Hand-Held Tools for Digital Scribblers | Spectacular Technology

Even after the invention of the typewriter, many great writers stuck with longhand. Hemingway slashed out his words in pen and ink while standing at a specially made desk, and Margaret Mitchell scribbled ?Gone With the Wind? in dozens of composition notebooks. But with the rise of the keyboard, and, more recently, the touch screen, it seems as if pen-and-paper lovers are out of luck.

While technology that enables artists to draw accurately on touch screens has been with us for most of this decade, only recently have computer and tablet users been able to draw or write directly onto a screen using pens so sensitive they can change the appearance of the sketched lines depending on drawing speed and hand pressure.

Better screen sensors have also made it easier for manufacturers to create cheaper, almost disposable, pens for computer use. And new applications have made it possible to sketch out garden plans, office designs and notes with a few strokes. For example, Thinkgeek.com sells a small foam-tipped stylus that can write on Apple?s iPad and iPhone screens, and on almost any other tablet that uses modern touch technology. The stylus, the Pogo Sketch ($9.99), mimics the electrical characteristics of the human finger, but offers considerably more accuracy when sketching, writing and drawing.

If you?re looking for something a bit heftier, Wacom recently announced the Bamboo Stylus ($30). It works with certain iPad applications to offer more precise drawing on the iPad?s screen. It is weighted and sized just like a real pen, allowing far more control than the thinner and less substantial Pogo Sketch stylus.

You can use either of these simple styluses with PhatPad, a $4.99 iPad app. It offers rudimentary handwriting recognition and will fix geometric shapes into perfect circles and squares. You can send your drawings via e-mail or save them on your computer.

Another app, Adobe Eazel ($2.99), works with Adobe Photoshop and allows you to paint on the iPad in various colors and brush styles.

For a bit more accuracy, N-trig?s new DuoSense technology is found in a diminutive tablet made by Fujitsu, the LifeBook T580, which can also be set up to work as a laptop. The T580 ($999) is a convertible tablet, which means it can open like a standard laptop with a keyboard, or you can twist around its 10-inch screen and lay it flat like a tablet.

The DuoSense screen allows you to draw directly on the screen using a stylus included with the tablet or to touch the screen with your fingers to interact with windows and buttons. For example, you can touch four points on the screen and move your fingers open or closed to resize images and windows, a feature not available on most Windows computers.

When set up as a laptop, the T580 creates drawings or text with its keyboard and track pad. But folding the screen down activates Windows 7?s Touch Pack, which includes handwriting recognition for Web browsers, word processors and other programs.

This allows you to run applications like OneNote, which lets you take notes with the stylus on the blank screen and record what you?ve written, and also to annotate documents. Software like Photoshop or Paint.NET turn the T580 into a sketchpad.

A more penlike experience can be had with HTC Flyer tablet ($500). The Flyer uses a stylus for drawing right on the screen, and the stylus and software allow you to annotate documents and Web pages and to draw and sketch.

Purists who want more than on-screen ink may want to take a look at the Livescibe Echo.

The Echo is a ?smartpen? ? a tiny computer inside an ink pen. A pattern of tiny dots on the paper, available from Livescribe (you can also print your own), allows the pen to sense its position and record your pen strokes. A built-in microphone records everything that is being said in the room or lecture hall. Later, when you need to consult your notes, you simply touch the pen to the words in question and it will play back the audio recorded at that moment.

The Echo can also run programs. You can, for example, draw calculations on the page (2+2=?) and get the answer instantly, or draw a little piano keyboard and play a tune by tapping the keys. A small LCD screen on the side of the pen shows prompts and menu items.

You can share ?pencasts? with others in video format. Pencasts are voice recordings that sync with pen strokes. For example, teachers can show how to draw Chinese characters or describe and show math formulas, all in real time.

The Echo software can also perform handwriting recognition on your recorded writings, allowing you to search your notes ? provided your handwriting isn?t too messy ? by typing search terms into the included notebook software.

The pens range in price from $100 for the 2GB version up to $250 for an 8GB Pro Pack that comes with a carrying case, headphones and more software.

Except for the Livescribe pen, none of these devices precisely mimics the experience of writing on paper. But these styluses reproduce hand motions with enough fidelity to record notes with plenty of detail, and the handwriting recognition built into Windows 7 ensures your hastily jotted shopping list won?t read like Absurdist poetry.

Sadly, though, it?s not quite like dipping your nib into a pot of ink and scratching out a masterpiece while nibbling madeleines. But you can use your imagination. Just keep the crumbs off the screen.

Source: www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/technology/personaltech/30basics.html?ref=technology#h[]

Source: http://spectaculartech.com/hand-held-tools-for-digital-scribblers/

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