E-ink writing pad, Noteslate. (noteslate.com)
Although it's obvious, I didn't immediately consider that these sketches could be saved. Once I did, my interest in something like this grew several-fold. I love to doodle and jot notes, I miss it. Now, I can do it again...
BTW, I don't know anything about the company. Maybe it's vaporware? I just happened across this on Kottke.org. I'd love to know more.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadBTW, I don't know anything about the company. Maybe it's vaporware? I just happened across this on Kottke.org. I'd love to know more.
The only drawback to it that I can see is that it doesn't really exist.
Besides, it's a wall of text. That's bad no matter the quality of the writing.
I'd have liked to have seen a video though, too early to tell whether it will actually make it to market, as advertised, as polished looking and as low priced.
Fingers crossed.
It really can be the bane of productivity.
I could see this as being useful as an input medium to something like Balsamiq, but that might conflict with the "we're keeping it simple. just like paper. nothing you can't do with paper." feel they're going for. Which is an odd pitch --- people selling electronic whiteboards usually say something like, "you can pretend it's like your other whiteboards, but here's all this other stuff you can also do with it!"
I just want a very long-life note-taking tablet with a decent keyboard. There's a reason the old Tandy 100 is still in use by a handful of journalists. Nothing has really taken the place of it, as far as I know.
The Kindle keyboard isn't comfortable enough to write a book or an article on; phone keyboards are too small and editing too much of a chore (I'd use vim on my Nexus One if it weren't such a damned hassle to hit Esc and some of the other special keys). I currently use a netbook for this purpose, but the battery life is too short at only a couple of hours. I can't go to the park and knock out a chapter in two hours, and rebooting to change batteries every two hours would be a productivity killer, even if I wanted to spend a bunch of money on spares and go to the trouble to keep them charged.
I guess I'm just not the niche for this device, as I can't imagine ever using it for anything.
(1) I find handwriting a very very efficient way to take notes. I choose that over typing.
(2) Its not just about writing - sketching, wireframes, doodles, ideas, diagrams in a format I can email and save - very useful to me
yes! Scribbling a small mock-up screen or a mind-map or an algo on an e-ink pad would be just so simple && awesome! (I can't even imagine doing that with a keyb/mouse)
I run emacs on my N810 (Nokia tablet). I haven't yet seen another device with a good enough keyboard, though. The N810 has Esc and Control, and has () and <> on the keys, and I've configured the terminal for one-touch {}, [], and |.
I think you would like the Alphasmart NEO. http://www.neo-direct.com/NEO/default.aspx
It's got a full-sized keyboard with a built-in 6 line LCD screen. It runs on 3 AA batteries or a rechargeable pack and it honestly runs forever. I got one originally 5 years ago when I did Nanowrimo for the first time. I use it all the time when I'm in the mood to just write, because there's no distraction. The only real downside is the need to hook it up to USB to transfer files off of it.
QWERTY keyboard with proper keys in a decent shape and that aren't much smaller than netbook keys. But it'll fit into a pocket and run for plenty of time on AA batteries. I could and did touch type on it fast enough to take very usable notes in meetings. And for those that want to draw diagrams, it's got a touchscreen too.
Honestly, I've never found anything quite as good and think it's a major shame they're not still available. A smartphone with the keyboard from one of these things would be brilliant; I just can't understand why companies play about with these silly modified calculator keyboards when there was something so much better available in 1997. If I were HTC I'd be making it, if I were a VC I'd be funding whoever could make it.
My solution was to buy a Psion 5MX, not because it's better built, but because it came out 2-3 years after the 5 and thus will last on average 2 years longer - which means they'll break in 2012. Also stockpiling the 5MX's so when mine breaks in 2012, I'll have 3 or 4 more to last me a few more years.
(Disclaimer - I stopped using it because I changed jobs and no longer needed its functionality, then eventually went for a netbook as I no longer so needed its portability and valued being able to run Visual Studio! I'd still recommend them to anyone who really wants a portable machine rather than just a toy though; in some ways I genuinely prefer it to my Android phone.)
My NC-10 is getting long in the tooth on its original 6-cell battery, but it still gets 4.5-6 hours, depending upon what I'm doing, and I seldom (read "almost never") remember to turn off wifi, which is a major power suck.
Nice and light, but you only get about 2-to-2-ana-half hours (three if you are careful with screen brightness and turn wireless off). I have a chunky after-market battery that lives in the Acer giving ~7 hours active use with everything turned on, but sometimes chuck the little one back in for the size/weight convenience.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0042TYYI4/
Lots of hard questions, but if they pulled it off, I'll be first in line.
Why?
You can see on the kindle the loading indicator is able to spin at a decent refresh rate; ditto word selection, menu selection, etc. This is because you are waiting on few elements to make the physical change at a time.
A simple pen based drawing surface would only update a few pixels at a time would and presumably work quickly as well.
(Any corrections welcome; this is just sort of how I assume it works based on using a kindle, not based on much looking into of how eink actually works)
I wrote low-level software for E Ink displays years ago, when the practical response time was more like 400ms IIRC. At the time, drawing lagged too much to be pleasant for a consumer device. Maybe now, if you do something clever with a quick 1st pass and a slow 2nd, darkening pass, you could get a reasonable result... Maybe.
I think the real key is an acceptable amount of friction. This looks like it could fit that bill.
"no superfluous features" ... but it includes an MP3 player.
"any ordinary pen or pencil usage" "real paper design"
"solar energy backside cover"
"no antialiasing (on of our best features)"
"180 hours battery life" ... So 180 hours of OCR on a 6mm thick device? Sure. That's totally plausible.
HN's bullshit detector has been firmly switched to the "off" position.
Use a pad of paper and lose all my notes over time or Use my laptop and cringe every time the professor uses a symbol I can't easily type
This seems perfect
Too bad it doesn't-the lack of a next page button and actual product pictures (among other things) signals this.
Oh well, back to dreaming about the MS Courier Concept.
Anyone know if this has been tried?
one thing was funny: "No superfluous features" then a paragraph later "it's an MP3 player!"
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/02/apple-ta...
Now, if you could do things like zoom, copy/paste, and connect (wifi) with a computer/projector, I could see buying one.
Currently, I could take notes on a laptop, but in mathematics this is extremely difficult (you have to be very very fast with LaTeX), and realtime diagram entering/editing is basically impossible with a laptop.