According to LocalTechWire and the Triangle Business Journal, Field2Base has received about $1M in angel funding from White Ventures to expand development of its Tablet PC solution for the construction industry. It's good to see an angel investor latch on to the value that Tablet solutions provide. In this case, it was an ideal match because Ed White (founder of White Ventures) is in the construction/development industry and can directly benefit from the solutions that Field2Base provides.
A local developer--that interestingly I've only met online--details some of his motorcycle journeys in an "occasional" blog. Here's his latest one:
Snow chains for my motorcycle?
I've been writing "Tablet" so much, I find it hard to write "Table" now when I need too. I automatically add a "T" at the end. This is getting frustratingly funny.
Bill Gates shares his view of the future. In a nutshell: much faster computers and bigger networks will drive new practicalities. Speech will be in most devices and tablet-like devices will be ubiquitous.
These are probably reasonable guesses based on what technology exists today. In ten years things probably won't change all that much--even though they will seem to change a lot to the companies that come and go and people racing to have the latest thing.
It's probably also safe to guess that display technology is going to continue to shake things up. The separation between the display and the computer will continue to blur.
Also on the hardware side, I see vision. I mean in the next decade or so it appears that we'll be reaching computational speeds where we will be able to do some very powerful vision processing in real-time. We'll be able to analyze scenes from multiple cameras in multiple spectrums in multiple ways 30+ frames a second. It'll simply be amazing. Real-time scene reconstruction will shatter our view of sporting events, news, movies, net meetings, webcasts, and on and on.
At Mobile DevCon today. But oops, I forgot my webcam's usb cable so I'm unable to post photos today.
The keynote was quite good. The Visual Studio 2005 part of the presentation went extremely well. They showed a business object being "bound" to an app--as if it were to a db table--very cool. My mind raced with examples from past projects that I've worked on where this would be a killer feature. These demo teasers are driving me crazy. I can't wait for Visual Studio 2005.
Lora is here too. She's typing her daily whatisnew post now as I type this. We're standing here laughing that even though Scoble isn't here, we've heard his name mentioned more than anyone elses. Blogging is deep into the developer roots.
The best part of the keynote? A video segment of Gates and a handful of others in a mock Office 2003-style Great Moments commercial. It was hilarious. I can't do the commercial justice, but it starts with the group struggling to make toast and ends with Gates dancing next to a spinning slice and a Tablet PC. I hope Microsoft posts the commercial on the Internet. Forget that. I wish they'd run it on TV. It would give the Taco Bell dog a run for his money.
Are you part of an ISV that's been thinking about creating a new product for the Tablet PC or enabling ink in your Tablet PC application? Then check this out. As WhatIsNew reports, Microsoft is launching today a new Tablet PC developer contest that goes beyond any of the other contests. We're talking real money here--$100,000 for the grand prize.
Last night we had some friends over for Hot Pot. Several of us are engineers of one type or another so it wasn't long before talk turned to computers, Tablet PCs, and eventually frustrations with Windows and worries about viruses. A couple of them operate small businesses that run Windows systems exclusively--and they've each been hit by viruses or spyware--and spent many hours undoing the mess. It's a big deal to them. Each is contemplating switching--one to Linux and one to Apple--because of the potential of lost productivity in the future. My take is that they don't really want to switch. They simply want things to work and work dependably. Service Pack 2 may turn out to be a key turning point for them.
According to this eWeek article, Phoenix BIOS will be expanding its "pre-boot" capabilties to more machines. This new BIOS feature will be go beyond what Phoenix BIOS already provides in the HP Tablet PC. I wonder if this is really that useful as implemented. Is this compromise compelling or is it just that--a compromise? It seems to me you have to have a more extensive infrastucture for "instant on" or else it won't be used that much. I need to go over to TabletPCBuzz and see what others say about HP's "instant" access feature.
Lora was beaming this morning when she messaged over Iggy's galactic praise for TabletPCPost. Now that's the way to start a Friday--one nice comment can instantly make you forget (at least temporarily) about all the rough edges in getting TabletPCPost going. Thanks Iggy!
It appears that TabletPCPost has come along at a good time for many. There's still lots to do, but it looks like it's functional enough for this early stage in the game. Whew.
Lobrecht digs in and discovers 16 auto-started apps on his new Acer Tablet PC. Hmm. I wonder why some of these couldn't be merged? Or is the overhead more controllable by having them split up?
Bryan and I were commenting yesterday how we use the Index feature in Visual Studio very little...well actually we use it indirectly a lot. When we're programming we hover for details on functions or press F1 to get more information on routines that the cursor is over. However, if we're going to search for something by typing, we just go to Google.
