As you may know, I’ve been posting notes regarding my experiences with the Logitech io Digital Pen for the past few days. Here’s more!

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

I wish I could open my Outlook calendar, pick an appointment and see all notes taken with the pen during that time, regardless of what page in the book they were written on. The pen doesn’t timestamp each stroke and I think it should.

You can save Digital Pen documents as images. I copied a couple JPGs to my SD card, but RescoViewer treats them like small 320×320 images and zooming just shows low-res blowups. There is probably a “better for large images” JPG viewing application out there and that would help. I think the ideal solution would be a synch process that copies all the Logitech io .pen files to the memory card in the same hierachy they appear in you’re My io Documents folder. Then, there should be an application on the pda that can interpret the XML .pen files to display the pen strokes. Zooming and panning would be a lot cleaner that way. Maybe there’s a way to convert the .pen files to a format used by a “vector graphics” palm editor. “Vector graphics” are images made of shapes and strokes rather than pixels(like bitmaps).

When I write a word in all capital letters, the handwriting recognition tries to recognize each letter without the context of the surrounding letters that make up the word. The only way to make it treat the all caps word correctly is to enter the word in the dictionary in all caps. This was frustrating for me, at first, because I normally write in all caps.

There is no workable system for users who want to dock their pen at work and at home. I haven’t tried it, but I see how the files would get completely out of sync, with some pages ending up at home and some at work. This is a problem that could be resolved by desktop software. And I hope it does.

The Logitech io Digital Pen has a TERRIBLE cap. It fits on the back of the pen, but falls off if you turn the pen upside down or wave it around. Incidentally, if you lose the pen cap, the pen will never know when to turn off and it’s batteries will wear down.

NEXT

Hopefully, I’ll find a good solution for viewing pages on my PDA and document that tomorrow. I’d also like to discuss, briefly, productivity applications that I think this technology could spawn. The following day, I’d like to wrap up, with a pleasant summary and compare the Logitech io Pen to the feature lists of similar products that are on the market now or soon will be.

Crossposted to PalmAddicts

Today, I took several pages of notes, during meetings, with the Logitech Pen. Here are my thoughts.

OCR

Yesterday, I was not satisfied with the handwriting recognition(trial included). I was using the included Post-Its and I thought the included notebook might be better. The handwriting recognition software is not noticably better with the notebook. But, I learned a few tricks. Doing a “select all” when in the handwriting recognition application lets you grab all the text and you can format it yourself in Outlook or Word if you plan to share it with someone else. Also, the best way I’ve seen to improve the handwriting recognition is to add words that it missed to your dictionary.

The OCR software does not recognize bullets, so you need to use dashes if you want the formatting to carry over to converted text.

I haven’t tried to train the OCR with the included training sheets, but I think my printed writing is too unpredictable to accurately train it. Maybe another day.

STABILITY

I’m much more comfortable with the interface now and I realize that yesterday’s description, “Clunky”, may have been too harsh. Also, I think it’s great that all my notes will soon be stored safely on my PC. A rogue cup of coffee or an over-zealous desk cleaning will no longer mean lost data.

CONVENIENCE

I think I won’t be using the OCR software much, but it’s nice knowing that if I had to get the notes from a meeting and distribute them quickly, I could convert the text, make a few corrections, load it up in Outlook and format it properly. I did just that for one set of meeting notes today and it was much quicker than typing the whole thing in from hand-written sheets.

All pages are searchable, even if you haven’t run them through the OCR software. So, I’ve gotten into the habit of putting a very clear title and some keywords at the top of each page. Typing in a search phrase will give you a list of documents that contain those words. Also, the documents can be organized, in the io application, into a hierarchy. That hierarchy is matched with files and folders on disk, in the My Documents/My io Documents folder.

COMFORT

At meetings, I feel comfortable taking notes with the pen. As I mentioned yesterday, typing lots of notes(or using Graffiti) during meetings feels impersonal to me and very constricting. With the io, I’ve been able to take notes the same way I’ve been doing it for years.

