;)
- tbp!
Posted by: teeb! on July 2, 2003 08:12 PMHey Loren... I finally got to actually try a Tablet PC at Best Buy for a few minutes, and I posted some thoughts a bit later: http://www.choam.org/tbp/weblog/archives/000030.html
I really do like the platform, I'm obviously just going to bitch when people send me Ink in the future, as Im sure it will happen. :) Does Messenger have a button to recognize what you wrote? I think it's a perfectly acceptable compromise to have it send the interpretted text. It's IM anyhow, and people make typos anyway :)
I totally dig having the option available at the times I need it. I just dont see it being something I would choose to do instead of another available option. Personally Im not much of a 'mobile warrior', more of a code monkey, so you can probably understand my personal bias there. I like devices with thumb keyboards lately.
I work at a library and there are plenty of situations where I think a wireless device of some kind would totally suit the workflow, but it's been an uphill battle to get some of these folks into wanting to use a PDA. I think the Tablet PC would work a heck of a lot better too, but it will probably take some time to get moving on any of that. It's not the librarians that are the problem, it's the "backend" people who maintain the collection who are used to VT100 entry that just hate to learn something new. Eventually ;)
- tbp!
Posted by: teeb! on July 2, 2003 08:13 PMHey Loren... I finally got to actually try a Tablet PC at Best Buy for a few minutes, and I posted some thoughts a bit later: http://www.choam.org/tbp/weblog/archives/000030.html
I really do like the platform, I'm obviously just going to bitch when people send me Ink in the future, as Im sure it will happen. :) Does Messenger have a button to recognize what you wrote? I think it's a perfectly acceptable compromise to have it send the interpretted text. It's IM anyhow, and people make typos anyway :)
I totally dig having the option available at the times I need it. I just dont see it being something I would choose to do instead of another available option. Personally Im not much of a 'mobile warrior', more of a code monkey, so you can probably understand my personal bias there. I like devices with thumb keyboards lately.
I work at a library and there are plenty of situations where I think a wireless device of some kind would totally suit the workflow, but it's been an uphill battle to get some of these folks into wanting to use a PDA. I think the Tablet PC would work a heck of a lot better too, but it will probably take some time to get moving on any of that. It's not the librarians that are the problem, it's the "backend" people who maintain the collection who are used to VT100 entry that just hate to learn something new. Eventually ;)
- tbp!
Posted by: teeb! on July 2, 2003 08:13 PMCrap, triple post, sorry about that. I'm such a noob :( I swear it wasn't working. *slap*
Posted by: teeb! on July 2, 2003 08:14 PMCool. Great comments.
Posted by: Loren on July 2, 2003 09:52 PMhi, look, im back, can u come, to msn,
asil