I know many of you do this, but it got me thinking about "help" systems in general. Why are we still using these static help files? I can see where they are useful as fallbacks, but in this connected world, what about leveraging incremental updates and indexing engines such as Google? Could a filter alogrithm be created that streams down the links to your desktop? The value added would be in the additional processing applied to Google. Then again, maybe it's not really necessary. That's the beauty of Google, I guess. Hmm.
What does this say about how these indexes should be managed in the future?
First and foremost it suggests that in the Google world strong communities of developers that share information are a big advantage. Together they go far beyond the value of the built in help.
John Porcaro on how he uses his SPOT watch: "All (and I mean other than the clock part) I use it for is to see when my next meeting is. Useful to know what room it's in without opening my tablet."
He's touching on something here. For Tablet users that are on the go, instant on is really needed. It's been said before. But it's worth repeating.
I've seen some prototypes with always-on clocks and contact information embedded on the "tops" of Tablets. This would be nice, however, I think that there will be too many times when I need instant access to things it doesn't provide. For instance, if I'm travelling and want to check a map real fast, I'd still have to boot up and wait. Even waiting 15 seconds is too long for me. I want something on the order of a second or two.
Am I dreaming?
It's events like the Programmers at Work reunion (as reported by panelist Dan Bricklin) that make me wish I lived in the Silicon Valley area.
TabletPCPost is one of those pleasant surprises. It looks like the site has come along at just the right time for many of us Tablet PCers looking for Tablet PC software as well as for the ISVs trying to reach us.
The traffic has been amazing. Check out this Alexa graph, for instance, that shows that TabletPCPost has been in the top 100,000 most trafficed websites since beta launch on March 8. No doubt that there's pent up demand here.
Just look at ArtRage. As of this morning there have been 91 downloads since ArtRage was added March 10th. And then there's Agilix's GoBinder. Not only has it received 65 downloads, but GoBinder's accumulated five strong votes ranks it as one of the favorite applications of Tableters. And yet another favorite for downloaders has been the Tablet Enhancements for Outlook. 78 downloads.
Several people have emailed me some excellent suggestions on ways to improve the RSS feeds for TabletPCPost. I'll try to get to it tonight, but it may get bumped again.
Next week I'm heading off to Mobile DevCon and I have a laundry list of "must do" items to knock off before heading out of town. Last night was plumbing. Tonight weeds. Whoohooo.
Scoble had dinner with David Johnson of Graphics Server Technologies--a charting and graphing tools ISV--and pitched him on doing some Tablet PC tools. Definitely a good idea. Lot's of possibilities here.
Yesterday was DevDays here in Phoenix. It was OK. Nothing special. It's the first time I'd been to DevDays so I wasn't sure what to expect. Almost all of the speakers were community volunteers and surprisingly good. It made me wonder though what DevDays would be like if it were a community event where Microsoft simply was a sponsor.
Oh, and if anyone was wondering why Whidbey isn't shipping soon--you should have been at the Phoenix DevDays. The demo flopped. It was a demoer's nightmare. At least he had a sense of humor about it. The presenter was wondering if part of the problem was with Virtual PC. He said he'd bumped the memory allowed from 256 to 512 MB before the keynote because Whidbey had been running so slow. Virtual PC was definitely like a ball and chain around the UI. It sure slows things down--which is especially bad for non-optimized, pre-alpha code. I'd suggest a dedicated box next time. Virtual PC is cool--but in key demos it adds one more thing to go wrong. And is it really necessary?
Also of note, the message gets a bit confused sometimes with the future of C++. Is it a first class language or not? I listened to a Microsoft Longhorn webcast the other day and the message was an emphatic yes. However, at a more corporate/IT-oriented event, like DevDays, C++ takes on some jabs.
Similarly, I recall last year at the Server 2003/Visual Studio launch the local Microsoft evangelists were spouting figures as to how much more money C# and VB programmers are paid than C++ developers. And that all smart developers would switch. This time around the message in the keynote was that C++ programming is going the way of DOS development. Interesting.
Now some of the message I think is getting muddled by Microsoft's attempt to convince developers to stay away from COM. Makes sense--especially in light of .NET. But why throw in C++, I don't get it.