NEXT

Tomorrow, I’ll address processes. For instance, what’s involved in getting notes from the pen to my Tungsten C? I’ll try jpgs, unformatted text, formatted text, etc.

Crossposted to PalmAddicts

“The Logitech io Personal Digital Pen: It writes as well as any ballpoint, but also permanently records all your ideas, sketches, and notes in digital form on your PC.” – from the main Logitech io page

“Digital paper with Anoto functionality is created by printing a proprietary pattern of very small dots on ordinary paper that is perceived by the eye as a slightly off-white color. The dots have a nominal spacing of 0.3 mm (0.01 inch). As you write, the built-in digital camera in the pen continuously takes pictures of the patterned paper. Then, when you place the pen in its cradle, all of your writing is transferred automatically to your PC.” – from the Logitech io technology page

Though I love my Tungsten C, none of the PDAs I’ve owned(starting with the original Pilot 5000) has allowed me to, comfortably, take pages of notes in meetings. The ThinkOutside Stowaway keyboard for my Palm V came close, but I couldn’t draw diagrams, etc. And then…

After reading about the Logitech io “Digital Pen” on Daily Gadget, I knew I had to have one. On Sunday, I read every post on the Logitech io forums and ordered one that night. It arrived today.

This pen is 3 or 4 times thicker than a normal pen, but it is light. Also, I feel confident that the pen is durable, despite the fact that a tiny camera sits at the tip, next to the ballpoint pen tip.

The pen writes well. The refills are very small, though, and I expect that the ink will run out quickly. It comes with 5 refills and more are available online.

The io software is clunky(loading, restoring the window after minimize), but downloads from the pen are fast and trouble free. Within seconds, you can put your pen in the cradle and, if the software is already running, open the downloaded document.

So far, I’ve only tested writing on the included Post-It Notes. I’ll try using the included notebook tomorrow. All the text I wrote(I normally print and I was a little careful) converted to text successfully. Unfortunately, text chunks with a lot of space between them were treated as different blocks of text and could not be copied to the clipboard as one chunk of text. I expect that the OCR stuff will work a lot better with the notebook. Also, I drew a pie graph with 4 slices and the shape recognition failed miserably.

The MyScript software that converts pen input to text is an additional $40. The pen comes with a 30 day trial of that software. I wonder if there is a free solution out there for OCR of the “.pen” files.

The paper is a little expensive ($25 for 3 notebooks – 160 pages each), but it is available in a lot of different formats. Several statements on the forums indicate that some people have successfully photocopied the paper and used the copies. I tried that on the copier at work with notebook and post it paper. The dots showed up, but the pen wouldn’t record.

The pen itself was $158 at Amazon. It’ll be worth every penny if it means I can get rid of a few of the piles of notes on my desk.

System requirements
Windows® 98, Me, 2000, or XP
Pentium® II 233MHz,64MB minimum,128MB, 300MB of free disk space
Screen resolution of at least 800×600 and 256 colors
Internet access
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or later; Microsoft .NET framework (both included in box)
Available USB port
CD-ROM drive
Pre-printed paper (initial supply included)
Email support requires one of the following MAPI-compatible email clients:
Microsoft® Outlook® Express 5.0 and 6.0
Microsoft® Outlook® 97, 2000, and XP
Microsoft® Hotmail®
Lotus® Notes® 5.0 and above
Eudora® Mail 5.0 and above
Netscape® Mail 6.2 and above

Tomorrow, I’ll report on my first full day of note-taking with the pen.

Crossposted to PalmAddicts

I’ve always wanted a tiny, low-res, low-power projector mounted to my PDA. Looks like my wish will come true… eventually. PDALive is pointing to Upstream Engineering’s plan to ship a small(portable tv sized) projector in 2005 which will eventually shrink to the size of a matchbox.

A more vaporware version is in NEC’s P-ISM concept package.

Crossposted to PalmAddicts