The style of development that I know, which leverages layers of abstraction where lower layers are built for speed and durability and built in a more flexible style is all but gone in the Microsoft messages. Instead the message is: .NET subsumes everything. So you're done. Hmm. That's not the way I'd engineer it. I think it's because I enjoy creating product-style applications whereas much of the emphasis today is on consulting and one-of in house projects (which no doubt make up the majority of development efforts.) As a product-oriented engineer I wonder if the message is simply one of targeting a group which I'm only partially part of or is it that Microsoft is pursuing a technical direction that the engineering side of me is uneasy with? It took Microsoft a long time to come around on COM. Let's hope that the same thing isn't happening with how best to leverage .NET.
It's interesting about Longhorn. As an engineer I understand reworking the Windows code--collapsing old hierarchies, removing dead code, improving APIs, eliminating redundancies, setting the road for future customer needs, making the code more robust and improving performance along the way. This is all OK. But then I hear discussions of the framework being everywhere. And then I begin to get a bit concerned. I wouldn't do it that way--unless I knew very well what the "framework" was. Actually, my engineering nose smells marketing. I think some concepts are getting collapsed down--not simply on the engineering side--but on the marketing side. I can't wait to see how it all works out.
Like the Robots themselves, my plans to go to the Darpa Grand Challenge Robot race fell apart this weekend. Oh, well. It looks like I didn't miss much. Such are the ways of Robots.
In the meantime I can watch this Sony video of Robots dancing.
The "Most Popular" RSS feed on TabletPCPost now validates. Whew. I'm so grateful that there are tools like FeedValidator.org and rss.scripting.com.
Once again, the RSS feed for the top 20 Most Popular downloads at TabletPCPost is:
http://www.TabletPCPost.com/mostpopularrss.php
This feed is great, but I also realized I was yearning for a feed that listed the new releases, so here it is too:
http://www.TabletPCPost.com/newreleasesrss.php
As the database grows, it will be nice to have even more feeds. Maybe one feed per category. Or maybe a feed with the apps that have changed their rank the most. Pass along your suggestions!
In a volley with Scoble over adoption of RSS within Microsoft, Steve Gillmor reveals that he's using a Tablet. Maybe I missed this before:
I've been using (and enjoying) Newsgator, an Outlook plug in. It's a great match with the H-P Tablet I'm testing, particularly in slate mode propped up on my knees in bed.
Yep. Tablets and bed go together. Ah, the freedom of WiFi.
Layne installed MT-Blacklist to help stop the comment spam here. Let's see if it does the trick.
Benjamin Zamora found my RSS feed to the most popular posts on TabletPCPost. The power of blogs! (By the way, check out Benjamin's ArtRage paintings. Wow.)
Lora's pointed out to me a couple times this morning that the feed is not validating correctly. Yep. I've got to fix this right away--hopefully tonight after work.
I've been using the feed since last night with SharpReader and it's fascinating to watch the reshuffling of the top downloads over time. I don't know why. Just fun.
One thing I've noticed though is that I'd like each new feed request to completely replace the current feed. Currently it appends each new item to the existing list. The plus side is that as a sideeffect you see at the top of the viewer only the products that have changed order. The downside is that the list gets plenty confusing since the same product can eventually be listed with different rankings. I don't know if it's possilbe to address this on the server side. I guess it would have to be a switch in the reader--something like "Replace All on Each Download." Do other readers provide this feature?
After I get the "Most Popular" feed cleaned up I'll help Lora get a "New Releases" and "Top Picks" feeds too. Anyone have any other feed requests?
No sooner had Lora put up TabletPCPost, that I realized I wanted an RSS feed. To help out I gave her the code at the link below that returns the top 20 most-downloaded apps at TabletPCPost. It's not finished, but if you're like me, it's probably useful enough in its current form. So here's the link:
http://www.tabletpcpost.com/mostpopularrss.php
You can use this link in an RSS reader app, such as SharpReader, to automatically monitor the Top-20 list. Without an RSS reader, the link returns a string of XML.
I'm sure Lora will get this link up on TabletPCPost after it's been tested. Till then, enjoy.
Update: Lora tells me that the rss feed doesn't validate. Oh well. One more thing to fix :-)
Mostly because of TabletPCPost, I downloaded several of the Microsoft Tablet PC PowerToys--some of which I had't tried in a long while.
I ran across a couple things that caught my attention:
I couldn't get the New York Times crossword puzzle program to download a puzzle. I keep geting an error message that suggests that I check my Internet connection or clock. Anyone else running into this?
And the extremely attractive pool program crashed numerous times until I finally realized I had to exit just about everything I was running as well as run the program in primary landscape mode. The Pool program is probably the slickest looking PowerToy. Compare it to the latest Dots PowerToy, for instance. Looks like it needs a little tweaking to make it more portrait and memory friendly though.
And what about my favs?
My favorite-tech PowerToy is hands down the Snipping tool--professionally done and easy to use. It comes in handy for grabbing screenshots, although I wish it could publish to my MovableType blog. (This just goes to show you how standards change. I never would have considered this an issue before. But for community-focused PowerToys, blogs are important to support.)
The Dictionary Tool (written by Shanine Omar) is also at the top of my "most-often-used" PowerToy--even though I rarely think about it. It's a great transparent program. It simply makes my handwriting recognition work better--especially with all my awkward program names. Great job Omar.
Red team first to qualify for the Darpa Grand Challenge. [NYT]
Looks like Lora and I are going to be at Mobile DevCon. I hope to meet a lot of other Tablet PC developers. Anyone going?
For Mobile DevCon blogs, check out Windows Mobile Bloggers.
I see Kevin Lisota is organizing a Mobile DevCon user-vote contest of favorite blogging clients:
With the Microsoft Mobile DevCon fast approaching and with the MDC Bloggers site now live, I thought it would be fun to have a little contest where the attendees vote on their favorite blog clients. The conference is March 23-27, so you've got some time to polish those apps.
I figure there are a few categories here:
1) MDC attendees' favorite “Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC blog client” (app runs on the device)
2) MDC attendees' favorite “Windows Mobile-based Smartphone blog client” (app runs on the device)
3) MDC attendee's favorite “Web-based mobile blog client”
Hey! What about the Tablet PC and blogging?? What about WebcamNotes that let's you take photos from a Tablet PC webcam, jot down a caption or handwrite a message, and post to your blog? And what about the other Tablet blogging apps under development? And, of course, some bloggers are leveraging OneNote too. Tablet PC blogging is finding a niche. For a taste of how creative some of these Tablet PC bloggers are getting, just check out one of Rory Blyth's comics.
Kunal's InkableType blogging application is making headway.
Traffic this morning on Lora's new site, TabletPCPost, has consistantly been running in the 50 to 60 simultaneous users. Not bad. Especially considering the beta site has only been "live" for one day.
Why the traffic? Scoble linked to it. Well, technically he didn't link to it. He linked to my blog. Lora asked him to wait. She asked me to wait too. But I couldn't. So I snuck in a link yesterday to TabletPCPost and Scoble linked to my "non-link." Hehe.
The traffic sure puts the pressure on Lora though to clean things up fast. I see she needs an RSS link and some affiliate banners. Well, I'm sure there goes another couple nights of lost sleep.
Lora just messaged and said she had numerous emails waiting in her mailbox this morning with people wishing her well on the new site. Everyone is sooo excited. I think TabletPCPost hits a nerve with everyone.
I hope it becomes a valuable resource for Tablet PCers to find and download Tablet PC-specific software as well as for developers and companies to post their latest creations.
I just scanned through the various team sites for the entrants in Darpa's Grand Challenge race. It's great to see so many corporate sponsors such as: Ford, AMD, IBM, Agilent, Raytheon, SanDisk, National Instruments, BFGoodrich, Rockwell, Trimble, Boeing, Intel, SAIC, Seagate, Caterpillar, ATI, Google (Yes Google!!), Yamaha, Earthlink, Honeywell, and MicroChip.
I see the Virginia Tech team has at least one computer on their vehicle running Windows Hmm. That makes me think: I didn't see Microsoft as a sponsor. Weird. I must have missed it.
Check out this video from a test run made of the Palos Verdes' High School robot entry built for the Darpa Robot Challenge.
Looking for an example of why engineers need Tablet PCs? Check out the whiteboard depicting design elements of AIMotorvators' Robot entry in the Darpa Robot Race.
Lan and I are making plans to be at the Darpa Robot race finish line in Vegas. Anyone else going to be there? I'll be the one blogging with my Tablet PC and WebcamNotes.
Ooops. Looks like the #1 entry just flipped out. Fortunately, the team was able to get the Robot up and running again, ready for this Saturday's 200-mile race from Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev. Ah, the life of a Robot programmer. Looks like fun to me :-)
Here's are some excerpts from the CMU vehicle's diary.
Lora made me promise not to tell anyone what she's working on--because it's still undergoing final touches. So I won't.
John Porcaro gives a Microsoft twist to each of Donald Trump's 7 Rules of Success.
Here's another virus story...well not really. Weekend before last I was called over to help an elderly women with her Windows machine. Her screen had gone blank. She was wondering if she had a virus.
Again, her main use of the computer is email--primarily to share jokes and pictures. She just wants that part to work and she doesn't want to have to learn anything else. She wants to view the computer as an appliance.
However, everyone--including me--has given her plenty of warnings about opening email attachments and viruses, so she's definitely cautious with the computer. Probably overly so. It didn't help her confidence though when AOL branded her email address as a spammer and blocked all outgoing emails. And as a beginner it's easy for her to click on the wrong thing and then go into a spiral of Windows where she gets lost. She'll catch on, but in the meantime her display is completely blank. So over to her house I went.
What did I find? The video cable on the back of the computer had come loose. No virus here.
Yep, viruses do plenty to shake people's confidence.
A friend of mine that owns a small business called me late last night. His anti-virus program was detecting a Netsky payload and wasn't letting him retrieve his email. I gave him a few suggestions and then in about an hour he called me back and said he was up and running again.
This is the second time he's been hit by malicious code--a few months back he had a terrible problem with spyware that was crippling IE on his main computer. He does a lot of business over the internet, so he spent the better part of two days working through the problems with the help of Microsoft tech support.
He took his latest virus hiccup in stride, but he's also beginning to wonder about switching his email systems and the computers that connect to the internet over to something other than Windows. It kind of makes sense. For security reasons he has a strict policy of never opening any email attachments (unless he knows the sender and was expecting something from them) and he has strict policy against any employees downloading applications from the Net anymore on his internet-connected work machines--unless it's from a trusted source. He wants the reliability of an appliance and Windows may or may not fit the bill. He's also seeking some lowest-common-denominator-level of reliable service. The baseline has to work.
Anyway, he's not switching anytime soon, but with the virus attacks over the last couple years, it's beginning to get old. His confidence gets shaken in Windows when he runs into problems like this.
It's interesting, in this last episode he was more suspicious of a recent Windows update he ran than he was of his anti-virus program--which updates all the time. This isn't right. In fact, he really needs the virus protection built in--especially for his email and web browser. His view of Windows is tightly coupled with how net-secure his machine is. Microsoft is going to be forced into providing virus protection.
I keep wondering how to integrate other sources of information with notetaking applications, such as OneNote. What I'd like is an adaptor interface that third-party applications could publish into--the content of which could be posted into OneNote. The content could be a transparent stream, such as a video or audio stream (OneNote already has the audio stream, for instance), or it could be "pasted" into the notetaking application on demand. To keep things nice and simple and relatively safe, it could support basic data types much like the clipboard--for example, text and bitmaps.
Here's one way I'd like to use this feature:
I take lots of notes while programming. I often jot down changes I've made to source code. Sometimes I use ShareKMC to copy/paste code snippets into OneNote and then annotate them. What would save me time, however, is a Visual Studio-like publisher that I could subscribe to in OneNote which would let me click and paste the recent deltas into my notes.
I could use another adaptor that captures screenshots for instance of all the current windows.
Or maybe a publisher of graphs generated by Excel would make sense.
I imagine developers could come up with tons of ways to leverage something like this. And, yes, I imagine the OneNote database could explode in size--especially if everyone started syncing their notes to every application they used. And generally I'm not a fan of push techniques--and maybe there's a pull permutation of this that might make more sense, but as long as the hard drives get faster and networks improve, I think I'd use it a lot.
Now there are some challenges here: For instance, the content needs a thumbnail view or menu item view for a picker over in OneNote as well as rendering issues of the content. And there are plenty of security issues. And it's got to work across machines--because I often take notes on one machine and have my work apps on others.
Today I realized I've been trying to solve the information sharing problem with my notetaking apps many times over. I spent a month last year taking ShareKMC down a path of enhancing the clipboard, for instance, until I realized that the simple fact is that the clipboard is terribly weak and it needs fixing. Any features I'd add to ShareKMC would be patchwork that might save time in a few cases but would appear klunky in most.
Maybe information adaptors similar to what I've spelled out here might help. I imagine apps could be written to simply call OneNote's api or menu items could be added to make calls back to external apps to retrieve content, but maybe a more generic implementation would be better so that Journal and other ink-based applications could share the content.
Hmm. I'll keep thinking.
MovableType has configuration settings for banning IP addresses from posting, but I need to ban based on domain names--since the domain names are what the spammers are pushing. The spammers are smart enough to use different IP addresses when posting--although I guess they could register a thousand domain names too and switch between them. Hmm.
I recall that there was a spam module for MovableType. I need to see if it does this.
These typographic animations [Via Scoble and Dan Stout] gave me an idea for a cool Tablet PC app:
What about laying down random characters while using the real-time stylus provided in the Lonestar SDK? Pressing harder would make the characters larger or heavier. For that matter, what about a power-toy-level app that lets you "ink" any graphic or select from a wide variety of them?
This gives me some other feature ideas for InkPlayer too. I particularly like the idea of fading away "old" ink. Very creative.
One of the forums I track every day is the OpenCV YahooGroup. It covers Intel's Open Source Computer Vision library.
What surprises me and inspires me is the level of activity of the group. Many days there are 20 plus posts. It appears that many posters are students wanting to develop apps that track faces or recognize cars or achieve some other challenging goal.
It's exciting that so many future developers are not limiting their view of the computer to a mouse, keyboard, and display.
As a developer, I particularly enjoy the challenge of developing vision applications--like ink applications--where data is not always what it seems. Authoring programs that can handle the subtle variations of real-world data is tough.
In the case of ink, for instance, is a given handdrawn stroke at 15 degrees or 13? Or is the line actually a curve with an extremely shallow and carefully drawn curvature? The temptation to highly-constrain the recognition result is tempting. However, tightly focusing the recognition parameters inevitably forces other more sloppily drawn strokes--that are obvious lines to the user--to be misrecognized. The "answer" often lies in the context--but not always.
Applications that seek to analyze real-world data, such as computer vision applications and ink-based apps, must handle the inevitability of incorrect answers. Handling this gracefully yet still providing value is an engineering art.
I wonder how the Leszynski Mobile Tablet PC events are going? Let's see it's Thursday March 4, so it must be Chicago.
Earlier this year Microsoft co-sponsored the ISV Tablet PC Challenge in Germany and now they are doing so in the UK. [via TabletPCBuzz] The grand prize is a trip to Redmond along with development support and co-marketing.
What's more, Microsoft is organizing a Tablet PC Anniversary Event in the UK.
Here's a description of the event, which is scheduled for March 24:
"One year on, come along to the Tablet PC Anniversary Event and find out the truth about what’s worked and what hasn’t. Hear from Canalys, the industry expert, and Microsoft about the future for Tablet PC and our operating system roadmap. Listen to what other ISVs are saying about developing for the Tablet PC and the success they are having, and join in our technical working session in the afternoon for in-depth development information.
You can register here.
I like the ISV Challenge idea. It's much more appropriate for ISVs than the Power Toy contests where product rights are transferred to Microsoft--although I can see where the Power Toy contests would do very well to attract developers in schools--helping to grow the next generation of developers.
Scoble has a most interesting idea for promoting the Tablet PC: Hire Steve Jobs!
Peter wonders if the new MSN Messenger--that's rumored to be a month or so away--will have better ink collaboration support.
I agree. Integrated ink collaboration support is one of those features I instinctively want to use. I never thought I would, but when I'm discussing ideas with people over Messenger I often find myself wanting to draw a picture or put up an image in a sidebar and then mark over it.
Newsweek.com's Michael Rogers links to TabletPCTalk, TabletPCBuzz, TabletQuestions, WhatIsNew and this blog. Cool.
Dan Bricklin also shares the notes he took at a Clayton Christensen fireside chat.
There are several terrific quotes here--many of them bolded.
One in particular leaped out at me:
"...some of the industries that haven't been disrupted recently as education, legal services, and healthcare."
It's funny, these industries are often listed as the top potential markets for the Tablet PC. Are these simply attractive markets because of the growing money involved in them or is there a more fundamental pattern? Hmm.
In terms of education, NPR had an interview last week with Alan Kay, Robert Taylor, and Charles Thacker (three of the winners of the Draper Prize for engineering---all principals in Xerox PARC's Alto project. The archive is worth listening to just for the history on this disruptive project!). And in the interview Thacker and Kay talked about computers--or the lack of--in schools. Thacker spoke of the growing possibilities with the Tablet PC, but listed a few hurdles that he thought must be overcome before computers are widespread in schools:
1. Computers must be of a form and weight that students can carry around with them all day (2lbs max Alan Kay says).
2. Computers must be economical enough for every student to have one.
3. Battery life must get to the point where a computer in uses lasts all day on a single charge.
4. Core material must move from books to digital media at which point the content can leverage the media richness of computers.
(There are many more gems in the NPR interview. Maybe I'll post the rest of my notes later. In the meantime I highly recommend listening to the NPR interview archive.)
Dan Bricklin is returning to his developer roots and is working on some new utilities for his company the Software Garden. And for his new development machine he picked up a....drumroll...PowerBook:
"So...for the first time since I bought a Mac SE in the late 1980's, I've bought a computer made by Apple. (Some of my long time Mac-user friends are enjoying laughing at me for being "forced" to go their way after singing the praises of Wintel machines for so long.) I've been a satisfied Microsoft DOS and Windows person since I bought my first 64K IBM PC in the early 1980's. I type this on my Tablet PC."
PowerBooks are definitely impressive machines. Is Dan setting a developer trend? Hmm. His choice makes lots of sense in light of the fact that he's planning on developing some cross-browser utilities. You need all sorts of machines for testing applications like these.
Dan also blogs his thoughts on his return to product development:
"I just want to spend a lot of time programming and then we'll see what happens. I love programming and hands-on product development."
and
"I am also interested in understanding how a small software company can make money in today's world. The old business models of the early Software Garden days are from a different era. Today we have an even more fertile field for innovation. There is still evolution in how best to afford to produce each of the different types of software we need. Once I have some new products to distribute, I can experiment and learn myself."
Why do I think I'm going to be checking Dan's blog everyday now to see what he's up to?
Crumpet: ArtRage "is a very cool free little paint application. For "real" painting which I first saw a few months back at Microsoft Tech Ed. They had this running on some Tablet PC's. Reason enough to buy a tablet PC I reckon."
I see some Tablet PC companies (Design-Universe and MaxiVista) are mentioning that they are finalists or winners in the Microsoft Tablet PC Challenge contest [German site]. I didn't realize there was one. Oh, I see, you had to be a German company.
This reminds me, what happened to Spencer's Tablet PC Awards? It's such a great idea.
I met Lenn at DEMO 2004. We had a great hallway discussion about Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, and developing software. Rats, I should have talked with him about fun stuff, like Robots. From his blog today he declares:
Robots are the ultimate user interface to a computer. I want to work in Robotics.
I agree. Robots are cool times ten.
I also see that Lenn knows Phil Torrone, my current Robot idol. Now this is the way to use my LitePad!
ArtRage---an impressive painting program---is now available as a public download. Cool!
ArtRage is loads of fun. If there's one program that has the chance to turn every person into an artist, this is it.
Note: A Tablet PC is not required, but highly recommended.
In response to recent press accounts of Bill Gates promoting Computer Science programs, Dave Winer contemplates: "Did Microsoft dry up the talent pool?" Hardly. But it is true that there is a communal feeling that software is dead.
It's interesting to compare what my friends and acquaintances tell me today with what I remember hearing when I was getting into microcomputers full-throttle in the late '70s.
I remember lots of people being overwhelmed by my handwired contraptions back then, but they almost unanimously were positive about their future. They saw great potential in computers.
I often chuckled inside when people were so positive however. Here I was with a computer that I hand-built and primarily programmed using front panel switches. It was going to become widespread? No way! And people often talked of wanting to use their microcomputers to balance their checkbooks. But who was going to type all the information into a microcomputer? You could do it faster by hand. It was hard to see where the practicality was. But even with all the limitations I think people inherently understood that these restrictions were temporary. They were right.
Now I compare all this to today. I'm going to bet that the majority of the time when I meet someone and tell them that I write software for the Tablet PC that I get a response that the software opportunities have moved overseas. Sure, people are intrigued when I show them what I'm doing, but at the same time I can see them ponder whether it couldn't be done just as well by someone else, somewhere else. Their assumption, I'm surmising, is that a big company could call in an order to develop a new software program as easily as it could order a pizza.
I imagine this can be a bit disconcerting--especially to someone thinking of getting into Computer Science.
That being said, I also remember quite well that back when I was getting into computers, it didn't matter what anyone said. I was still going to do it. I don't think I could effectively explain to anyone why they really needed a S-100 system in their home or office. But there was no stopping me from exploring them. I had no idea where it was going to lead. I presume I could have had trouble justifying the time--if I had thought about it--which I can't remember doing.
Now with car loans, housing, insurance, medical bills and on and on I admit I'm outwardly more reasoned in how I allocate my time and resources. However, I still have that inexplicable drive to want to make things better--computers being one tool to accomplish this.
And when I mean "make things better" I don't mean simply sanding down well-known and understood technologies. We've only scratched the surface of what computers need to do. I want computers hundreds of times faster than we have now to get to the point where computers can be more aware of their surroundings, making interacting with them much more powerful and natural. I need this because I really want to build robots. Yeah, I can't exactly tell you why. I can't justify the cost of building a robot that can fetch a can of coke or keep track of your food. But I've got to find out how to do it. The one thing I'm sure about is that the value will be obvious...later.
Hmm, if I was in the student audience listening to Bill Gates, one thing that surely would have inspired me would have been if he'd brought a robot on stage. What would have inspired you?
Bryan gets feedback on his thoughts on C# garbage collection on this blog, via Larry O'Brien and others.
I see Peter posted some screenshots of the new InfoPath preview. If you have a Tablet PC and contemplate filling out forms, the InfoPath Preview is a must-check-out program.
What makes InfoPath so intriguing is its support of ink. As Peter's screenshots illustrate, an automatically-resizing window pops up when you're using a stylus so you can handwrite in fields and have the text automatically recognized.
A couple thoughts came to mind when using InfoPath that I wanted to share...Oh, by the way, this is the most I've ever used InfoPath, so maybe all these things have fixes that I'm not aware of or they wouldn't really pan out after further thinking, but here goes....
I'd like the forms to be scalable. For instance, all the sample forms are fairly tiny on my Tablet. It's supposed to technically not a problem with the pen since InfoPath is designed so you can ink in larger areas than the edit field itself. However, it's a bit disconcerting. Maybe I'd get used to it. But I keep worrying that I'm going to click on the wrong field when the fields are tightly spaced together. What I'd like to be able to do is scale the form a bit--kind of like how Journal can scale a page. I tried scaling a form by hand, but it was time consuming since I had to go in and change fonts all over the place. Call me silly. Maybe it's just that I have a longing for Longhorn and its vector graphics :-) I can't wait!
Checkboxes are OK, but tapping on a checkbox requires just a tad more precision on a tiny tablet than lazy me wants sometimes. How about supporting the ability to circle or scribble on checkboxes or radio buttons with ink? I haven't experimented with this, but it seems like a scribble is slightly more deliberate and easier to do than tapping with just the right pressure. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's something I've noticed. Watch someone try to tap a box on a Tablet PC and you'll often see them have to try a couple times to get it right--sometimes due to errors in the digitizer, sometimes due to insufficient pressure, sometimes due to parallax, and sometimes due to inaccurate positioning.
The popup ink window for edit fields is nice, but I wonder how redundant it will be in light of Lonestar--which includes a vastly superior although similar input metaphor. My concern is that the currently employed ink edit window in InfoPath doesn't support editing. I'm guessing once the Lonestar code permeates the Tablet community, that everyone will expect it. But then I guess you could simply use the Lonestar TIP instead, although I like the tightly integrated ink window. It seems more natural. Seems like there's room for a TIP mode that appears like that in InfoPath, but that contains editing features.
And while on the ink fields, here are a couple other thoughts. The recognition occurs after a or so second after the recognition stops. This is OK, but most of the time when I'm done, I'd really like the recognition to occur right then. The delay slows me down too much when filling out a form. Yeah, I know there's a checkbox off to the lower-right that I can click on, but I'm so cognitively lazy that I don't bother moving my hand over to try to tap precisely on it. So what about supporting an exit direction or something on the window? I'm not sure what it would be exactly, but I'm thinking that if the pen stops moving maybe the recognition starts or maybe if the pen moves off the side of the window in a certain direction the recognition initiates? Or maybe we need a "pen away" event that we can use to invoke recognition? Seems like something is missing.
Partially because of the ink delay another issue pops up. I'd like to be able to go on to the next field even when the current edit window is up. Right now all the ink is routed to the original edit field that the ink was in. I know I'm suggesting a potentially semantic mess, but if the ink window stays up too long, I want to keep inking.
Oh, and one more dream feature. I'd like the ink to be kept around in the edit field. I can imagine many situations where the recognition fails, but that fact isn't noticed right away. If there could be a way for the user to get back to the original ink so you could see what was intended, this would be a nice feature. I guess for this matter, maybe just keeping everything visually in ink would be great too.
On the "I love it" side of things, I'm already addicted to the scratch out gesture in the edit fields. Well done.
And lastly, as a developer I'm wondering about the possibility of "getting at" the ink in an ink picture field so I can add recognition (such as shape recognition). I guess I'd be limited to pumping ink back into the picture window. Hmmm. I don't know if accessing the ink is possible or practical, but it seems like it could lead to some very interesting applications indeed. Is there a sample somewhere? I'd like to see one. Maybe this calls for some third-party form components? For instance, what about plug-in controls to create a classroom seating chart, for instance? Or for that matter, especially once you have a freeform pen, why does a form have to be all edit fields and other stock Windows controls? What about supporting hotspots on bitmaps? Seems like there's great potential here.
I hope these comments help the InfoPath team. The product looks very, very promising--especially for anyone dealing with forms.
In fact, I wonder who might benefit more: the Tablet PC from the new release of InfoPath or InfoPath from the existence of the Tablet PC?